Concert Series 4. Tre Corda

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PROFESSOR: My name is Mark Harvey, and I am teaching a course this semester on musical improvisation. We have our students here this evening, and [INAUDIBLE] the rest of you [INAUDIBLE]. And in conjunction with the course, we're running this concert series, which is the last of four concerts we've had. And you see on the page that you picked up at the door, another very different kinds of programs that we've had. And we're thrilled to include in this particular [INAUDIBLE] we call Tre Corda with Tim Ray over here, Greg Hopkins, and Eugene Friesen. So please welcome them.

[APPLAUSE]

[MUSIC - TRE CORDA, "SHADOW PLAY"]

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TIM RAY: Thank you. Thanks very much. And thank you all for coming out. It's great to see a great audience here at MIT. We are Tre Corda and very glad to be here and. And as Mark mentioned, the gentlemen up here on stage-- on stage? Do we call this a stage? It's where we're playing, so I guess it's a stage. Anyway, I just want to remind you that is on trumpet and flugelhorn Greg Hopkins.

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And on cello, Eugene Friesen.

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So that first piece you heard was a composition of Eugene Friesen's called "Shadow Play," which of course is an amazing pizzicato technique on the cello. And we love to jump in on some of Eugene's pizzicato creations as we did on that song. We're celebrating a new CD. We have a new CD, the three of us, called Squeaky Toy. And we're going to play-- "Shadow Play," the song we just played is on the new CD. And we're going to play some other ones on the new CD as well. And continuing on with another song from that disk. This is the first movement of the sonata for trumpet, cello, and piano composed by Greg Hopkins. And the title of this movement is "Sneakers."

[MUSIC - TRE CORDA, "SNEAKERS"]

[APPLAUSE]

GREG HOPKINS: Thank you very much. Yeah, it's such a joy to have these wonderful musicians play the music you're hearing in your head. And it comes out like that. Thank you so much, guys. This next one I also wrote. And it's an homage to my late cat. His name was Cargassian. And he was very deft at walking in the dark up on the mantels. And you could hear the china just clinking together. Nothing ever fell or broke. But it just tingled a little bit. So you knew he was there. Anyway, so please enjoy "Cargassian." He had blue hair. Nothing to do with the [INAUDIBLE].

[MUSIC - TRE CORDA, "CARGASSIAN"]

[APPLAUSE]

TIM RAY: Eugene and I had the opportunity to work with some of the students in Mark Harvey's improvisation class today. And that's their assignment. They have to play that for us next week.

[LAUGHTER]

So [INAUDIBLE].

GREG HOPKINS: Get stratching.

TIM RAY: Get scratching. So we're going to continue on. This is a recent piece that I wrote, pretty recent.

GREG HOPKINS: Tim, this is the first time we're playing it.

TIM RAY: So I guess--

[LAUGHTER]

I guess that makes it recent. No, this was for the occasion of my wife and I, who's here tonight, for our 25th wedding anniversary, one of the things we did to mark that was we bought this clock, this big chiming clock. And there's a long story that goes behind it. But basically the ones that were really cool that sound beautiful and that look really nice, we couldn't afford those.

[LAUGHTER]

So we got this kind of sort of smallish and the case is a little misshapen. And it's only got one hand. And it makes this horrendous chiming sound. It's really bad. Like for the first month after we got the clock, every hour the dogs would run out of the room, because they thought something terrible was about to happen. But now the dogs are used to it. And we're used to it. We actually kind of fell in love with this clock now. Another thing I did for this was I wrote a song. And the title of this song is Joy. And if you listen at the end, you will here 25 chimes for the 25 years.

[MUSIC - TRE CORDA, "JOY"]

[APPLAUSE]

[MUSIC - TRE CORDA]

[APPLAUSE]

TIM RAY: Thank you, thank you. That of course, from the opera Carmen, or our version of that. That's also kind of neat for us. Actually, Mark, I think summed it up perfectly before the show. He said, yeah, that manages to offend the French, the Spanish, and the Cubans all at once. I think he's right, too, not to mention classical music in general. So we're going to give Eugene a breather. And Greg and I are going to do a duet. And I don't know what we're going to play, because I never know what we're going to play. We'll find out when we get there. [INAUDIBLE].

[MUSIC - TRE CORDA, "LITTLE ROOTIE TOOTIE"]

[APPLAUSE]

OK. What song was that? First of all-- OK, title, anybody? Title? Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say, composer. Thelonious Monk, very good. Thank you, Alan. "Little Rootie Tootie," is the name of that. Written for his son, apparently he called his son Little Rootie Tootie.

