Warsaw Village Band
Poland's Warsaw Village Band may be a folk music sextet, but that doesn't mean it employs polite strumming and quaint melodies. Sunday evening on the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, this three-woman, three-man ensemble used violins, dulcimer, cello, Polish frame drum, marching band-style baraban drum, and high-pitched vocals to showcase the unique, raw style they referred to as Polish "roots music from the ancient to the future."
With the women upfront and the guys in back, the group featured songs from their two recent albums, "People's Spring" and "Uprooting." Although the one-hour set was often dominated by noisy waves of rhythmic bowing from the two violin players, their string work frequently lacked melodic variety. But the other instruments, and especially the haunting female vocals, took up the slack.
The women, led by youthful yet serious cellist Maja Kleszcz, turned mournful numbers such as "I Had a Lover" and "Red Apple" into showcases for "white voice." Though that style is sometimes described as shouting, this band showed that the high-pitched intonation is musical and mesmerizing. For the show closer, "The Rain Is Falling," the band engaged in three-part harmonies and feverishly upped the tempo of this cinematic, orchestral-like composition.
Warsaw Village Band's traditional songbook doesn't contain the hooks of contemporary pop, but the glorious timbres, the galloping percussion, the driving pings of the dulcimer and the dissonant staccato stroking of the cello delivered plenty of drama.
-- Steve Kiviat
Concertante
In the musical world, the buoyant chamber ensemble Concertante fills an important niche. While fine string quartets abound, far fewer larger groups exist to plumb the outer edges of the repertoire. Concertante, composed of exceptional rising musicians, performs sextets, septets and so forth with polish and raw fervor. In its memorable Sunday afternoon concert at the Landon School, sponsored by the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences, the group's playing was alive to details and general flow of several sextet masterworks.
Concertante gave Richard Strauss's String Sextet from "Capriccio," Op. 85, the feeling of a farewell, poignantly rendering striated colors and gentle melodies. Violinists Xaio-Dong Wang and Lisa Shihoten etched their parts with sweetness and precision that were matched by the warmth and energy of cellists Amit Peled and Alexis Pia Gerlach.
Schoenberg's "Transfigured Night," Op. 4, possessed all the turbulence and anxiety you would expect from a highly romantic depiction of martial betrayal, confrontation and forgiveness. With a burnished sound, violists Rachel Shapiro and Ara Gregorian set a strong overall pulse, providing a solid foundation for the restless climaxes and pyrotechnics that would follow.
Concertante smartly negotiated the opposing demands of formal rigor and expression in Brahms's String Sextet No. 2 in G, Op. 36. In a meticulous yet sweeping reading, Concertante brought out Brahms's characteristically sophisticated ideas and heart-rending moments. The highlight was undoubtedly the third movement Adagio, which was archaically rigid one second and uproariously romping the next.
-- Daniel Ginsberg
Kat Parsons
In a world glutted with singer-songwriters, artists are increasingly forced to be financially creative to raise the money to record and release albums -- and many are doing it through fan donations. Kat Parsons's latest, "No Will Power," will see the light of day in March mainly through fan pre-orders, and at least a few people who showed up to hear the Los Angeles-based singer at Iota on Sunday night were her backers.
Parsons grew up in Maryland, so there was also a heavy friends 'n' family vibe during her hour-long set: Her brother, Jon, accompanied her on guitar for most of performance, and her parents (!) sang backup on a cover of Neil Young's "Helpless." Parsons isn't really about a Partridge Family thing, though, because her songs possess a fiery folk-rock spirit and melodic shifts (which elevate them above the dross flowing from other singer-songwriters who should stick to open-mike nights).
With Parsons alternating between piano and guitar, such songs as "Go Find Her" and "Botox and Butt Tucks" conjured Amy Rigby and Joni Mitchell, while her new disc's title track simmered and fluttered, tacking relationship dynamics to a classic '70s folk-rock backdrop. And though she sang wistfully, "I'm on the brink of something I've been on the brink of for years," the confident, dynamic songs she sang Sunday might just be enough to make her career slam into high gear.
-- Patrick Foster
