The String Revolution.
Fifteen performers. Over a dozen songs and medleys. A packed house, and audience members turned away at the door. Media coverage. Film coverage. Photos. A standing ovation, praise, fawning, awe and love from dozens of spectators.
...Needless to say, it was a huge success.
I'd like to say that due to the explosive popularity of the show, we've now been booked for gigs around the world. I'd like to say that our time has been comprised of madly writing new arrangements, practicing solos and transcriptions like mad, mingling with the press, going to photo shoots, and sitting for TV interviews. I'd like to say that thanks to this idea, this fantastical dream hatched by two mad fiddle chicks, I never have to work a day in my life again. Not on anything not-music-related, anyway.
Sadly this is not reality, and I'm back in Boston getting ready to graduate from the Berklee College of Music. No agent has swooped down from heaven to whisk us away into stardom. No record labels have come banging on our doors to immortalize our insanity on vinyl.
BUT.
The show will go on, as I am planning phase two as we speak - String Revolution Boston! April 25th, Sunday afternoon, 4:30 - 6:00, Club Passim in Cambridge - THE hub for acoustic folk fiddle music in Boston. WOOHOO!! I couldn't hope for a better location!! Well...maybe the Orpheus Theater, or the Wang, or the BPC...BUT NO!! Those places don't cherish String Power like Passim does.
String Revolution Boston is underway. The set will be bigger, badder, and even MORE eclectic than before. Before this goes any further, I think I should start trying to describe just exactly WHAT the show is about...I mean, it was Lea's idea to play awesome tunes, and before I knew it we were zipping sound files back and forth across the internets and concocting wild plans for tribute medleys to Berklee professors... What is String Revolution all about, anyway?
I think it's about showing the public that behind the classical stereotype, beyond The Irish Washerwoman, and besides Turkey in the Straw, the violin can play a LOT more. There are sounds strings can create that they don't teach you in your average middle school orchestra class. There are ways of combining old tunes with new styles to make a sound you've only heard in the farthest corners of your dream factories.
I wanted to create a concert that would show people the types of music I'VE seen and heard in my life - at the Berklee College of Music (and all the apartments surrounding it where fiddle jams and tuneswaps take place) and at Mark O'Connor's fiddle camps (hodgepodges of dozens of musical genres, ALL with the violin as a central instrument).
Even in the melting pot of my hometown, Buffalo NY, the youth music scene breeds creativity and an absolute passion for crossover. Enter the high school jazz ensemble, Buffalo Youth Orchestra, and my Suzuki school string quartet, where I met Sinatra, Sibelius, and David Stone in less than three years.
In one sense, this show is about me, and what I want a kick-ass string power concert to be. But there's so much I don't know about this ever-expanding, ever-unfurling world of string music, that it's impossible for it to be just MY show. It's not. It belongs to everyone playing in the show, and what THEY like about string power. It belongs to all the artists writing the tunes that we so graciously and thankfully perform.
And most of all, it belongs to (yep, I'm gonna say it): The Fans. Those who hunger and thirst for MORE STRING MUSIC, but don't know where to go or how to find it. The people who love chamber music, but wish there was more improvisation, or love fiddling, but wish there was more jazz modality. Those who like hearing those hit songs on the radio, get tired of hearing them played the same way over and over again.
Those who desire more than the average four-string sound...will usually flip their lids to see a five-string onstage.
This show is for you, wild music enthusiasts. We tip our hats to you and your incompatible style. Our passion will be your passion, our joy your joy. Please come and enjoy yourselves on April 25th, 4:30, at Club Passim!
The Revolution is upon us, my friends...
Peace out.
