The Goat Rodeo Sessions Live Blu-ray delivers stunning video and reference-quality audio in this exceptional Blu-ray release
Live performance from a group of celebrated string musicians, comprising cellist Yo-Yo Ma, fiddler Stuart Duncan, bassist Edgar Meyer and mandolist Chris Thile. The group, which came together to record the 2011 collaborative album 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions', is joined on stage by guest vocalist Aoife O'Donovan. The performance took place at the House of Blues in Boston in January 2012 and saw the talented musicians perform an eclectic setlist of material.
Hi, I'm Jeff and I am a musicholic. Are there support groups for people addicted to music, especially the more outré and
outlandish sorts of things that seemed to be staples of American popular culture from the 1950's through at least the
1960's? If so, I should probably sign up right away. But even taking away that limited genre, as anyone who's seen
my home will tell you, I am a rabid enjoyer of virtually all kinds of music and I have the rooms full of CDs and LPs to
prove it. As some of you who regularly read my classical reviews already know, I have made at least part of my living
as a professional musician for decades, and that has included everything from conducting musical theater to performing
in classical chamber and symphony orchestras to playing a lot of jazz (especially Brazilian tinged jazz, which is probably
my personal
favorite). That means I have a huge collection of recordings in about every genre imaginable, but I must admit I have a
certain fondness for the occasional odd little release by people like Martin Denny or Enoch Light and even Percy Faith.
One of Faith's fellow master string arrangers was a man who also had feet in both the classical and pop music fields,
Felix Slatkin (father of the St. Louis Symphony conductor Leonard). Felix Slatkin won several Grammy Awards and
toured regularly with his classical Hollywood String Quartet, but he was also the preferred concertmaster for such pop
artists as
Frank Sinatra. Slatkin also released a number of really excellent "easy listening" albums in the early sixties (before his
untimely death from a heart attack), and one of the weirdest, yet most wonderful, CDs in my collection is the fabulous
rerelease of Slatkin's LP "Hoedown", an album which remade American folk music in the guise of a big string orchestra.
Slatkin's approach is awfully prescient in a way of some of the really interesting collaborations between Yo Yo Ma and a
number of other artists which have revisited American folk music from a classically trained perspective. The latest in this
line of releases is the wonderful The Goat Rodeo Sessions, an all star assemblage of classical
musicians who perform folk flavored originals, giving them that certain savoir faire that comes from a lifetime of
mastering
their individual instruments.
The Goat Rodeo Sessions Live was streamed live to theaters as well as recorded as a television special
broadcast
on PBS, both releases following up the album The Goat Rodeo Sessions. As the four main members of this
quartet
—Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile, Stuart Duncan and Edgar Meyer—discuss in a brief pre-credits sequence, the term "goat rodeo"
is
a metaphor for a kind of controlled chaos, though each of the four puts their own spin on what they individually think
the
term might refer to with regard to their collaboration. After the credits sequence, we get Ma yet again talking for a
moment about the term "goat rodeo" as well as giving a bit of background on how this particular assemblage came to
pass. As lovers of eclectic music will no doubt no, Ma himself has collaborated previously with both Edgar Meyer and
Chris
Thile on such wonderful albums as Appalachian Journey and Appalachia Waltz, but according to Ma's
brief
commentary, this particular outing actually began with Meyer and Thile and then ended up included Stuart Duncan as
well
as guest vocalist Aoife O'Donovan. There may be a bit (or more than a bit) of false modesty in Ma's recounting of the
history here.
Once the music finally gets underway, listeners are in for a nonstop treat of genre bashing sounds. There is a hugely
disparate variety of sounds here, with everything from semi-traditional sounding material bumping up against decidedly
more modern sounds. A perfect example is the second tune, "Where's My Bow?", which almost sounds like a traditional
fiddle reel until you realize that what's happening is in fact a kind of deconstruction of minimalism with a decided tip of
the riffing hat to Philip Glass. Over and over again these marvelous musicians manage to craft mélanges of material
that wouldn't seem to be able to be joined together.
