The Alison Brown Quartet performed the first concert in the Different Drummer Series this season at the Ogle Center.
The quartet incorporates the banjo, acoustic guitar, drum and bass —without lyrics — to entertain the audience with a unique blend of music.
Larry Atamanuik, drummer, described the music.
“Little bit jazz, little bit Latin, little bit bluegrass, little bit Celtic,” Atamanuik said. “Kind of that two-beat jazz, Dixie kind of stuff. It’s a mixture of everything, but it’s all in there.”
The quartet started the show with an upbeat song, “The Sound of Summer Running.” Brown’s banjo was the main focus of this country song.
Cory Dixon, chemistry freshman, said he can appreciate the way Brown plays because he recently started playing the banjo himself.
“She’s a really good banjo player,” Dixon said. “It’s really cool to see someone that far advanced playing. It definitely opened up a new range. I didn’t know the banjo was capable of some of the stuff she was getting it to do.”
Brown joked about her previous life as an investment banker, and how she used to read about bluegrass music on the job.
Brown said there are multiple styles of music in her work because of her background.
“I think it just came from my experiences,” Brown said. “I grew up in California. I didn’t grow up in Kentucky, so I kind of came to Bluegrass secondhand. I listen to a lot of other things, too. Basically, the music I write just tends to be this composite of all the different things I listen to.”
Brown said the music she plays is created by experimenting with the different styles of music she listens to and figuring out how well they blend together.
“When you write music, it’s kind of like the saying ‘You are what you eat,’” Brown said. “You kind of write what you’re exposed to. It goes in your ears, and it stews around in there for years, and when it comes out, it’s its own sort of blend.”
In the third song, “Deep North,” Brown used her acoustic guitar and continued to use it through the fourth song, “My Favorite Marsha.”
She said this song was inspired by a letter she received from a fan who worked in a space shuttle.
The fan told Brown she listened to the record at work, and Brown said it was neat to know her music was being played in space.
John Burr, pianist, opened for the next song, “Crazy Ivan,” which blended the different styles of the banjo and the piano.
Dixon said he liked the trade-offs between Burr and Brown in the songs.
“You can definitely see the jazz in it, but you can see the cross over into more of a bluegrass feeling,” Dixon said. “It’s really interesting because I’ve never heard those sounds really blend together like that.”
The quartet finished the performance with the song, “The Magnificent Seven.”
Atamanuik said the different styles of music he plays require different kinds of energy on stage.
“You can be playing one song, and it may feel like a Latin song, but then there are all these other elements in it, too,” he said. “You’ve got to put that in your music, and not it’s not only for playing
music, it’s for whatever you do.”
By BRITTANY POWELL
Staff
bripowel@umail.iu.edu