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Kelley Hollis
CODED: Rehearsal Week Reflections

What happens when you tell a story?

CODED: Rehearsal Week Reflections
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We've landed in Florida

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A Far Cry arrived in the Florida Keys today, and this is my first time here. The beauty everywhere took me by surprise, and being so completely surrounded by water (even the humidity in the air) makes me feel like a completely new person. I think that I can expand and be more fully myself when I feel all of the water molecules from the air seeping into my winter-in-Boston-dried-up body. (I'm an Oregon duck, so this is how I'm meant to be operating!) Jesse's grandparents, Ed and Betsy Bouton, hosted us for dinner, and there was even a fireworks display further up north that we could see from their dock. Kate, our guest Crier on bass, and I are housemates, and our hosts and their house are the epitome of graciousness. In fact, I am now going to go for a little swim before retiring. I'm sure it will help our concert tomorrow sound very refreshed and fluid. Can't wait!

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Eichler Weighs In

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The Boston Globe's Jeremy Eichler was kind enough to attend and review our Friday night concert at St. Paul's Church in Brookline - our first Globe review! If you read today's Globe and are visiting us for the first time, welcome. Please poke around our website - there are many hidden treasures. Tickets for our May 21 return to Jordan Hall are on sale now, but in the mean time you can hear (and see) A Far Cry in action via our channel on YouTube and a boston.com audio slideshow. "Conductorless and fancy-free, a chamber orchestra takes flight"

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Survey Responses

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At our concerts this past weekend, we asked audience members to fill out feedback surveys. We're just beginning to sort through all of the great ideas and information, but I wanted to share one particularly cool use of technology. One of the questions was simply "What did you think of the concert?" - I took all of the responses and fed them into a tag cloud generator, which essentially summarizes the responses by setting the most commonly-occuring words in different sizes and colors, depending on how common. Check it out:

created at TagCrowd.com

What did YOU think of the concert?

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Tackling Turceasca

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Years ago, I'm sitting in a car with a group of people, headingsomewhere - a music festival? A bassist is driving the car, I think. We are having a great time listening to Bela Fleck when the driver decides that it is time to turn things up a notch.

"Listen to this," he says, puts in a Kronos Quartet CD, and punches a track number.

Fistfuls of notes start bouncing around the car at lightning speed, followed by one of the most stunningly "alive" melodies I've encountered. Paired with an amazing groove in the rhythm section, which must have included one certifiably insane dulcimer player, this song takes off like nothing I'd ever heard. I love to exaggerate, but that statement is 100 percent bona fide - and the energy created by this CD track is wild, whirling, and totally wonderful. Perhaps that's why I neglect to catch its name at the time.

Fast-forward a good bit and suddenly it's 2008 and one of the other Criers is mentioning to me that there's this great tune out there that Jesse got to know during a Silk Road workshop at Carnegie. The thought is to ask someone named - who was it? - Zhurbin - if he'd be willing to make us an arrangement.

"Wait a second," I say - "Lev Zhurbin? You mean, Ljova?"

And suddenly, things are rewinding again, back to my first moments in the now-long-silent Wild Ginger Philharmonic, playing in a viola section led by a guy named Lev who seems too have much energy for any single musical phrase, who seems to want to play them all at once... followed by stints out in front of New York restaurants with my new friend, improv-ing fiddle-style on two violas... and moments like the one in that Village place where the performer we had come to hear was late - so Ljova borrowed my viola, strolled on stage, and proceeded to steal the show by improvising out of thin air until the other musicians arrived... followed by my then-bemusement as this inspiring musician busted out of Juilliard and the status quo, left it all behind, and started doing things his own way for good.

I'd tell Lev about rehearsing Brahms, or maybe it was Bruckner or Bartok. How great it was. "Well..." he'd say, "today I wrote a Mexican tune and I think it sounds kinda Mexican."

Anyone who wants to know how this particular story ends only has to glance at Ljova's website, www.ljova.com.

Do it. It's inspiring.

