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Belying Bluegrass and Bach

Be'eri Moalem on October 7, 2008
Used to be that the mention of bluegrass conjured up thoughts of a throng of senior citizens sitting in folding armchairs listening to foot-stomping, string-twanging folk music. The mention of Bach conjured up a dark church and powdered wigs. But Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile's Bluegrass and Bach concert, presented by San Francisco Performances, was not your Grandpa's bluegrass, nor was it your Grandma's Bach. It was a unique creation full of casual wit and quirky charm. The presence and sound of a mandolin is always going to have certain connotations but Thile easily dissolves these stereotypes with a unique sound that is not only original but also a pleasure to hear. This is what making art is all about — creating something new, but at the same time enjoyable and accessible to an audience. Meyer and Thile, despite a 20-year age difference, worked seamlessly together. Their sound blends, their solos balanced each other, and they have a knack for gliding in and out of coordinated improvisation so that it is often impossible to distinguish between what is being made up on the spot and what is pre-composed. The duo showcased this ability by making up a story on stage, then setting it to music. It was corny, but their virtuosity more than made up for the hokeyness.
Chris Thile
And what virtuosity it was — unbelievable and exciting, yet at the same time casual, cool, and effortless. Thile’s mandolin is practically an extension of his body. It is as natural for him to play finger-blurring riffs as it for a normal person to twiddle his thumbs. He produces gentle melodies, graceful streams of notes, harsh percussive beats, and much more, all out of a tiny, tinny instrument.

Bass as Fiddle

In the hands of Edgar Meyer, the double bass becomes almost a third person on stage, a dancing partner for its player. He commands the four-foot fingerboard of the mammoth instrument as easily as if it were a snug little fiddle. The sounds he produces vary from flutelike, through the whole range of string instruments, to tubalike and voicelike.
Edgar Meyer
In both cases, technical instrument operation seems superfluous, to be taken for granted, as easy as chatting up the audience. The concert's program was announced from the stage in between attempts at humor. They made fun of their titles (such as G22, The Pig), of each other (a running joke involving Meyer's bow habits and Thile's pick ... you had to be there), baseball's Chicago Cubs (on a postseason night when they lost to the Dodgers 10-3) and, of course (inevitably on the night of the Palin-Biden debate), presidential politics. In addition to a comedy show, the concert might have also been billed as a dance performance. Thile needs to be careful — one day he's going to hurt himself or someone else with those torso convulsions, foot kicks, knee jerks, jumps, and fist pumps at the end of pieces. It can be endearing, it can be mesmerizing, it can help the music communicate emotions, it shows the artist's complete absorption with his music in the moment — but it also gets distracting and annoying. Yet his movements were infectious and Meyer also got to dancing on stage. There's something hilarious about seeing a grown man in slacks shaking his tush, jiggling his belly, wobbling his shoulders, and literally walking around his bass — while displaying jaw-dropping jazzy bass technique — in a formal concert setting. It is always refreshing to see musicians taking it easy, losing inhibitions, and having fun on stage. But the concert had a serious side as well. In the context of Thile and Meyer's crazy progressive bluegrass style, the transition to Bach was a powerful one. The performers stood still for a while and concentrated all of their fun-loving emotion into the measured tones of Bach's keyboard works. The sheer contrast reminded me why and how much I love the music of Bach. The duo performed organ works, a courante from a French Suite, and the Well-Tempered Clavier F-sharp major prelude "transposed in E ... for the greater good." The mandolin sounded not unlike a harpsichord and the bass sounded not unlike a viola da gamba, displaying these musicians' and their instruments' versatility.