EUGENE FRIESEN: And now for something completely different.

TIM RAY: And now-- Can you set this up? You can find the music.

EUGENE FRIESEN: OK, sure thing. This shows a little of the different side of improvising. This is a piece that was originally a [INAUDIBLE]. As we were discussing this afternoon, some of us benefit from launching into an improvisation by kind of limiting the boundaries of the language a little bit. In this case, this was pretty much a diotronic piece that was a free improve. It was recorded in a beautiful cathedral, St. John the Divine, in one November night in 1986. And thank goodness the tape was rolling. It turned out to be something that I wanted to play again and again. I call it "First Ride." And we went back and transcribed the original improvs so we could perform it again. Tim did an amazing job of reinventing the improvised piano part. I'm pretty much playing the cello part that was improvised that night some years ago. This is called "First Ride."

[MUSIC - TRE CORDA, "FIRST RIDE"]

[APPLAUSE]

TIM RAY: Thank have. Thanks very much. We've got a couple more left. Now I'm trying to decide. As you can see, we have way too much music for the time we have left. So we're going to pick and choose a little bit here. You guys want to do Bartok? Let's do Bartok. As I'm sure you've probably figured out by now, we're playing a lot with classical music. And we're obviously influenced by classical music. It's a lot of what we're doing. And now we're actually going to try to play some classical music. I know. I know, I thought the same thing. And these guys-- well, anyway. But of course, we're not going to play it straight.

This is something else, and by the way, it's on the new CD. I was introduced to these piano pieces, Bartok, Bela Bartok, piano pieces back when I was at college. And I was immediately attracted to them because the title of them is "Improvisations." Then I thought, cool. I get to just make up stuff and call it classical music. But it turns out, it doesn't work that way. You have to play the notes that are out there. But they're called improvisations, but they're all written out. So I was a little disappointed. But nevertheless, I loved these.

I play these pieces, and I love them. And I kind of rediscovered them by accident a few years ago. And I thought this would be great to, first of all, to try with the trio, and second of all, to actually put some improvisation into the "Improvisations." So with apologies to Bela Bartok. We're going to do three-- these are eight short piano pieces. And we're going to do three of them, number five, number three, and number eight.

[MUSIC - TRE CORDA, "IMPROVISATIONS"]

[APPLAUSE]

Thanks very much. Thank you. So we're going to do one more song and get our in the beautiful cool air once again. But before we do, a couple of reminders. If you're interested in a CD, we've got the new CD, the new Tre Corda CD, Squeaky Toy. And I'm told that my merchandise staff out there gives huge discounts to students. Huge discounts for students. And Greg Hopkins's new CD is also out on the table, right? Greg Hopkins has a new sextet, a quintet plus one, as he calls it, which to me sounds like a sextet, but apparently it's different.

[LAUGHTER]

GREG HOPKINS: You're the plus one.

TIM RAY: I'm the plus one? OK. So look for that as well. We also have, for the new CD, you know, we're all old guys, relatively speaking. I'm very proud of myself. I actually have download cards out there, for a discount rate. I forget what the discount rate is. She'll tell you. You can buy a little download card. It's cheaper than a CD. That much I know. And go download it from a CD Baby. So that's a cool thing to do if you just want the digital, the ones and zeroes. That's a good way to do that.

And mailing list, if you want to get on email list. You can also do that at the table. And I think that's it except for two more things. Of course I want to give a big thank you to MIT and to the folks here at Killian Hall for providing this beautiful space for us to play in, and particularly to my good friend Mark Harvey who invited us here.

[APPLAUSE]

As I said before, we're really glad to be finishing up the series of improvising groups here at MIT. And we're having a great time. And again, if you want to come find us, go sign up on our email list. And lastly, but not leastly, please help me thank once again on cello, Eugene Friesen.

[APPLAUSE]

And on trumpet, Greg Hopkins.

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GREG HOPKINS: And our fearless leader, Tim Ray on piano.

[APPLAUSE]

TIM RAY: So I'm looking at three or four songs here. Should we-- do you have an idea? Oh, you're pointing at Greg. We could do "Theme Park" or we could "Church Rhythm." Let's do "Church Rhythm." OK, we're going to do another-- we started with a Eugene Friesen composition. We're going to end with a Eugene Friesen composition. This is entitled, "Church Rhythm."

[MUSIC - TRE CORDA, "CHURCH RHYTHM"]

[APPLAUSE]

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