So (the present interjects) before I know it, I'm emailing my old friend to ask about the possibility of arranging this unknown tune with a weird name. I'm happy to be doing it. Even though I have no idea about this music, I trust all the players in this situation absolutely. Jesse wouldn't be excited about this piece unless it was going to rock the proverbial house, and Ljova wouldn't take something like this on without making it shine.

It's 11:30 PM (or is it 12:30?), mid-December, and Lev and his wife Inna (amazing singer-by-night, lawyer-by-day... whew!) and I are at a friend's house in Boston. We're listening to a reedy MIDI playthrough of the Silk Road arrangement of this piece and watching the score pages autoscroll by. Somehow, the pipa line needs to get shared out between the string sections, he says. My tired head nods. "But I can't do it right now - the Latin Grammys are coming up in days."

Well, the Latin Grammys came and went, and one fine day, a gorgeous stack of PDFs of "Turceasca" landed in my inbox.

Curiously, it was just a couple days before that that the Great Revelation had finally struck me. Lev had mentioned that he needed to run the parts by Osvaldo Golijov, because the original arrangement had been the one that Golijov had made for the Kronos Quartet. That moment of wondering "could it be the same piece?" followed by the wonderful shock of recognition left me immensely eager to finally get out there are discover what this nifty, nutty, tune was REALLY all about.

So, I finally started doing my homework! Check this out.

Taraf De Haidouks

Still breathing?

Welcome to the world of the Taraf de Haiidouks, the Romanian gypsy band that lights a fire under everything that they do, and for whom their composition "Turceasca" is their official calling card. There is a wealth of great material from them available on the Internet, especially via YouTube, and I'd especially recommend one fantastic video that shows them making music with an entire village, leading children out of houses Pied-Piper style and trading phrases with the local musicians. I don't know the link, but it's just as well - the seach will be rewarding! Or perhaps Sharon, who showed it to me, will be so kind as to post it...

Also potentially of interest is this link to a great little folk dancing sheet that details precisely what kind of a dance the "turceasca" is - "arms free and active, mostly in front of the body, hands at shoulder level, elbows slightly bent - steps generally small - usually the hips sway with each step touch..."

Here's the whole link:

Dance the Turceasca (pdf link)

(Anyone want to volunteer to lead the dancing tonight?)

In a way, I wish my dear friend Lev Zhurbin was up here to hear the fruits of his labors, not just because it would be great to play Turcaesca for him, but because he could be the one to get people up out of their seats and show them how to enjoy themselves in motion. As proof, I offer you one of the sweetest videos I've ever seen - his wedding procession/dance through the streets of New York City. Old world, New World, different souls, same spirit.

Ljova's Wedding Procession

There's so much to write about this piece, and the weird confluence of different situations and relationships that helped to generate tonight's performance. In a way, it's a metaphor for what we're navigating in the entire program! But I'll let you go now, with one final wacky thought.

When Ljova first sent up the PDFs, he sent a MIDI file of the new arrangement with them. Of course, the sound is horrible and there's no sense of rubato, no energy, no nuthin.' All the same, I've gotten strangely addicted to it. It's great to hear the Taraf de Haiidouks and their effortless virtuosity. It's great to hear the Kronos Quartet sweating away. But there's something weirdly wonderful about listening to this silly midi file, because it leaves all the doors wide open. No decisions have been made, no opinions stamped. Everything is still possible. In its squat package of sound, I feel like I can hear what may happen tonight, what may happen on Sunday, and what may happen at any point in the future.

It's exciting!

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Criers Move into Storefront Home

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AFC Space Yesterday morning, the Criers met together at our new home on South Street in Jamaica Plain for our first rehearsals of Folklore. The energy was strong and spirits high as we played our first notes in the 800-square-foot storefront that will serve as A Far Cry's rehearsal and collaborative arts home. In addition to the upstairs area, there is an 800-square-foot office space, storage space, and music library/archive in the basement that will serve as the home of A Far Cry's day-to-day, non-profit operational activities.

Brainstorming has reached fever pitch among the Criers concerning what other uses the upstairs storefront might have. Some ideas presented so far include open rehearsals, an instrument "petting zoo" for kids, chamber music and jazz jam session evenings, intimate family concerts, a weeklong festival to celebrate the arts in Jamaica Plain, collaboration with local visual artists, guest speakers, a video showcase, art exhibits, and many, many more ideas!

