Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 4, 1991 TAG: 9102040011
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON/ SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Cello, a quartet of cellists half of whose members hail from Roanoke, played to about 500 concertgoers who overflowed the regular seating into the choir loft and hastily set-up folding chairs. The crowd was Cello's from the outset, but these four young women don't need the advantage of home turf to make an impression. They are seasoned musicians who are just as comfortable with jazz and pop as with the classical repertoire. And it can't hurt their album sales that they are an attractive quartet ("provocative and luscious," said one critic quoted in their promotional literature).
You might suppose that four identical instruments would have problems in producing a sufficiently varied range of timbres and tones to satisfy the ear over the course of an hour or two. Four trumpets or even four violins would make for sonic boredom, but the cello is a different instrument entirely. As Roanoker Stephanie Cummins pointed out in an interview last week, the five-octave range of the cello extends from the upper reaches of double-bass territory through that of the viola and into the lower parts of the violin's range. This, combined with the wide variety of bowing and plucking techniques common to all stringed instruments, means that a cello is a small orchestra in itself. Four cellos have the potential to produce everything from tutti orchestral effects to intimate chamber music, and Cello has chosen its arrangers to do just that.
About half of Sunday afternoon's program was taken from the group's latest compact disc on the Pro Arte Digital label. Cello opened with a concerto grosso by Vivaldi that immediately grabbed the audience, which was so enthusiastic it clapped after each movement. They followed this with "The Visionary," a piece written especially for them by composer Jeff Beal which had a folk-like first subject followed by a second episode with a hypnotic ostinato and minimalist-like melodic fragments which were passed from player to player.
Jazz tunes included Ron Carter's "Loose Change" and Miles Davis' bebop classic "So What," which began with some bars of a lovely Ravelian exoticism before swinging into the familiar riffs. An arrangement of the Beatles' "I am the Walrus" was followed by a moving version of the "Adagio for Strings" by the American neo-Romantic Samuel Barber. This one had the audience holding its breath as the triple-p ending measures faded into nothingness.
The post-intermission half of the concert included "The Chairman Dances" from John Adams' opera "Nixon in China," Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night in Tunisia," and the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby," which had a prominent cello line in the original version. Jeff Beal's "Samba de Sol" and Ken Chipkin's "Funk by Proxy" both featured segments in a loping 7/4 rhythm, and the group also did the Sarabande from Bach's Cello Suite No. 6.
Cello has said they are "a democratic group," and Sunday's performance saw the lead parts rotate repeatedly, with frequent solos from Cummins and fellow Roanoker Sachi McHenry. After a bravura performance of Bartok's "Hungarian Peasant Songs," Cello was called back with standing ovations for two encores, one of which was a bluesy Gershwin prelude arranged by Stephanie's father, Richard Cummins.
by CNB