Celtic Twist

Ask Caroline LaVelle what it was like learning to adapt the cello to Celtic music a few years ago and the classically trained string player answers with a hearty laugh. "It was a baptism by fire," she says, during a phone interview from her home near Cornwall, England, adding that the experience came without benefit of rehearsals while performing with the Irish folk group De Dannan. "I learned to play by the seat of my pants," she adds with a laugh.

This spring, that on-the-job training paid off when Paddy Maloney of the Chieftains asked the English-born singer, songwriter, and string player to join the band on tour in the United States. The tour—the first since the October 17 death of the band's celebrated harpist Derek Bell—gave the Chieftains the chance to use a cellist, something Maloney had wanted to try when he first formed the band 40 years ago. "You can't replace Derek, of course—he was very unique, a real funny and eccentric character," says Maloney, "so we've decided to go down a different road." That road has led to LaVelle, whose credits include recording sessions with pop stars Radiohead, Peter Gabriel, Sting, and William Orbit as well as tour dates with violinist Nigel Kennedy and others. "The cello brings a depth that the instruments normally associated with Irish music don't offer," says LaVelle, who in November played at a Belfast memorial service for Bell. "You know, because the cellist can give stick way down there and really whoomf up the sound with a lot of bottom."

Her one regret: not getting a chance to play with Bell. "I've been listening to his music while getting ready for the tour and his work was so beautiful," she says. "It would have been so lovely to get to play with him."

Meanwhile, LaVelle's solo career is building momentum. Her recently released self-produced album Brilliant Midnight 2.0 (Ringing Tree), the follow-up to her acclaimed 1995 solo debut Spirit, is drawing rave reviews. The song "Anxiety" recently found its way onto the soundtrack of the offbeat movie Roadkill, and LaVelle’s "All I Have" and "Firefly Night" have been featured on the cult HBO series Six Feet Under.

—Greg Cahill

Artful Violins

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra staff member Sarah Yates has found an exciting way to merge the visual arts and music. Yates, a string player and artist, spent three summers collecting and restoring beat-up old fiddles. She then enlisted such prominent artists as Roy Dowell, Michael C. McMillen, Linda Nishio, Frank Romero, Erika Rothenberg, and Betye Saar to create unique masterpieces from the instruments. In January, the painted violins—including one created by Yates—were sold at a silent auction to raise funds for the LACO community outreach and youth education programs. "The arts have an extraordinary power to enrich each other," Yates notes, "and I felt that the visual appeal of painted violins could be used to spark people's enthusiasm for classical music and generate pride in the chamber orchestra and its community activities."

In February, LACO, under music director Jeffrey Kahane, took another step toward unifying the arts by presenting the West Coast premiere of Pink Skies: A Musical Celebration of Paul Gauguin, a family concert geared toward teaching children about color in painting and music.

Long Live the King

With the recent release of a new double album (ECM New Series, 289 461 862-2), cellist Thomas Demenga has completed the lengthy series of Bach cello suites that he began recording in the mid-'80s. What makes this series especially noteworthy is not just the suites, but what he chose to record alongside them. Rather than do yet another straight-ahead series of recordings of the suites, Demenga has paired the works with pieces by such contemporary composers as Elliott Carter, Heinz Holliger, Sándor Veress, Bernard Alois Zimmerman, Toshio Hosokawa, and Isang Yun. On these recordings, Demenga seems not just an accomplished cellist, but a curator of a serious stream of contemporary musical thought.

"The choice of the composers also includes a general view of today's new music in a few different countries, East and West," says Demenga, "and even shows a link between 'teacher and pupil' in two cases: Veress was Holliger's teacher, and Yun taught Hosokawa. Most of them are composers I know or knew personally: I found it important to be able to have contact with the composer in order to play their music the way they imagined it."

Demenga doesn't hope to cast new light on the old pieces by placing them alongside newer works; he just enjoys this music—which is obvious from his performances–and feels it ought to be heard. "Some 15 years ago, people used to either play modern music or Baroque music" he says, "At that time I started combining the two in solo recitals and found that the audience received this idea in a very positive way. I don't think there is really a connection between Bach and the other composers on these discs. For me Bach is 'the king' of all composers—the greatest genius of all time—and I’m quite certain that most musicians think that as well. So it simply means that it's a great honor for any composer to be coupled with 'the master.'"

—Daniel Felsenfeld