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| Time for Three raised a ruckus at Kaul./Photo: Steve J. Sherman |
Time for Three is a group of musicians, two violists and a double bassist, who met at the Curtis Institute of Music and graduated from the prestigious conservatory in 2002 or 2003. According to their bios in the Friends of Chamber Music program for their show Monday night at Reed College's Kaul Auditorium, they all play in a wide variety of musical environments. So, violinist Zachary De Pue is the concertmaster of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, where Time for Three is in residency at the moment. Violinist Nicolas Kendall plays in both a chamber orchestra and a string quartet. And bass player Ranaan Meyer, who is also a composer, sits in with large symphonies (Philadelphia, Baltimore and Minnesota, for example) and jazz bands.
My only point is that these guys know their classical music and their technique is excellent. But at Monday's concert, only two specifically "classical" moments arose. The first was an adaptation of a Bach piece, which they sped up and improvised around. The second was Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 5 and that turned into a comedy number, slipping into "Hava Nagila" and "If I Were a Rich Man" before its rousing conclusion.
For the rest, they played adaptations of Bill Monroe ("Jerusalem's Ridge"), Charlie Rouse ("Orange Blossom Special"), Leonard Cohen ("Hallelujah"), Lennon and McCartney ("Blackbird") as well as several of Meyer's own compositions, richly sonorous and melodic but more indebted to Americana than Mittel Europa.
Their attack on the familiar numbers was clever and energetic. "Blackbird" began with a little repeating melody, which on the surface had nothing to do with Lennon/McCartney, and then added a bass line that supplied the right rhythm the song maybe, but still didn't hint at the famous melody to come. When that finally arrived, "Blackbird singing in the dead of night," the first repeated figure and the bass line made absolutely perfect sense. And of course it was beautifully played.
