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REVIEW: Cellophoria @ House Concert (Creswell, OR – 12/18/11)
House concerts are the best… especially when your $$ goes straight to the artists and you get a smorgasbord of awesome food! Super thanks to hosts Jenny & Mike (same place I co-hosted the Peter Mulvey show last month)!
Last afternoon’s show was by Cellophoria – a cello quartet made up of Eugene Symphony musicians. Dale Bradley, Jeffrey Eaton, Ann Grabe, and Anne Ridlington all play with the Eugene Symphony. They also have vast non-ES experience with the Eugene Opera Orchestra, Oregon Mozart Players, the OSU/Corvallis Symphony, Oregon Bach Festival and many varied teaching and playing opportunities. They obviously keep busy, which made their ability and willingness to set aside a foggy afternoon for us into a true treat!
Their gorgeous set in a gorgeous setting…
Setlist: about an hour
- Slavic Dance [Dale Bradley]
- Prelude in E Minor, Op. 28, No. 4 [Frederic Chopin, arr. Laszlo Varga]
- Four Scottish & Irish Tunes [arr. Dale Bradley]
….Arran Boat Song
….Road to Lisdoonvarna
….Star of the County Down
….Skye Boat Song - Every Breath You Take [Sting, arr. John Reed]
- Ashokan Farewell [Jay Ungar, arr. David Faulkner]
- Gagliarda del Principe di Venosa [Carlo Gesualdo, arr. Árpád Pejtsik]
- Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D Minor For Unaccompanied Violin, BWV 1004 [J.S. Bach, arr. Laszlo Varga]
- Bagatelle No. 5 from Bagatelles for 2 Violins, Cello and Harmonium, Op. 47 [Antonin Dvorák, arr. Rosalynn Heuer]
- Generations [Dale Bradley]
- Eleanor Rigby [Lennon/McCartney, arr. B. Lanier]
- All Through the Night [arr. Dale Bradley]
The sound in the high, vaulted wood ceiling living room was superb. Full from good food and good music, it was a splendid late Fall/lazy Sunday afternoon.
That was presumably my last show of the year (unless something pops up between now and 12/30). 2011 year-end concert and album “best of” recaps coming up soon. Next show for me… Pojama People play the music of Frank Zappa with FZ vocalist Ike Willis at Sam Bond’s on 1/7.
~Dan – np: Childish Gambino – Camp
Smooth Criminal for Cellos
Cello and other string tributes may be a little “played out”… regardless, this is one still pretty damn good:
Stjepan Hauser & Luka Sulic – “Smooth Criminal”
~Dan – np: No. 2 – No Memory
cello, string, stringed tribute to Michael Jackson
Portland Cello Project on Daytrotter
The few websites that aren’t RSS feed-able that made it to my “must check every day” list… Daytrotter is great, and they hit us this past week with a live in the studio session with the Portland Cello Project…
Go here for the free music:
http://tinyurl.com/daytrotter-pcp
1) Turkish Wine 2) Mouth For War 3) Halo 3 Theme 4) Remedy
Past Daytrotter Sessions I’ve blogged about and dug (links and free music not guaranteed on these old blogs): Matisyahu, Tori Amos, The Swell Season, David Bazan #2, Copeland, Bad Veins, Nellie McKay, Clare and the Reasons, My Brightest Diamond #2, Damien Jurado, Talkdemonic, Aimee Mann, Ani DiFranco, Bad Veins #1, Kaki King, Holy Fuck… and David Bazan, My Brightest Diamond, Erin McKeown.
~Dan – np: Masada – Yod (#10)
REVIEW: Erik Friedlander @ Winningstad Theatre (Portland, OR – 9/12/09)
FYI… PHOTOS of the SHOW at the BOTTOM
Erik Friedlander grew up spending many of his summers on the road with his family due to his photographer father, Lee Friedlander. I knew his dad was a photographer with some notoriety, but I hadn’t known about the long, cross-country summer road trips – which were the basis for Erik’s 3-day run of Block Ice and Propane at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA)’s TBA Festival (aka T:BA:09). More about T:BA:09 later…
I have been into Erik for a while… basically contemporaneously with my immersion into John Zorn, as Erik is a mainstay in the Downtown NYC jazz scene and finds his way on maaaaany of the Tzadik releases that I love. He’s a part of the Masada String Trio & Bar Kokhba Sextet, and has played with Dave Douglas, Ikue Mori, Wadada Leo Smith, severalk of Zorn’s Filmworks series, et cetera.
When I showed up for the event, I was caught off guard by the vast amount of people milling about the lobby. “Does Erik have this big of a draw in Portland?”
Well, the answer to that question is, “now he does.” This was the third night of his three-night run as part of the T:BA:09 festival put on by PICA. The entire 10-day festival was also coming to a crescendo on the 12th… needless to say, the program looked amazing, full of art of all kinds, not just music. I’m definitely putting T:BA:10 on my radar for next year.
