Author: Michael Witthaus

Take3 on a mission to the mainstream

Classical music is rigorous and demanding, its top purveyors virtuosic — but it’s box office anathema. Charity, not ticket sales, provides the majority of revenue for most American orchestras.

Enter Lindsay Deutsch. She launched her group Take3 to change the genre’s perception. The violin, piano and cello trio performs modern songs like “Despacito” and “Yellow” with the same musical discipline Deutsch learned when she was classically trained at The Colburn School in Los Angeles.

It’s an approach familiar to fans of Netflix’s Bridgerton, which offered string quartet renditions of Ariana Grande and Maroon 5 hits, among others, but Deutsch arguably got there first. Beyond that, her kinetic stage presence is singularly unique. She’s to the violin what Ian Anderson is on the flute with Jethro Tull, stalking the boards like a dervish.

The idea for reimagining pop songs as classical pieces came from frustration with the medium’s strict rules.

“The thing about Bach, Brahms and Beethoven is you have to play in a box, so to speak,” Deutsch said in a recent phone interview. “As an artist, I felt like … I have this huge voice, and people keep asking me not to use my voice, but to try and figure out what this dead, old white guy wants.”

Deutsch’s light bulb moment came when she traveled to Saudi Arabia for a last-minute spot playing with Yanni. The New Age superstar had found her on YouTube; she’d never heard of him until he called to say his regular violinist was leaving to have a baby. She had three weeks to learn the material; it would be her first time performing with amplification and in-ear monitors.

During her initial solo, Deutsch couldn’t hear anything and feared the worst was happening.

“I’m just fingering the violin, I can’t hear one note, I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “My thought is, OK, this is my first and last performance with Yanni, because I’m gonna for sure be fired.”

When she glanced at the bandleader, however, he was smiling broadly at her.

“I look up further and see a sea of people on their feet, cheering. That’s when I realized my in-ear monitors are fine; it’s the sound of the crowd that is so loud.”

For Deutsch, it was a revelation.

“In classical music, we don’t have audiences that make that kind of noise,” she said. “It was something that I realized I was really missing. … I became kind of addicted to that passion and to that fire the audience was giving me in response to this crossover style. After that moment, I just never looked back.”

Though the group’s material is accessible, it remains musically challenging.

“Take3 never felt that just playing the tune was good enough, because we had the chops to play big concerti with an orchestra,” Deutsch said. “We were not going to be happy with just playing single notes and easy renditions. So we made this stuff super hard, and we added double stops all over the place and cool techniques. … We wanted to really show off what we learned.”

After a few lineup changes, Take3 is currently Deutsch, Juilliard-trained pianist Jason Stoll and fellow L.A.-based cellist Mikala Schmitz, who studied at Cleveland Institute of Music.

“It’s very rare to find serious classical musicians that have the chops needed who can also let their hair down and have fun. … It’s been beaten into us since we were 5 years old to read the music, play exactly you see,” Deutsch said. “I’m saying the music is a guide, and if you want to diverge from that, have a little fun and do something different, by all means go for it. We’re on stage to have a good time.”

Though she’s playing a violin that’s over two centuries old, Deutsch knows she’s competing with 21^st-century distractions like movies and video games.

“These amazing things that people are used to seeing … if I just walk out on stage and plop myself down in a chair, it doesn’t matter how good it sounds, I’m never going to compete with modern-day entertainment.”

A livestreamed show sponsored by the Palace Theatre in Manchester on March 26 will feature Take3 performing a wide selection of material.

“It’s just all our favorite tunes that we’ve been playing over the last three years,” Deutsch said. “Anything from Justin Bieber to The Beatles to Coldplay, Pirates of the Caribbean and Game of Thrones. All good stuff.”

Take3 Virtual Stream
When: Friday, March 26, 8 p.m.
Where: Hosted by The Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St., Manchester
Tickets: $15 at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: Take3. Courtesy photo.

Ryan Montbleau unveils first of four new EPs

On the first track of his latest record, Ryan Montbleau celebrates imperfection. “If things don’t have to be perfect, it’s a lot easier for them to be right,” Montbleau sings, quoting his therapist.

There’s a lot of self-care on the new EP Wood, the first in a series to be followed by Fire, Water and Air. Montbleau tends to look on the bright side of things, like his upcoming gig at Portsmouth’s Music Hall on March 19. True, social distancing rules will reduce crowd size, but performing in the storied Historic Theatre instead of the smaller Loft space is a big plus.

“I’ve always wanted to play there; all it took was them limiting capacity to 20 percent,” Montbleau said with a laugh in a recent phone interview.

Similarly, the Massachusetts-born singer-songwriter managed to turn his pandemic year into a growth experience.

“It kind of sped up the process of life,’ he said. “It’s weird, but in some ways I’ve almost never been happier.”

Montbleau purchased his first house, in Burlington, Vermont. He took piano lessons, did weekly Facebook Live sets and the odd solo gig, and appeared on a local music talk show.

“I’ve been very lucky through all this; it’s kind of allowed me to stay in one place for once and start to build a home life,” he said.

Spotify and other streaming services provided a cushion as well.

“I’ve been building this thing for 20 years, and I don’t have to tour my face off like I used to,” he said.

One bit of good fortune: He completed the basic tracks for the new music in summer 2019, playing with a rotating cast that included jazz jam legend Martin Medeski. Montbleau worked with producer Adam Landry (Deer Tick, Rayland Baxter) at Guilford Studio in southern Vermont.

