SOUNDTRACK: JAKE SCHEPPS’ EXPEDITION QUARTET-Tiny Desk Concert #187 (January 19, 2012).
Jake Schepps’ Expedition Quartet is a somewhat unusual string quartet in that the instruments are violin and upright bass (normal) but also guitar and banjo. And so the songs have a classical feel–melodies repeated in a fugue style, but with the prominence of the banjo, it feels more like a folk song. The violin takes on a kind of fiddle sound. And that’s interesting enough, but it’s the story of the music that they are playing which makes it even more fascinating:
About 100 years ago, Béla Bartók was traipsing through his native Hungary (Romania and Slovakia, too) with a bulky Edison phonograph, documenting folk songs and dances. There’s a priceless photo of the young composer, his contraption perched on an outside windowsill with a woman singing into the horn while anxious villagers stare at the camera. By 1918, Bartók had amassed almost 9,000 folk tunes. He made transcriptions of some; others he arranged for piano, while elements of still others found their way into his orchestra pieces and chamber music.
This was the country music of Eastern Europe, and its off-kilter rhythms and pungent melodies continue to captivate music lovers and musicians like Colorado-based banjo player Jake Schepps, who has recorded an entire album of Bartok’s folk-inspired music.
For this concert, with fellow members of Expedition Quartet — violinist Enion Pelta-Tiller, guitarist Grant Gordy and bass player Ian Hutchison, they played a Bartók hoe-down of sorts.
They play three pieces:
“Romanian Folk Dances: ‘Stick Game'” Bartók (arr. Flinner). This is a quieter piece with moments of bounce. Indeed, Schepps doesn’t feel like the leader of this group because everyone shares the spotlight. The guitar takes a lengthy solo–its got a very jazzy feel (which is a little weird on an acoustic guitar). The violin takes a pizzicato solo, which is neat. When Schepps finally does do a solo it’s not a showoffy banjo solo, it just fits in well with what everyone else is playing.
“For Children (Hungarian Folk Tunes): ‘Stars, Stars Brightly Shine'” Bartók (arr. Schepps). This is a slower tune and it is much shorter as well—it doesn’t really lend itself to soloing. Although the violin takes on the lead melody and it sounds mournful and beautiful.
“Mikrokosmos No. 78 / ‘Cousin Sally Brown'” Bartók / traditional (arr. Schepps). Before this track, when someone tells Schepps that No 78 is his favorite of the Mikrokosmos, he says that he prefers 79. The bassist says that 79 has gotten too commercial. The end of the song has a tag of “Cousin Sally” a rollicking traditional dance number. The four seems to play somewhat at odds with each other briefly and when they all rejoin for the end—it’s pretty great.
[READ: December 27, 2016] Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down
I keep expecting the quality of the jokes in the Wimpy Kid books to decline. But rather, this book was not only hilarious, but it worked really well as a book, too.
What I mean is that, I know that the Wimpy Kid series is online and that Kinney does a new story every day (or at least he did , I don’t know if he still does). These books had always been taken from the online site (and I assume they still are). But somehow, this book has jokes that circle back to jokes earlier in the book. There’s at least a half a dozen callbacks which makes this book more than just a collection of diary entries…it’s a perfectly contained unit with a satisfying ending.
