Before Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile take the stage at the University of Chicago's Mandel Hall tonight, the pair can be heard live on WFDU-FM's Lonesome Pine RFD this morning. The Washington Post says the duo's self-titled Nonesuch debut "represents the most substantial music Thile has recorded, for the give-and-take between the high-pitched mandolin and the deeply resounding bass is full of dark drama and rigorous musical architecture." The Kansas City Star says "the duo's world-class musicianship" along with "the highly intuitive communication that exists in the music itself ... provide the album's 12 compositions with heart, humor, precision and warmth."
Before Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile take the stage at the University of Chicago's Mandel Hall tonight, the pair can be heard live on WFDU-FM's Lonesome Pine RFD with host Carol Beaugard this morning at 11 AM ET. Tune in online at wfdu.fm. And tune in to Columbia Univeristy radio station WKCR Sunday morning at 11 AM for an interview and performance with Meyer and Thile on the station's Moonshine Show, at columbia.edu/cu/wkcr.
Before the duo's final tour concert in Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium on Wednesday, they'll perform at Washington, DC's Lisner Auditorium this Tuesday. The Washington Post's Geoffrey Himes, says that Chris, "the 27-year-old mandolin virtuoso" whose composition The Blind Leaving the Blind, on this year's Punch Brothers debut album, Punch, "betrayed his ambition to go beyond his bluegrass beginnings and move into the world of serious art music ... could find no better mentor for that journey than the 47-year-old bassist Edgar Meyer."
In his review of Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile, the pair's recent Nonesuch debut, Himes says it "represents the most substantial music Thile has recorded, for the give-and-take between the high-pitched mandolin and the deeply resounding bass is full of dark drama and rigorous musical architecture. While Thile's rambunctious, fleet-fingered runs imply high spirits, Meyer's bowed bass hints at a melancholy awareness of life's losses."
Read the review at washingtonpost.com.
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The Kansas City Star's Walter Tunis says that the music on the album, while far from being neatly catagorizable, "bears an intimacy and melodic delicacy that approximates chamber music," while at the same time, "adheres to an acoustic music lexicon that uses bluegrass as a starting point for jazz-directed adventures." That's not for nothing, says Tunis, given the abilities of the two performers:
String players Béla Fleck, Darol Anger, Jerry Douglas and Meyer were at the forefront of such stylistic advancement more than 25 years ago. Thile is easily among the boldest of the new-generation string-band players to further those ideas.
The reviewer says what leads to the album's success, in addition to "the duo's world-class musicianship is the highly intuitive communication that exists in the music itself. Together, both traits provide the album's 12 compositions with heart, humor, precision and warmth."
Read the review at kansascity.com.
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