Celebrity Series's Stave Sessions defies easy classification, again

Boston Globe

14-02-2025

Seven years later, satisfying the AI — or whatever's powering the streaming service of the day's algorithm — has
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On Tuesday evening, the small audience entered to find the lights already dim, and Providence-based singer and composer (and Bent Knee cofounder) Courtney Swain's setup onstage blanketed with artificial roses. Swain stood behind a flower-strewn keyboard for most of her almost seamless one-hour set with collaborating guitarist Tim Doherty; with her hands so obscured and the layers of her supple, strong vocals wreathing the room, she often seemed to be coaxing music from the blooms. The apocalyptic but strangely consoling lyrics set against the gentle instrumental background made for a meditative, inward-looking experience. Only near the end of the set did she address the audience, hinting that this might be one of her last shows under the Courtney Swain name as she formalizes this new artistic project under a different moniker.
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Singer, sound artist, and composer Courtney Swain at Somerville's Crystal Ballroom on Feb. 11, the first night of Celebrity Series of Boston's 2025 Stave Sessions.
Robert Torres
On Wednesday,
That's a process in itself. So, unsurprisingly, the group's setlist mostly consisted of repertoire from its upcoming album, 'Rare Birds,' which releases March 15. There were two originals by Owls cellist and composer Paul Wiancko; a hearty arrangement of a piece by Norwegian/American folk duo Trollstilt; a fascinating and kaleidoscopic inverse-quartet arrangement of Couperin's harpsichord piece 'Les Barricades Mysterieuses.' The most memorable was Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh's ecstatic 'Raqs,' written originally for Kronos Quartet — which, not so incidentally, has 50 percent overlap with Owls by way of Wiancko and violinist Ayane Kozasa, and newly installed Kronos second violinist Gabriela Diaz was in the audience. The adventuresome, try-anything spirit of Kronos is clearly in capable and joyous hands. If the number of professional musicians-about-town in the audience was any indication, Owls just might be a member of your favorite orchestra's favorite quartet.
Cellist Seth Parker Woods is also a familiar face around Boston, having collaborated several times with local organizations such as Castle of Our Skins; Thursday, he presented his touring program 'Thus Spoke their Verse,' consisting of three sections he called 'hypersuites.' These
used sarabandes from Bach's cello suites as launchpads into mostly contemporary repertoire, with mixed but mostly satisfying results. Particularly striking was the transition from the Sarabande from Suite No. 1 into the plucked Calvary Ostinato from Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's 'Lamentations, 'Black/Folk Song Suite,'' which Woods anchored with a hauntingly calm repeated bassline while making the higher strings wail and twang like a banjo.
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Also unforgettable was Fredrick Gifford's 'Difficult Grace,' for layered cello and voice. Reciting excerpts from Dudley Randall's 1968 poem 'Primitives,' Woods adopted a vintage storyteller's resonant tones, which morphed on a dime into a ghostly whisper, all while adding eerie wordless commentary from the cello. I wished he had provided the text of the poem in his program notes — the message was clearly powerful, but chopped up into collage for artistic effect as it was, it wasn't easy to process individual phrases. Woods's keen stage presence helped bridge that gap, however; several times throughout the evening, it seemed he was looking right at me, and I wonder how many others felt the same way. There's an experience no AI can replicate.
STAVE SESSIONS
Presented by Celebrity Series of Boston. At Crystal Ballroom, Somerville. www.celebrityseries.org
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at