Tag Archives: triple door

An Eclectic Easter With the Portland Cello Project

Portland Cello Project (Photo: Jason Quigley)
Portland Cello Project (Photo: Jason Quigley)

Portland Cello Project knows how to rock. They also know how to jazz, to funk, to rap, and to classical. It seems like there isn’t a musical genre that hasn’t been lovingly remixed by this roving band of cellists. Since 2007, the dozen-or-so musicians of PCP (as they’re lovingly called by members and fans) have pursued their mission to to boldly go where no cello has gone before, from rock clubs and art galleries to sports arenas and dive bars.

The ensemble’s adventurous arrangements and cello-playing chops have won them legions of fans in the Portland area and beyond. After wowing Seattle audiences in 2013 with an eclectic mix of Beck, Bach, and Brubeck, the band returned to the Triple Door on April 20 for an Easter Sunday concert. They were joined by the Alialujah Choir, a band of fellow Portlanders who blend folk-inspired tunes with layered vocal harmonies.

Alialujah Choir (Photo: Tarina Westlund)

In true PCP spirit, Sunday’s program had something for everyone. Hits by Radiohead, Kanye West, Beck, and Fleet Foxes figured prominently, along with fallen hometown hero Elliott Smith. A nod to the cello’s classical roots came in the form of Rossini’s William Tell Overture and a tribute to British choral composer John Tavener. The ensemble’s take on Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk” was one of the most interesting arrangements of the evening, the ensemble tossing Brubeck’s energetic piano theme from cellist to cellist.

Sunday’s concert was performed by six of the ensemble’s rotating group of cellists, all fine players at the top of their game. I was impressed by the quality of PCP’s arrangements, which utilize the full range of the cello and often play with timbre in clever ways. Their arrangement of Tavener’s “The Lamb” brought a buoyant quality to the solemn choral piece, shedding a new light on the Easter-appropriate work. In contrast, the arrangement of the theme from Princess Mononoke echoed the film score to a tee, evoking the soaring string melody of the original.

The six cellists received support on some songs from a backup band of drums, bass, trumpet, and keyboard. Though the rhythm section added a lot of energy to the ensemble, the songs with drums and bass guitar sounded muddled and too busy. The reverb on the bass guitar drowned out the nuanced cello arrangements in some of the more rocking tunes like Radiohead’s “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” and Beck’s “Paper Tiger”. A jazzy cello solo in Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk” was barely audible amidst accompaniment from the other cellists as well as the backup band.

Vocalist Patti King also joined the cellists for a few numbers. She quickly became a crowd favorite, drawing cheers for her performances of Radiohead, Beck, and her own original song, “My Arrow”. PCP and King joined forces for a couple of numbers from Beck’s Song Reader, the artist’s 2012 album that was released only in sheet music format. The wry “Last Night You Were a Dream” was full of charm, with King’s sunny vocals floating over cello harmonies.

Not surprisingly, PCP sounds best when focusing on what its members know best: The cello and its vast musical capabilities. My favorite piece of the evening was “Denmark”, an original work written for the ensemble by composer and founding member Gideon Freudmann. A tentative pizzicato phrase kicks off the tune, transforming into a countermelody as the layers of the piece slowly unfold, revealing an elegant theme that’s passed around the group. It’s a short, relatively simple little piece, but “Denmark” goes far in showcasing the range and versatility of the cello ensemble.

In the spirit of Portland-flavored DIY, Sunday’s program was a true community effort, bringing together arrangements by different members of the band. With a repertoire of over 800 songs, it’s easy to believe that no two PCP shows are alike. I appreciated the opportunity to hear from each of the six cellists during their Triple Door performance, whether it be in the form of a solo passage or through a piece they arranged.

Alialujah Choir opened the evening with a brief set. With one band member missing due to illness, guitarist Adam Shearer and pianist Meredith Adelaide struggled to impart fullness to the group’s brand of wistful folk tunes. Their efforts were valiant indeed, with the pair’s lovely vocal harmonies floating in perfect balance with intertwining instrumentals. However, without the harmonizing power of the full band, the typically-rich songs felt a little hollow and repetitive after the first few numbers.

Keep an eye on Alialujah Choir for a chance to catch them in full force and health. They’ll be touring Oregon, Idaho, and the Southwest with Blitzen Trapper this fall.

What We’re Hearing This Month: Classical Music Picks For April

Portland Cello Project (Photo: Tarina Westlund)

Spring is in full bloom around Seattle, from the University of Washington’s famed cherry trees to the patches of tulips poking up in home gardens around town. With these seasonal transitions come musical changes as well; local ensembles and concert venues look towards warmer weather this month with music of growth, rebirth, and summer sunshine.

April 8 — Trio con Brio Copenhagen performs as part of the UW World Series. Comprised of two Korean sisters and a Danish pianist, the ensemble performs classics by Beethoven and Mendelssohn as well as a piece by Danish composer Per Nørgård.