Erik’s solo chair, laptop stand, and microphone in front of a projector screen was nicely lit with a blue light as the herd of an audience entered the Dolores Winningstad Theatre. I’d never been to the Winningstad Theatre, but it’s in the same complex as the Newmark Theatre (where I saw the SF Jazz Collective in ’08 and where I’ll see Patton Oswalt tonight), and it’s right next door to the Arlene Schnitzer Hall (where I’ve seen many shows). “The Winny” was a great venue… small & intimate, but seemingly able to fit in a large amount of people, including 2 tiers of balcony seating. Luckily I was solo; so I found a stray seat right up front-left.
As mentioned prior, the show was Erik playing solo cello in front of a backdrop of photos from his childhood, primarily taken by his father Lee Friedlander. The performance, specifically the backdrop, had a very “Americana” feel set to non-“Americana music.” Or perhaps it was Americana music set through the filter of the cello. It wasn’t Woody Guthrie-esque, but it had that dirty, road weary, wow-look-at-this-wonderful-country feel to it. Amongst the photos were also some videos shot by Bill Morrison.
Outside of photographing the country on big summer roadtrips, Erik’s father Lee also photographed many musicians… Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane… even up to the current era like a famous Madonna photo. Lee’s love of music spilled over to Erik, who found a love for music early in his life. He started on guitar and eventually moved to cello. However, his basis in guitar drove much of the style of playing last night. Only a few times did Erik pull out a bow – rather he plucked and strummed his cello like one would with a guitar… well, a guitar that you were holding like a cello. :)
Setlist:
- Block Ice & Propane
- Road Weary
- King Rig
- I’m Not Here
- Cold Chicken
- Yakima
- Pressure Cooking
- Winking at Highway 7
- Rusting in Honeysuckle
- Dream Song
- Airstream Envy
- Night White
Some of my favorite pieces were the lead-in, title track (to the 2007 CD of the same name), as well as “Pressure Cooking” and “Night White” (nice harmonics). The story about “Cold Chicken” was great, about how at a diner they were served very slowly and Lee stormed into the kitchen to complain about “who wants to eat cold chicken!?” while the family scurried away. The music, which I’ve heard several times before on the CD, totally made sense now. Nice…
Block Ice and Propane (the 2007 CD) can be purchased directly from Erik HERE.
The Appropriate Linkage:
~Dan – np: Porcupine Tree – The Incident
ERIK FRIEDLANDER PHOTOS
all pictures (cc) 2009 Daniel Temmesfeld,
you may use freely under a creative commons attribution
(click for larger)
REVIEW: Portland Cello Project & Emily Wells @ Cozmic Pizza (Eugene, OR – 6/13/09)
I first heard of Portland Cello Project via cellist Anna Fritz. Her 2005 album Wake featured a couple of songs with singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey guesting, of whom I had been a longtime fan already. Anyway, shortly thereafter, Anna Fritz was posting on her MySpace page about this new band that she was in, the Portland Cello Project. They kept playing around on times that I couldn’t see them… so last night was the first official time for me to see them, though I guess I’ve been a fan for a while.
We showed up around 8:30 to a beyond packed house. Oh crap, I underestimated the draw of the PCP on a Saturday night in Eugene. Emily Wells was into her set, and some of the PCP was sitting in on her set. Great stuff… enough to buy her Symphonies album. I hope she comes around Eugene or Portland again… I loved her sound.
The Portland Cello Project came on around 9:30. Their sound seemed very much standard “chamber music” until they hit the more energetic Pantera and Dave Brubeck pieces. PCP pulls off the “modern / alternative chamber music” sound pretty well without getting lumped into the sometimes cheesy Apocalyptica and the almost always cheesy “String Quartet Tribute to…” compilations. PCP had a mix of classical, jazz, rougher music, tween pop with John Brophy, and indie rock (the songs featuring Justin Power on guitar & voice)… seemed to be enjoyed by the very large, very diverse crowd…
Setlist: (per the PCP blog)
- Collaborations with Emily Wells
- The Batman Theme Song (by Danny Elfman)
- Turkish Wine (by Norfolk and Western)
- Denmark (by Gideon Freudmann)
- Mouth for War (by Pantera)
- Take 5 (by Dave Brubeck Quartet)
- A piece by Ashia
- Ashia and Justin Power playing Hungry Liars
- Two more Justin Power pieces!
- Toxic (by Britney Spears) featuring John Brophy
- What Goes Around…/…Comes Back around (by Justin Timberlake) featuring John Brophy
- Push-it (by Salt N Pepa) featuring John Brophy and Emily Wells
- 3 pieces collaborating with Run-On Sentence
- Encore: Transformation from The Dream: A Three Movement Suite for Cellos, Mallet Percussion, and Drum Set by Rachel Blumberg
We stuck around through the Justin Timberlake tune (it had been a long day). Great stuff all around. I was very impressed with Emily Wells set (never heard of her before), and the size of the crowd at Cozmic. I mean, seriously, I’ve never seen that many people packed in there. It was great to see so many people out there, but I’m wondering how they heard about it. Here I was thinking I’d show up at 8:30 and get right in…
Next time, I’ll know to show up early for PCP in Eugene.
The Appropriate Linkage:
- Portland Cello Project Online
- Portland Cello Project on MySpace
- Emily Wells on MySpace
- Justin Power on MySpace
- Cozmic Pizza
~Dan – np: Flaregun – Ten Sundays
-Eyvind Kang
-Frank Zappa
Amazon.com mp3 downloads
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