“I had just amazing people coming in and out,” he said. “Turning it into a record [is] what’s taken the last year and a half … a lot of tweaking, taking things out and putting them in.”

He divided the collection’s 15 tracks into four themes. Wood is rustic and down to earth, while Fire rocks hard. Water is calm, reflective, with songs inspired by time Montbleau spent doing medicine work in Peru.

“I would sit in the jungle in a tent for 10 days and work with different plants,” he said, calling the experience “pretty life-altering. … It points you in a different direction. … I feel like some of those songs were gifts; that’s why they ended up on Water.”

The final chapter, Air, offers a sense of closure and peace. It ends with “The Dust” and Montbleau singing, “just know that you are not alone, and that’s all you get to know now.”

Wood, Fire, Water and Air’s songs reflect a long and sometimes difficult period for Montbleau.

“My old band split up around 2013 and I lost my management at the time; I had a long relationship end and I’d been on the road for 10 years,” he said. “I had a lot of growing to do. Since then, I’ve been searching for who I am, how to heal and how to be better.”

Wood was scheduled to be released on March 12; the others are expected to arrive over the next three to four months.

The just-released EP includes the charming “Ankles,” an autobiographical song that touches upon his first tour, where he suffered a burst appendix and a busted van. Montbleau soldiered on in spite of that nightmare, becoming a festival staple along the way.

“If I could survive this, I could survive anything,” he decided.

“On the road I found my muses, off the road I lost my mind,” he sings, concluding with, “off the road I lost my uses, on the road I found my shine.” For most touring musicians, Montbleau explained, standing still is where the trouble begins.

It’s also where his growth had to start.

“You get so used to being on stage and having people appreciate what you do… when you get home finally and you’re just sitting alone in a room, it’s really daunting,” he said. “What is my purpose? What are my uses? Back on the road, I would find my shine under the lights, and find my purpose again. So I think the years leading up to now have been me digging deep and figuring out who I am, and who I was before I started doing this.”

An Evening With Ryan Montbleau
When: Friday, March 19, 8 p.m.
Where: The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
Tickets: $38 at themusichall.org

Featured photo: Ryan Montbleau. Photo by Shervin Lainez.

Enjoy St. Patrick’s Day music virtually

A year ago Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki was heading into his busy season and primed to play traditional Irish music across the region. Following a St. Patrick’s Day weekend kickoff show, the Jordan TW Trio, including Matt Jensen on guitar and bass player Chris Noyes, would play its biggest gig of the year, to a sold out Saturday night crowd at Bank of NH Stage.

It was Friday the 13^th, however. In 2020, that cursed day delivered misery like never before.

“As we stepped off stage, I took out my phone,” the fiddler said in a recent phone interview, “and found out that we’d been canceled from that point on.”

Though Tirrell-Wysocki would resume a fairly busy schedule later that spring — Zoom lessons with cabin-fevered students were a silver lining during the pandemic — on March 17 the jigs and reels were streamed from his home on Facebook Live.

This year he’ll finally take the stage in downtown Concord. Alas, apart from a camera operator and sound engineer, his trio will play to an empty room.

He calls the situation “weirdly ironic” but is pleased nonetheless. “I’m grateful that the Capitol Center has figured out how to present quality livestream content. … I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

The March 12 show is one of four Irish-themed virtual events offered by the venue. On March 13 a late afternoon show offers We Banjo 3: Live From Ireland. An indie band with Celtic roots, they most recently performed a virtual Christmas show.

That’s followed later in the evening by the concert/travelogue Virtual Ireland with Michael Londra. A prerecorded live concert experience featuring world-renowned step dancers and musicians, Rhythm of the Dance debuted in February and will run two more times in March.

An “intermission” from live events imposed late last year has been challenging, Capitol Center Executive Director Nicki Clarke said recently. Federal CARES Act money and donations have sustained them financially.

“We’ve been taking it literally month by month, saying, ‘We’re just going to pause and look again, and pause again,’” she said.

Socially distanced standup comedy from Juston McKinney was set to resume in-person shows on March 27, but “the board decided to stay in our ‘pause’ state,” Clarke wrote in a Feb. 25 email, so the event is postponed, with no new date confirmed. A May 14 Adam Ezra Band show is still listed on the venue’s website; everything before that is off or virtual, and the Ezra show is not certain either, Clarke said.

“Our board weighs in on the pause question the second Thursday of each month for the following month,” she said. “This means the call to go or re-schedule again will be made on or around April 8.”

Some silver linings emerged from the dearth of live events. Necessary stage repairs could be made, for example.

“In some ways being closed was a good thing, because we can get that done right,” Clarke said.

Still, livestreamed shows are no substitute for the real thing money-wise.

“We might be making like $2 for every ticket that we sell; it’s really for the benefit of giving people something to watch,” she said. “This mud season is going to be tough. We’ve got to get through March and April, then hopefully we’ll be outside and able to join up with each other.”

Tirrell-Wysocki is also willing to wait.

“As much as I’m looking forward to being able to work in a normal capacity again, I don’t want to rush it,” he said. “I have been offered indoor shows, and I honestly feel weird. I don’t blame anyone who’s willing to perform inside with distance guidelines and all of that, but a huge part of my job as an independent musician is filling a room, and I just can’t really in good conscience do that. … I want to be sure we’ve waited long enough to do it safely and feel good about it. If that means livestreaming for now, then that’s what we’re going to do.”

Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki Trio Livestream
When: Friday, March 12, 8 p.m.
Where: online
Tickets: $20 at ccanh.com

Featured photo: Jordan TW Trio. Courtesy photo.