Featuring Pt Juncture WA, The Blue Cranes and more TBA
"Highly talented, highly collaborative and highly experimental, the Portland Cello Project is a dream team of instrumentalists." Anika Sabin, Willamette Week, Portland.
"To say that this is not your father's cello ensemble is a vast understatement." Barbara Mitchell, Portland Tribune.
"The Portland Cello Project liberate the cello and bring it back to the common folk. Kind of like those High Life commercials where the distro driver self-righteously shoplifts beer, but, you know, with cellos." Ezra Caraeff, Portland Mercury.
"Nobody brings chamber music to the masses like the Portland Cello Project." Alison Hallett, Portand Mercury.
"No longer are cellists hiding in the wings, reliving memories of traumatic junior-high orchestra performances. Gone is the discomfiture of lugging around a huge stringed beast." Paige Richmond, Willamette Week.
"Throw out everything you ever thought you knew about string ensembles. " The Portland Tribune.
"Comfortable asses or not, a PCP performance is always something to base your week on." The Portland Mercury.
A quartet of PCP cellists has been invited to open for Japanese Tsugaru-Shamisen virtuosos, The Yoshida Brothers, at The Aladdin Theater in Portland next Tuesday, May 20.
From the group’s website:
“Superstars in their native Japan, young Tsugaru-shamisen virtuosos Ryoichiro and Kenichi Yoshida-The Yoshida Brothers-have effected nothing short of a cultural revolution with a muscular reinvention of the ancient three-stringed instrument, giving it the fiery passion of a rock ‘n roll guitar. Online world music portal World Music Central notes, “Clad in formal, ceremonial attire of kimonos and hakama pants, but sporting the dyed light brown hair that is trendy among Japan’s savvy youth, the Brothers play the age-old Tsugaru-shamisen-an instrument akin to a rustic three-stringed banjo-with the fervor of Jimi Hendrix.”
Seems like a fitting combo, doesn’t it?
Our quartet will consist of Skip Von Kuske, Justin Kagan, Douglas Jenkins and Kevin Jackson, and we will play a fully acoustic set of music, which we hope eclectically fits the occasion.
In preparation for a recording session next week, a PCP Quartet (Justin Kagan, Anna Fritz, Kevin Jackson, Douglas Jenkins) will run through Arvo Pärt’s Summa tonight at Costello’s Travel Cafe, which is a beautiful little cafe on 2222 NE Broadway as part of Classical Revolution PDX.
So, if you’re looking for something to do tonight, come on down to Classical Rev PDX. As always, Classical Rev is totally free and is all-ages.
We’ve been working on this piece for while, experimenting with all sorts of bowings and dynamics. We even tried playing it once backwards (from last note to first) while holding our bows at the tips. (Though it didn’t yield any interesting result or mystical message…)
And the location of Classical Rev tonight is great: Costello’s travel cafe. It has Plasma Screen Televisions, but NOT for watching sports! Instead of Arena Football, the TV’s at Costello’s play scenes from your favorite, picturesque cities around the world, all in high-definition Plasma-Vision. It’s so good to know that the plasma we donate as starving artists goes to such a great cause!
The awesome people over at the “You Are So Relevant” blog came up with a math equation to define the terms and principles of The Portland Cello Project!
There have been a few really wonderful blogs posting sneak previews of songs that will be on our LP that’s coming out August 12. Thanks to all of them for the kind words!
Portland Cello Project will be playing as the opening band for Pink Martini June 3 at The Crystal Ballroom!
We will be performing a nicely balanced set (we’re actually quite proud of the balance), with everything in it, from Bon Jovi, to tangos, to unusual jazz medleys, to silly things, to classical things.
Joining us on stage for collaboration will be Jessyka Luzzi singing Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras number 5, and Nick Jaina, doing a couple of his own pieces arranged by Douglas Jenkins and Ali Ippolito.
We’re posting our videos on Vimeo as well as YouTube now. I always wondered why localcut and Endhits always post their videos with Vimeo, but now I know — it’s because the quality, especially of the sound, is much better. In the words of Adam Shearer (Weinland) in an email to us yesterday, “Vimeo kicks YouTube’s face off.”
Tomorrow, Friday May 2, The Cello Project is going to make a surprise appearance as the “opening band” for Gideon Freudmann’s CD release party at Mississippi Studios. We’re moving the mains out of the way in this tiny venue to cram as many cellists in as possible (at least 7). This is a rare opportunity to see us en masse in such an intimate space!
The room seats 85, so we expect it to be full, but comfortable — there are seats throughout the venue and a really nice ambiance.
The Portland Cello Project will be playing with Pink Martini June 3 at the Crystal Ballroom right here in Portland as part of FundFest 2008 — a benefit-festival-thing. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Tickets can be purchased now at the Crystal Ballroom’s ticket booth or online.
The performance is a benefit for Friends of Trees, which is a non-profit which “brings people in the Portland-Vancouver area together to plant trees along city streets and in urban natural areas.”
The Portland Cello Project and Heather Broderick will be on this year’s PDX Pop Now! Compilation! Does this mean we might be playing our favorite wonderful, free, all-ages, Portland music community-building event this summer (also put on by the great people at PDX Pop Now!)? We sincerely hope it’s a possibility.