April 11 – 19 — Pacific Northwest Ballet‘s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream combines Mendelssohn’s beloved score with gorgeous choreography by 20th century master George Balanchine. PNB completes the magic with whimsical pastel-hued sets and costumes.

April 12 — A Russian composer of Jewish heritage, Maximilian Steinberg completed his 1927 choral masterpiece Passion Week just before Stalin’s ban on religious music went into effect. As a result, the piece was never performed. Choral ensemble Cappella Romana sheds light on this lost work with world premiere performances in Portland (April 11) and Seattle (April 12).

April 20 — Portland Cello Project rolls into town with the folk singers of the Alialujah Choir, a fellow Oregonian ensemble. The cellists and vocalists bring an eclectic mix of tunes to the stage at the Triple Door.

April 22 — Cellist Joshua Roman is back in town with a new program of musical gems for Town Hall audiences. The Town Music series artistic director is joined by Lithuanian pianist Andrius Zlabys for music by Stravinsky, Schnittke, and others.

April 24 & 26 — Seattle Symphony concertmaster Alexander Velinzon takes the stage for Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major. Afterwards, the spotlight shifts to the symphony in Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

April 26 — Guest harpsichordist Alexander Weimann leads the Seattle Baroque Orchestra in “Delirio Amoroso”, a program that explores George Frideric Handel’s visit to Rome. Hear Italian music of the early 18th century alongside pieces the young Handel composed during his stay in the capitol.

April 29 — Intrepid violinist Hilary Hahn has covered vast musical territory in her career, from Baroque sonatas to contemporary composers. Her UW World Series solo recital features a medley of works by Mozart, Schubert, Schoenberg, Telemann, and others.

Space Rock Lift-Off: Hypnotikon, Reviewed (Photo Gallery)

Lumerians.
Lumerians.
Cave.
Jetman Jet Team.
Jetman Jet Team.
Night Beats.
Night Beats.
Cloudland Canyon.
Silver Apples.
Silver Apples.
Silver Apples.
Silver Apples.

Psychedelic Druids: Fungal Abyss at Hypnotikon 2013. (Photo: Tony Kay)

Happy nightmare, baby: Midday Veil's Emily Pothast. (Photo: Tony Kay)

Lumerians: Cubicle moles open the eye of the Cosmos. (Photo: Tony Kay)

(Photo: Tony Kay)

Groove rock gone lysergic: Cave at Hypnotikon. (Photo: Tony Kay)

Jetman Jet Team at Jet City's Hypnotikon. (Photo: Tony Kay)

(Photo: Tony Kay)

Danny Lee Blackwell, guitar freakout specialist in Night Beats. (Photo: Tony Kay)

(Photo: Tony Kay)

Cloudland Canyon bring the colors. (Photo: Tony Kay)

How do you like them: Silver Apples close(s) out Hypnotikon 2013. (Photo: Tony Kay)

(Photo: Tony Kay)

(Photo: Tony Kay)

(Photo: Tony Kay)

I’ve spent much of this week in such an un-exotic framework of mundane necessity, it’s almost obscured my memories of last week’s Hypnotikon Fest at the Triple Door. Almost.

Musically, Seattle’s first sorta major Psych Rock Festival couldn’t be faulted, as local and national psychedelic acts plied their surreal, sometimes symphonic currents of musical noise. The venue itself, though, ultimately felt a bit unwieldy. Psychedelic music, by its nature, is designed to immerse a listener, so the Triple Door’s spacious digs, spread-out tables, and supper-club ambience muted the heady ambience generated by the music. On the plus side, it imbued the air with a strange sense of decadence, as though spectators were upper-crust Roman senators watching holy fools and minstrels play for their amusement. On the flip side, it distanced the audience from music that’s normally gloriously interactive.

But there are worse things in life than not being jammed next to a massive PA in a crush of standing, surging people in a sweaty nightclub. And I come to praise Hypnotikon, not bury it.

Fungal Abyss opened up Hypnotikon Day 1 with expansive free-form jams steeped deeply in ambient noise. Melodies bobbed in and out of the atmosphere like a handful of jewels at the bottom of a dark lagoon, and the band displayed a gift for making their musical tangents feel like envelope-pushing invention, not simple wankery. Midday Veil, meantime, deepened my band crush on ‘em with another heady set. Few psych rock bands get so unabashedly experimental, yet still emerge with solid pop hooks. Singer Emily Pothast should be permitted to stir the dreams and haunt the nightmares of everyone in earshot with her voice and almost kabuki theatrical sense.

