TTU Celtic Ensemble/Elegant Savages Orchestra
BALFOLK: A Euro-French dance revolution!
with guest artists Dr Quinn Patrick Ankrum (mezzo-soprano), Dr Benjamin Robinette (dance, voice, button accordion), Professor Roger Landes (English bagpipe), Jakob Reynolds (fiddle, bouzouki)
About this Program
The cluster of music and dance styles known, in contemporary Western Europe, as “Bal-Folk” (literally, a “folk-dance-ball”), is rooted in the French folk dances of bourree, vals, mazurka, Cerc Cercassiene, and chappelloise, but—as should be obvious from the names of the dances themselves—it draws widely from other European traditions. More widely, BalFolk is a modern phenomenon, part of a new wave of “revivals” which has transformed expectations about who plays which regional folk styles and what that playing means. Relatively recently, musicians, singers, and dancers in Europe and the UK have begun to explore what happens when players, instruments, tunes, and dances cross national boundaries, and the ways in which such crossings can break down barriers of nationalism and class. Emphasizing powerfully distinct modes and rhythms, utilizing droning bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies, accordions, fiddles, and instruments further afield, these musicians envision a “post-nationalist” global village in which we all can dance together.
We thank particularly our sources and inspirations, most notably the great English dance band Blowzabella and our wonderful French-folk friends RT Taylor and Scott Gayman. In this tenth anniversary year, we invite you to join our celebration!
TTU Celtic Ensemble a/k/a/ The Elegant Savages Orchestra
Dr Christopher J Smith, director
Eddie Allen (bass), Brittany Bell (fiddle), Heather Beltz (flute, piccolo, section leader), Casey Brito (clarinet), Wesley Colquitt (tuba), Hudson Dougherty (percussion), Rachel Elder (voice, dance), Madeline Garcia (cello), Anissa Garcia (voice, dance), Karson Goggans (voice, dance), Trey Guadarrama (trombone), Maurice Hernandez (saxophone), Lizzie Jackson (oboe), Austin Jones (keyboards, dance, voice), Alexander Kolb (trumpet), Nhat Le (fiddle), Ella Lowrance (bassoon, sarrusaphone), Kathryn Mann (voice, dance), Kaitlyn Martinez (horn, dance), Jorge Martinez (trombone, section leader), Kay Millerick (flute), ShayLynn Mitchell (voice, dance, flute), Jaclyn Paul (percussion, drums, voice, dance, section leader), Spencer Reese (clarinet, bass clarinet), Maria Rodriguez (fiddle), Elisa Shiller (voice, dance), Matt Sidilau (trombone), Steve Stallings (guitar), Tiffany Sumrow (trumpet), Nathan Thorp (voice, dance, section leader), Cole Treider (bass trombone), Morgan White (voice, dance, percussion, dance captain), Lucy Worley (fiddle, dance, section leader)
websites: ttucelticensemble.com a/k/a www.elegantsavagesorchestra.com
About Bassanda and the Elegant Savages Orchestra
Major inspiration for the Elegant Savages Orchestra, the orchestra-sized version of the TTU Celtic Ensemble, comes from the fictional country of “Bassanda,” a creation of Taos-based musicians and VMC partners Chipper Thompson (chipperthompson.com) and Roger Landes (rogerlandes.com), who for purposes of our January 2014 debut assumed their Bassanda personae (“The Rev” and “The General”) as guest performers. When Theatre & Dance faculty member Nicole Wesley (alias “Bronislava Nijinska”) and photographer Tif Holmes (“Cifani Dhoma”) joined the creative team as choreographer and artist-documentarian respectively, we committed to this symphonic approach to a “quasi-modernist” folkloric music and dance (see also www.bassandaproject.com). We imagined the fictional “Elegant Savages Orchestra,” in which, as part of an “alternate-history” frame, it’s alleged that a Soviet satellite’s official state folkloric ensemble (the “Bassanda National Radio Orchestra”) mutates, after the fall of Communism, into a free-lance ensemble engaged in a Never-Ending Tour.
The BNRO/ESO has thus been heard in many permutations and with widely variegated personnel, including “The Classic 1952 Band,” “The 1962 ‘Beatnik’ Band” (which nearly appeared on the cover of Life magazine under the headline “New Currents from Behind the Iron Curtain), and “The 1965 Newport Folk Festival Band,” who helped jump-start Bob Dylan’s notorious switch, in that year, from acoustic folk to electric rock & roll.
