Add Viola and Stir
- Release date: late December, 2010
- Genre: jazz, classical, instrumental
- Label: Vlazville Records
- Track Listing:
Sidemen:
Dave Miotke, piano/accordion; Dave Miotke has been singing and playing keyboards (accordion and piano) since he was 3. On the way to getting two degrees at Northwestern in music (BM in theory and composition; MM in applied piano), he left school to be part of the popular rock band “H.P. Lovecraft,” recording two highly successful album and performing all over the country in places like the Fillmore East and West and Winterland. He then became a studio musician in Chicago in the 1970s. He has been in the Bay Area for the past 30 years, currently performing free-lance, making recordings, and teaching music.
Steve Hanson, bass; Grew up in Minnesota, graduated from Moorhead St. University, then toured Europe as trombone soloist with the NATO Band before returning to study and receive a master’s degree at North Texas State. While living in New York, he was the tuba player for Woody Allen’s New Orleans Jazz Band and also performed at the White House with George Segal. He is currently the Bay Area’s go-to bassist for pretty much every style of music, including all types of jazz, tango, and Hawaiian.
Natalie Cox, harp; Natalie Cox is Principal Harp with the Oakland East Bay Symphony and Festival Opera Orchestra. A native of San Francisco she divides her time between chamber music, orchestra, teaching and recording.
- CD Info: Open this CD and stir up a whole banquet of musical styles from one acoustic viola and a few good friends. Katrina Wreede, a former Turtle Island String Quartet violist and composer, creates unique and compelling jazz, blues, tango, classical, and sound collages with her trademark “California Eclectic” style in Add Viola and Stir, her debut solo project.
Wreede is no stranger to praise for her work. Jazz historian, Leonard Feather once said she had “extemporaneous mastery rare, perhaps unique, in the annals of the viola.” The San Francisco Examiner called her “stunningly talented and imaginative.” The San Jose Mercury News enjoyed her “contagious vitality…” and Billboard complimented her “relaxed and highly professional air…”
The album starts with a “martini and melancholy” cool jazz blues. It segues into a jazz waltz blend of Bill Evans and Dave Brubeck, including interludes reminiscent of an eastern European “Take Five” and a piano cadenza Chopin would be proud of, followed by a Latin jazz-flavored melody inspired by Impressionist composer, d’Indy.
Other highlights include an ebullient tango originally written for San Francisco Symphony’s “Adventures in Music” program, the elegant and introspective “Scenes” for harp and viola, a Baroque-flavored groove solo, “Romp”, and the powerfully intense cry to the heavens, “Invocation #3”, accompanied by the Living Wind Chimes. Add Viola and Stir is a tasteful mixture of Wreede’s humor, wit, drama, and passion.
For two centuries the viola has been the much-maligned junior member of the string family, the butt of hundreds of viola jokes. Now musicians and audiences alike have discovered this profound voice that speaks both the depths and heights of human experience, as recently experienced by over 400 people celebrating ViolaMania, including Wreede’s version of the Telemann Concerto for 132 violists, in Berkeley, CA. Add Viola and Stir will be a welcome addition to the instrument’s new place in music.