Wondrous things sometimes come in the unlikeliest packages, and Lumerians, Hypnotikon’s third mainstage act last Friday, more than demonstrated that truism. The San Francisco outfit looked more like a bunch of Silicon Valley cubicle moles than psychedelic explorers, which gave their percussive, throbbing space rock the unexpected punch of a Stealth Bomber. If there’d have been a dance floor, there wouldn’t have been an unshaken booty in the house. Last but surely not least, Cave’s largely instrumental groove rock moved with concise purpose, even as they spattered the momentum with sprays of keyboard whirrs and movie-soundtrack richness. Over in the Musiquarium Lounge, Tokyoidaho offered a terrific set of shoegazer pop, anchored by Peter Marchese’s resonant baritone voice (I missed Ecstatic Cosmic Union’s Musiquarium performance).

Saturday night drew a larger crowd, probably due to the presence of psych-rock legend Silver Apples. Happily, the three preceding mainstage acts offered plenty of pleasures of their own.

Seattle shoegazers Jetman Jet Team crafted one stellar (literally and metaphorically) effort with their recent full-length, We Will Live the Space Age. Live, they were a joyous surprise, vaulting into unknown territory with a set of unfamiliar (but still hooky and vast) material played with a recklessness not always present on Space Age’s carefully-constructed pop framework. And speaking of recklessness, Texas transplants Night Beats laid down some seriously vicious garage rock, with singer Danny Lee Blackwell’s crazed guitar cutting the air and bass player Tarek Wegner clambering atop some of the tables at the front (Wegner’s prone to crowd surfing in a more traditional venue). Yes, they rocked most mightily.

Two people manipulating their laptops isn’t always a recipe for riveting live showmanship, but then again, Cloudland Canyon aren’t about flash. They just generate a lush wall of sound that informs modern electronic music with enchanting and odd touches that render it quintessentially psychedelic. Some of the best visuals of Hypnotikon’s impressive light show–rolling landscapes projected updside-down and in negative over one another–bolstered the decidedly cinematic sound.

Hypnotikon’s most inspirational hour, not surprisingly, came from the one-man incarnation of psych vets Silver Apples. Bathed in the brightest orgy of colored lights and images to bombard Hypnotikon’s stage all weekend, keyboardist/singer Simeon played material that seamlessly spanned his entire career, delivering the songs in a frenetic but playful voice as his bank of keyboards and oscillators bleeped, throbbed, and sang. It didn’t just paint frescoes on spectators’ eardrums: Simeon’s music rang with impish charm and a sense of humor that made its septuagenarian creator seem younger than yesterday.

Tonight’s Music Selections at City Arts Fest

The 2012 edition of City Arts Fest made its official musical bow yesterday, with turns from David Byrne and St. Vincent, The Head and the Heart’s Jonathan Russell, and Ghostland Observatory, among others. If you didn’t get a chance to check out any of Wednesday’s music acts, fret not: There are still plenty of crucial sonics coming down the pike before the Fest winds down on Saturday. A detailed schedule, ticket info, and various sundry good things can be acquired over at the City Arts Fest website, but here are some of the musical highlights coming up tonight.

DJ Swervewon, Thaddeus David, Larry Hawkins (formerly SK), The Physics, Mos Def @ Showbox SODO. Show begins at 7:15pm.

Showbox SODO sits in South Seattle, pretty far away from the Fest’s Capitol Hill and downtown focal points, and it’s an imperfect performance space at best. That said, the lineup’s strong enough to warrant just hunkering down and shaking your ass for the night. Whether he calls himself Yasiin Bay, Dante Smith, or whatever, Mos Def’s more than earned hip hop royalty status after a couple of decades in the trenches (dude’s a really good film and TV actor, too). But the front end of the bill’s brimming with multiple flavors of local hip hop.  Thaddeus David keeps it sparse and menacing, the artist formerly known as SK (Larry Hawkins) plies a more expansive, hook-laden sound, and The Physics back their rhymes with a lush sound that combines velour funk with bursts of silken soul-inflected backing vocals.

Tomten, Throw Me the Statue, Kay Kay and his Weathered Underground, Gold Leaves @ The Crocodile. Show begins at 8pm.

Yeah, Gold Leaves–the newest project from Arthur and Yu’s Grant Olsen–is pretty as all get out, what with its lush arrangements and Olsen’s plaintive, warm vocals at the center. But the three preceding acts make tonight’s Croc show a full-meal deal. Tomten‘s graceful, loping pop songs are so British-sounding you can taste the vinegar on the salt-and-vinegar crisps, and Throw Me the Statue sell their everything-and-the-kitchen-sink indie pop with phenomenal musicianship and drum-tight live performances.  Kay Kay and his Weathered Underground, meantime, sound like earnest chamber pop, bum-rushed by a drunken cabaret band.

Nark, Glitterbang, House of Ladosha, SSION @ the Rendezvous. Show begins at 7:45pm.

