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Celebrated violinist Mark O’Connor brought an entourage of diverse styles and talented performers to his Folly Jazz Series appearance Saturday night for sizable, appreciative crowd. The champion fiddler, jazz and classical composer, and Grammy Award-winner assembled a talented cast of young performers to present an “Appalachian Christmas,” a program featuring selections from his new acclaimed Christmas album which features appearances by Renée Fleming, Alison Krauss, Jane Monheit, James Taylor, and Yo-Yo Ma among others. O’Connor’s ensemble, the American String Celebration, brought together New Orleans jazz pianist Jonathan Batiste, jazz and classical violinist Sara Caswell, and violinist and Americana singer/songwriter Carrie Rodriguez and her bandmates, guitarist Hans Holzen and bassist Kyle Kegerais for the Kansas City performance. Both Caswell and Rodriguez are former students of O’Connor’s summer string camps.

O’Connor, along with Batiste, Holzen, and Kegerais, opened with a pairing of Claude “Fiddler” Williams’ “Fiddler Going Home” and O’Connor’s “Gypsy Fantastic.” The first, a nuanced, wistful fiddle ballad, showed off the perfect balance of the backing ensemble in harmony with O’Connor’s captivating, effortless playing. The latter was an electrifying jam with fiery sixteenth notes and glissando inflections.

Sara Caswell, who made her classical orchestral debut at age fifteen with Brahms’ Double Concerto for Violin and Cello in Kansas City, seemed equally adept in the jazz realm, having touring recently with Esperanza Spalding. In her Folly set, Caswell offered a lovely arrangement of “Bye, Bye, Blackbird” that featured a calm, steady rhythm section set against a freely wandering melody that explored the whole range of the violin. The set concluded with an enjoyable, loosely styled ballad version of “I’ll be home for Christmas.”

Carrie Rodriguez opened her set with her angst-ridden tune “Absence,” which melded bluesy folk-rock with the mood and imagery of an Appalachian-style murder ballad. In “Blue Christmas,” Rodriguez channeled Patsy Cline, but with a touch of Courtney Love for good measure.

Closing the first half, everyone took the stage for a transcendent performance “The Cherry Tree Carol”—a favorite tune of mine I hadn’t heard since I was a child in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. It was beautiful and slowly developed with piano and later all three violins added in for rich harmonies. Solos were excellent all around, especially Caswell’s classically infused offering and Batiste’s shimmering sopranino variation.

The strong first half of the program proved to be a tough act to follow, though there were some notable exceptions. O’Connor reappeared onstage to offer a haunting, minimalist, unaccompanied, Appalachian-styled ballad version of “Silent Night,” that lingered on poignant double-stops in unisons, fourths, and sevenths.

Jonathan Batiste performed one of the biggest crowd-pleasers of the evening with a “Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer” rendition that morphed through a number of unexpected styles and moods. The solo was well played and ingenious, but went on a bit too long for my taste.

What’s more, the evening wasn’t without its faults. Part of the second half of the show devolved into an under-prepared, unfocused set where song title announcements were dispensed with and one performer, Caswell, unsure of the set list order, initially forgot to retake the stage, leaving her to make her way through the number without her music when she did. It certainly wasn’t the worst fate to befall an experienced jazz and classical performer, all the same, it wasn’t a comfortable moment to witness.

The evening finished on a stronger note, however, with O’Connor’s “Olympic Reel,” composed for the ceremonies of the ‘96 Olympics in Atlanta. The work featured moments of lightning-fast unison playing for the three violins. As an encore, the group offered “Appalachian Waltz” with the three violins in richly ornamented, three-part harmonies underpinned by a subtle poignant rhythm section. The piece was made all the more moving as a humbled O’Connor related how Bill Clinton had told him recently how beautifully Yo-Yo Ma performed the piece at Steve Jobs memorial service.

There’s no question Mark O’Connor is a must-hear performer. Batiste, Caswell, and Rodriguez each have a multitude of talent which we’ll be reading about for years to come. Indeed, many parts of the evening were world class. However,  the quality of the program would have benefited by cutting a few of the less-prepared numbers from the 2.5 hour program.

REVIEW:
Folly Jazz Series 
Mark O’Connor
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Folly Theatre
300 W 12th St, Kansas City, MO
For more information, visit www.follytheatre.com. 

Top Photo: Mark O’Connor (Photo by Erica Horn)

By Topher Levin

Classical Editor and Contributor

Christopher (Topher) Levin is a composer, pianist, music theorist, and music blogger based in Kansas City, MO. His compositions have been performed at music festivals across the US and in Europe. He has spent two summers in Paris, France studying music at the Ecole Normale de Musique through the EAMA program. His trio for clarinet, piano, and percussion is published in the SCI Journal of Scores.

Topher holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (M.M.) in music theory and (M.M.) in composition and from James Madison University in Virginia (B.M.) in composition. Primary composition teachers have included John S. Hilliard, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Claude Baker, Narcis Bonet, Michel Merlet, and João Pedro Oliveira. His piano teachers have included Patricia Brady and Karen Kushner. Topher maintains a piano studio of 22 students.

Having recently completed a Master's thesis on the beautiful complexities of Chinary Ung's trio, Spiral I, Topher turned his writing attention to the more informal blogging medium. He has taken to it quite well, sharing posts on strange and wonderful music and art found across the web with a modest but growing number of blog followers. He looks forward to writing for KCM and sharing with its readers the stories of all the amazing musicians performing in Kansas City.