Additionally, we are asking our fans and supporters to please consider helping us by donating furniture/supplies that we need to properly set up the space. The short list of things that we are most in need of are:

- a well-functioning computer: desktop -or- laptop  DONATED! - computer monitor: large enough for graphic design work - a baby grand (or larger) piano - a file cabinet - area rugs for upstairs rehearsal space and downstairs office space

Are you looking to donate any of these items to an active, non-profit arts group? If so, please contact Margaret Dyer (our Operations chair) directly at margaret@afarcry.org or call us at 617.297.2796 (office).

A Far Cry Debut Album On The Way

For those of you missing A Far Cry’s sound between concert cycles, I have good news for you. We are in the midst of producing our Debut Album! This recording project was one that we started in the fall. In addition to meeting as a group to decide on repertoire, and spending many rehearsal hours getting to a place of confidence in order to engrave our sounds in the universe forever, there were lots of decisions to be made that would affect both the experience and the results of our labor. We needed to find the perfect recording space (Mechanics Hall, in Worcester, MA), an engineer (Jesse Lewis of Sound Mirror) and a couple of producers- musicians that we trusted and respected to be our outside ears through the recording process (violist Roger Tapping, and cellist Terry King).

Things fell into place rather miraculously, and the morning after we returned from our trip to Duluth, MN, we woke up early and headed over to Mechanics Hall to begin three days of recording. Thanks to our wonderful engineer Jesse, and our esteemed producers Roger and Terry, things seemed to go quite smoothly.

Those of you that have recorded know, and even those of you that haven’t can imagine what a difficult task it is! Every take could be "the one,” and if you miss a note, or someone sneezes, what might have otherwise been a perfect take goes in the garbage!

The other thing about studio recording is that there is no audience. While this improves our chances of a “clean” recording – no candy wrappers or coughs from the crowd, it also changes the feel of the music. I mean, if a tree falls in the forest….

But we did our best to imagine you there right along side us, and we’re eagerly awaiting our first listen. Jesse is busy editing, we’ll listen in a few weeks, and we should have our discs available for you by the time April rolls around. The album includes works by Handel, Golijov and Tchaikovsky. 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Humanwine and Steampunks

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Maker Profile - Steampunk on MAKE: television from make magazine on Vimeo. Humanwine is an awesome Boston band which A Far Cry has been honored to join in performance. Their sound defies easy description, but "eco-anarchist punk rock" comes sort of close. The video above features a performance (toward the end) of Humanwine with Crier Ashley Vandiver playing backup violin. Our buddy Jeremy Harman plays cello. The segment was on PBS's MakeTV, and is all about Steampunk - the clever construction of devices combining 19th and 21st-century technologies. Completely worth the time to watch!

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Essence in Print

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strubgs-logo.gifThe Criers returned from our Vermont retreat yesterday, energized and excited by our meeting discussions, well-cared for thanks to May Bigelow's incredible hospitality, and nourished thanks to fantastic meals prepared by Far Cry Chefs Fisher, Irons, Shaw and Stohs - all true artists! We arrived in the Boston area, eager to find the March 2009 edition of Strings Magazine and read our first Strings feature article. After a few thwarted attempts at finding a copy of the magazine, we finally got ahold of the magazine this morning and devoured David Templeton's article with delight. It beautifully captures the spirit of A Far Cry, from our commitment to each other and the music to our love of laughter. My favorite quote from the article is the description of our sound: "...a lush, sweet sound that is achingly alive and emotional." Thanks to David Templeton and Strings Magazine for this article

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Welcome, Strings Readers!

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We just heard that Strings Magazine is featuring A Far Cry on their last-page "encore" section this month. If you are a Strings Magazine reader and this is your first visit to A Far Cry, welcome! Please take a look around, leave a comment on the blog to say hi, and check out our youtube videos. Upcoming concerts are listed on the "Concerts" page, which also has a link to "Touring" for our out-of-Boston concerts. We look forward to meeting you! Read the article (pdf link)

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