This year, we bring you the “Mysterious 1885 ‘Steampunk’ Band”—documented in a single Ambrotype photographic image, date approximate, found in a Taos NM Mission. Here is a relevant excerpt from the Bassanda Correspondence:
The story becomes even more complicated when examining certain historical photographs held in the Archives at Miskatonic U. In the section of sketches, ambrotypes, and daguerreotypes (sadly, not available online, as the Archive has as yet been unsuccessful in raising the very substantial funds necessary to catalog and digitize the extensive collection), there is a charcoal sketch attributed to Giyanlakshmi Julahe Kaur. This sketch matches an anonymous ambrotype, found in a Taos mission, of the mysterious “1885 Band”—mysterious precisely because, though a very imperfect and ambiguous image, it appears to have been taken in London or possibly Paris, and to include, c1885, portraits of individuals who were likewise members of the Bands of the 1950s and ‘60s. Though denounced by 1960s BSSP functionaries as “mere imperialist falsifications”—an allusion to the poorly-retouched file photographs which notoriously “erased” discredited Party functionaries from May Day and Lenin’s Tomb commemorations, or added newly-favored ones—no persuasive debunking of the sketch, or of the ambrotype upon which it is based, has been tendered.
Related correspondence, personal biographies, timelines, galleries & archival commentary can be found at: www.elegantsavagesorchestra.com; likewise search Facebook for “Elegant Savages Orchestra.”
Special thanks as always to School of Music Director William Ballenger a/k/a “Vilyum Balandjeor”
VMC staff
Media contacts: Director Christopher J Smith (christopher.smith@ttu.edu), Associate Director Roger Landes (roger.landes@ttu.edu); VMC Assistants: Heather Beltz (heather.beltz@ttu.edu); Amy McDevitt (amy.mcdevitt@ttu.edu); Adolfo Estrada (a.estrada@ttu.edu); Kathryn Mann (kathryn.mann@ttu.edu)
The Vernacular Music Center Scholarship at Texas Tech University
The competitive Vernacular Music Center Scholarship at Texas Tech University provides financial assistance to a student in the College of Visual and Performing Arts who is a practitioner of one or more traditional performance idioms. For more information, please be in touch with Dr Christopher Smith at christopher.smith@ttu.edu
The VMC Outreach Scholars Program helps fund young performers of great promise for attendance at workshops, summer camps, and festivals, in order that they may develop teaching skills to share in future with their communities. To find out more about the Outreach Scholars, and for news & information on VMC events: visit www.vernacularmusiccenter.org
The Journal of the Vernacular Music Center, a partnership of the VMC, the Texas Tech University Press, and the TTU Libraries, is an online, peer-reviewed, biannual periodical whose thematic focus is vernacular music and dance research and pedagogy, particularly in the context of university education. The Journal is available online and for free download at http://jovmc.org
You can always check in on Vernacular Music Center events at the live Google calendar:
http://www.vernacularmusiccenter.org/calendar.html
Can I participate?
Yes! If you are interested in participating in one of the VMC ensembles or partners (Celtic Ensemble, Tango Camerata, Early Music Ensemble, Irish Set Dancers, Caprock Morris, Balkan Ensemble, Elegant Savages, Mariachi Los Matadores, or other), feel free to contact their respective directors (see vernacularmusiccenter.com/ensembles.html). Auditions typically occur in the first weeks of each academic semester.
You can donate directly in support of the VMC Scholarship, Outreach Scholars, and Concert Series. Visit Give2Tech.com and search “Celtic Ensemble VMC Gifts” to make an online, tax-deductible donation.
VMC photographer: Dr Tiffany Holmes tifholmes.com
Social Media Wrangler: Christopher Hepburn
Brewmasters: Milhouse Brewing Co.
Websites:
http://ttucelticensemble.com
http://vernacularmusiccenter.org
http://elegantsavagesorchestra.com
Facebook Event at: https://www.facebook.com/events/336939439973095/
Upcoming highlights in the VMC’s 2016-17 season
· Oct 9: Balkan Ensemble Fall Concert (Hemmle)
· Oct 15: ESO performs live score to 1922 horror classic Nosferatu (Museum at TTU)
· Oct 20-23: ESO tours Nosferatu (NM)
· Oct 29: Tech Set Dancers Pirates & Cowboys Halloween (Sugar Brown’s)
· Oct 30: Roger Landes guests with University Symphony
· Nov 12: BalFolk (Euro-French) live music dance party (Fire Bay-LHUCA)
· Nov 19: VMC Musicale at Fredericksburg
· Nov 20: Landes, Smith, Robinette at Faculty Collaboration Concert (Legacy)
· Dec 3: Roger Landes solo show (J&B Coffee)
· Dec 10: Celtic Xmas XVI (Maedgen Theater)
Co-sponsored by the Vernacular Music Center, the School of Music, and the Roots Music Institute (www.rootsmusicinstitute.com )