There are several highlights throughout this concert (and in fact some could argue quite convincingly that the entire
concert is one big highlight). A piano is added to such tunes as "Franz and the Fiddle", and adds a gentle, tentative
feeling that is quite redolent of a jazz based group that also worked in a chamber music setting, the wonderful
assemblage named after my home state, Oregon. O'Donovan adds her ethereal voice to a few tunes as well, and "No
One But You" comes off akin to something like Enya singing the blues. It's interesting that in an evening comprised
mostly of originals, the concert closes with an actual, honest to goodness, folk tune, "All Through the Night," delivered
in a simple but elegant rendition that is incredibly touching.
Lovers of the Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? will also enjoy one of the few spoken moments in this
concert. Stuart Duncan, who performed on the concert tour that helped promote the film's incredible score, has a very
funny anecdote about how he came to name his piece "Hill Justice".
The set list for The Goat Rodeo Sessions Live is:
1. Quarter Chicken Dark
2. Where's My Bow?
3. Here and Heaven
4. Franz and the Eagle
5. Helping Hand
6. 13:8
7. Hill Justice
8. No One But You
9. Attaboy
10. All Through The Night
The Goat Rodeo Sessions Live is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sony and WGBH with an AVC encoded 1080i
transfer in 1.78:1. This is an extremely sharp and well defined outing that is one of the best live concert videos in recent
memory, with deep, burnished colors and overall very impressive contrast. Fine object detail is also quite impressive, to the
point where individual dings on the various instruments can be clearly seen. Even though several of the musicians are
wearing dark clothing, black levels are strong and really well delineated, so there are virtually no problems with shadow
detail or crush. In fact about the only anomaly is some very minor fading into the background with regard to
O'Donovan, perhaps because she's placed kind of to the far stage left side of the theater and may be out of the prime
lighting scheme.
The Goat Rodeo Sessions Live, as with most Blu-ray live music releases offered by Sony, is afforded three audio
options, uncompressed LPCM tracks in both 5.1 and 2.0, as well as a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix. The audio
here is simply stellar. The LPCM 5.1 mix is breathtakingly clear, and the surround channels invite the listener into the
sometimes delicate interplay between the instruments. The mix here follows the standard operating procedure of
spreading the instruments across the front channels, with the occasionally boisterous audience sounds bringing up the rear
(so to speak), but there's such a fluid spaciousness to this mix that all of the incredibly complex counterpoint that makes up
a lot of this musical material. Fidelity is top notch and there's some really breathtaking dynamic range spread throughout
these tracks as well.
Bonus Tracks (1080i; 22:42) contains four extra songs which well display this group's incredible
versatility. The four numbers are:
Fiddle Medley Less is Moi Parallax Bach: Gamba Sonata No. 1, Movements 3 & 4.
Just taking the first and last offerings proves that this group can tackle anything they set their minds (and/or fingers) to.
The opening tune (actually tunes) is one of the more traditional sounding in the entire set list, while the last piece is a
gorgeous recreation of one of Bach's beautiful chamber pieces.
The Goat Rodeo Sessions Live might not be immediately exciting to many out there, people who might think this is
classical music (the horror) or even "too smart for its own good" revisionism with regard to the great American Folktune
songbook. It's really neither, though it includes elements of both of these ideas. What this is more than anything is just
simple, unadulterated great music. There is such thrilling musicianship on display, and the song list here is so varied, that
this is a veritable horn of plenty of various styles and idioms (despite the fact that no horns are included in the
instrumentation). There's an obvious rapport between these musicians, and so tempi can change with nary an
inkling given other than a brief nod of the head, and the interplay between all of the players dances an incredibly fine line
between notated brilliance and the joy of improvisation. Take some advice from someone who loves virtually all kinds of
music, but who is nonetheless a stickler for quality and informed expression: take a chance on The Goat Rodeo
Sessions Live, even if you don't think it's something you're innately interested in. You very well may be nicely surprised.
With excellent video and unbeatable audio, The Goat Rodeo Sessions Live comes Highly recommended.
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