Wanna dance, but don’t wanna do so in the barn-like Showbox SODO? Get thee the hell to the Rendezvous tonight. Headliners SSION enjoy reams of notoriety for their warped and over-the-top live shows (lead singer Cody Critchloe’s cartoon charisma alone is worth the price of admission) and the band’s newest material takes a left turn from herky-jerky new wave to hooky electro-disco. That change in sound will nicely compliment Brooklyn beat-meister House of Ladosha and Seattle danceketeers Glitterbang, plus busy Seattle DJ Nark spins for early arrivals.

Slang!, Lemolo @ The Triple Door. Show begins at 8pm. 

You probably don’t need to hear another round of hosannahs for local duo Lemolo‘s swirly and devastatingly lovely pop, but there’s a reason for all the hoop-dee-doo: their songs completely captivate, and their live shows have never been anything less than transcendental. Opening outfit Slang! consists of Portland singer/songwriter Drew Grow and Wild Flag/Quasi member Janet Weiss. Grow and Weiss are talented as hell, so it’ll be nice to hear the former lending his famously-passionate delivery to other peoples’ material (Slang! is a cover band, apparently) while the latter delivers contrasting harmonies and (fingers crossed) gets behind the drum kit.

 

 

 

 

Tuesday is Modern Luv‘s Last Seattle Stand, Before New York Calls

Seattle soft-rock god Mark Siano is taking his cabaret-musical collaboration with not-so-soft-rock Opal Peachey, Modern Luv, on the road to New York City. To prepare for a smaller venue than Seattle’s Triple Door, where, Siano tells me, they had five well-sold shows, they’re holing up at the Rendezvous’ Jewelbox Theater for a one-night-only, 21+ show on April 10 (tickets: $15 advance).

“It’s an ‘Unplugged’ version,” Siano says, featuring a piano and a drum kit since the 65-seat theater doesn’t allow for much in the way of a band. But other than that, not all that much has changed. The Triple Door audiences laughed at all the right places, and one show sold out entirely. He’s tightened it up to a streamlined 90 minutes with no intermission, and changed a few Seattle-centric jokes that New York audiences wouldn’t be expected to get. A controversial “Seattle vs. New York” compare-and-contrast has stayed in the picture.

Modern Luv, like the “5th ACT’s” First Date, takes on love in a time of social media, but Siano says it’s “half-fiction, half-memoir.” He and Peachey are not an item, but they did “discover” each other online when Peachey showed up on YouTube covering a song Siano had, if I have this correctly, written the lyrics to. From this small spark, a “musical about cabaret performers” was born, with Siano and Peachey playing themselves in an alternate, rom-com universe. They spoke with Seattle Gay Scene about the show here.

Showman Siano is a man of many hats, so after his New York excursion, he returns, in a way, for Cafe Nordo’s May show, Cabinet of Curiosities. Set in Washington Hall, it’s a “a multi-room private collection of culinary exhibits,” and one of the rooms will be Siano’s creation. He’s also involved with the much-lauded and occasional sketch troupe The Habit–they’re preparing for a three-week run of a new show this November. (Full disclosure: We are also involved with at least one The Habit member, who pops up occasionally in these pages, and get your mind out of the gutter.)

Finally, because you’ve read this far, I can confirm that the “sparkle-tards” that Siano & Co. are accustomed to swanning about in are custom-made creations, from Sewing Specialties.

We Are Augustines Charm The Triple Door Before Tonight’s Neptune Set

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Billy McCarthy of We Are Augustines (Photo: MvB)

We Are Augustines guitarist Billy McCarthy and bassist Eric Sanderson (Photo: MvB)

We Are Augustines guitarist Billy McCarthy, bassist Eric Sanderson, and drummer Rob Allen at the Triple Door (Photo: MvB)

We Are Augustines at the Triple Door (Photo: MvB)

Billy McCarthy of We Are Augustines (Photo: MvB)

We Are Augustines guitarist Billy McCarthy, bassist Eric Sanderson, and drummer Rob Allen (Photo: MvB)

Billy McCarthy of We Are Augustines (Photo: MvB)

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It takes an extra-talented group of musicians to earn the title of John in the Morning’s Favorite Band in the World, but Brooklyn’s We Are Augustines have done so twice–both in their current incarnation and in Billy McCarthy and Eric Sanderson’s previous band Pela. Arising from Pela’s ashes, with new drummer Rob Allen in tow, We Are Augustines have a sound similar to their predecessor: passionate rock with big bombastic choruses, anchored by McCarthy’s perfectly imperfect emotive voice.

At the Triple Door earlier today, they put on a gloriously exuberant KEXP set, drawing from their dynamic debut Rise Ye Sunken Ships, and declaring themselves as happy to be playing as the audience was to hear it. Tune into KEXP at 4:30 today to hear this performance, or get your tickets at the door ($20) and see them live at the Neptune tonight, opening for Band of Skulls.