Saw them last night at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, and if you get a chance to see this show, by all means do. Come for her flute playing (and her whistling, and her singing, and her stage presence), stay for the arrangements: everything from comforting neoconservative straightforwardry to polyrhythmic humorous boopy space walks, all of it compellingly top shelf musicianship, intimate, and drop-dead tasty. Soundwise they cover a lot of ground with just three people, and nothing seems lacking.
Saw her recently in a house concert with Troy MacGillivray, Andrea Beaton and Jake Charron. I can echo Nano’s comments wholeheartedly (except for the “polyrhythmic humorous boopy space walks”—I must have been in the rest room for that).
But what’s she holding in the photo below—looks humungous.
Could be they didn’t play it that night; the guest musicians may not have been in on that one. It was pretty complex.
As intro and accompaniment to a particular song, she was playing a small and rather dated Casio keyboard, and Mike Bryan provided a like-sounding counterpoint on guitar while Donald Hay futtered around atmospherically on his kit which included dangling zils and a cluster-rattle of yaks’ toes, or so I am told they were. The effect was a very laid-back “Jetsons futuristic” sound. Also, the rhythm profile morphed delightfully as the song progressed, then at the end reverted to the original. With any luck I might be able to find a vid of it.
I think this would be the wood Terry McGee refers to as ‘Dead Finish’. Archidendropsis Basaltica. Common name is red lancewood. A number of Australian makers like it.
