Guitarist Bill Frisell (center) is joined by bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston for two shows at The Southern Café and Music Hall on Saturday. Supplied photo.
By Dave Cantor
Bill Frisell is a cypher for American music, ping-ponging among genres for the past five decades.
Like most jazz musicians, the guitarist keeps his ears wide open. But encountering vibraphonist Gary Burton playing what at one point was called “jazz rock” sent Frisell’s understanding of the genre down a new path.
“The whole psychedelic thing was happening, but then the music was on such a high level,” Frisell says of hearing Burton’s late-’60s and early-’70s groups during his youth. “I mean the guitarists that Gary had in his band were—I guess people don’t even know half of these guys. Even before Larry Coryell, he played with Hank Garland. … Then there’s Jerry Hahn, Sam Brown, John Scofield, Pat Metheny, Mick Goodrick. It’s incredible the guitar players that went through that band.”
As a kid, Frisell frequented a music shop and cultural center run by Harry Tuft—a figure in Denver maybe akin to Moses Asch. He’d hang around, check out instruments and records that were for sale, and take in heady conversations about performers he wasn’t necessarily familiar with.
By his teenage years, Frisell was deep into the clarinet and eventually headed off to college to further study the instrument. His folks also moved from Denver to New Jersey during the ’70s, and then later to North Carolina, where Frisell would “go off exploring” during visits.
In the western portion of North Carolina and in southwest Virginia, Frisell again found music that rearranged his brain—folk strains developed in tight-knit communities, relatively untouched by the genre’s electric and pop-oriented derivations.
“It was really kind of mind-blowing for me,” the guitarist says. “I hadn’t heard that for real, you know, stuff that people had just grown up [with] there and played. That had a huge impact on me.”
Frisell’s own work has stretched to insinuate the spectrum of music he’s encountered over the decades, veering from jazz standards to familiar folk tunes. In some ways, it was drummer Paul Motian—best known for working in Bill Evans’ trio—who gave the guitarist a significant platform to explore in the ’80s.
“He really recognized me for what my voice was. He wanted a guitar player, but it wasn’t so much about the guitarist. He wanted me as a person,” Frisell says about the late drummer. “I felt so wide open to do whatever I felt. It wasn’t like I was filling a role of what he thought a guitarist should be. It was like, ‘Here, just take it as far as you can go.’”
Frisell’s developed long-standing relationships with a raft of other players—including drummer Rudy Royston; they first played together back in 1993, the guitarist says. During the ensuing decades, Royston’s contributed to a handful of the bandleader’s albums, as well as provided the backbeat for Frisell’s regular trio, which is making a stop at The Southern for a pair of Saturday shows.
In addition to Royston, the guitarist’s group will include Thomas Morgan at its Charlottesville date—a bassist who’s played with Frisell for more than a decade, contributing to a few duo albums on ECM alongside the bandleader. Both rhythm players were also a part of the guitarist’s Grammy-nominated Orchestras, a 2024 album that featured a wealth of European classical talent.
It should maybe go without saying: There’s not a set list for the trio’s local performance.
“The number of songs that we know and the possibilities are so huge that we never really—especially with this trio—we don’t really plan at all,” Frisell says. “Anything I can throw at those guys, they’re gonna know what it is.”
While familiarity with repertoire can help performers shuttle ideas from their minds down to their fingers, attaining that kind of fluidity is a career-long journey.
Frisell referred to the distance between intent and desired outcome as a “huge chasm.”
“I can never get what it is I’m actually trying to do to come out,” he says. “It’s always … reaching for something that you can’t quite get. So, you just get as close as you can, and that’s what keeps you going.”
Following the 2023 release of her 16th studio album Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart and candid memoir Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, Lucinda Williams and her band bring a unique stage show functioning as a career retrospective. Though Williams can no longer play the guitar in the wake of a stroke she suffered in 2020, the multi-Grammy-winning musician is still a consummate songwriter. Featuring short films, photos, visual supplements, and songs with her full band, this evening will see Williams recount some of the singular moments in her life and career.
Wednesday 11/20. $49.75–84.75, 8pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. theparamount.net
Inspired by East-meets-West solo guitar ruminations and a desire to merge fingerstyle acoustic guitar with improvisational elements, Six Organs of Admittance is the ongoing project by Northern California guitarist Ben Chasny. His “new folk” combines drone, percussion, and resonant vocalizations in experimental arrangements anchored by expert fingerpicking. The creator of the Hexadic System—a chance operation tool placing parameters on musical arrangement—Chasny has produced conceptually driven compositions since the late ’90s, and continuously pushes sonic boundaries.
Saturday 11/16. $20, 8pm. The Southern Café and Music Hall, 103 First St. S. thesoutherncville.com
Now in its 50th season, the Charlottesville Symphony continues to explore the boundaries of what orchestral music can be. Photo by Alisa Foytik.
When the schedule for this year’s 50th-anniversary season of the Charlottesville Symphony hits the desk of Elizabeth Roberts, the orchestra’s principal bassoonist eyes the first piece in the first show. It’s Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, and she’s played it many, many times.
For professional players like Roberts, seeing Beethoven 5 on the setlist is like hearing an audience member request “Free Bird” at a Lynyrd Skynyrd show. The band has played it so often, it’s tough to muster up much enthusiasm.
But this is a 50th-anniversary program. Roberts and the other professionals in the Charlottesville Symphony’s principal seats know what Music Director Ben Rous is thinking. The celebratory season is a time not only to show off the nontraditional work they’ve been doing, but also an opportunity to call back to the masters who’ve come before them.
Plus, Charlottesville’s orchestra has a cheat code when it comes to playing the standards with passion: students.
“What we have are a lot of super-smart kids who are passionate and accomplished and really dedicated to improving,” Roberts says. “They are going to play with a level of energy when you put Beethoven 5 in front of them that the audience is going to sense. They’ve been waiting their whole life to play it.”
The Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia is made up of not only professionals and students, but also community members. It’s a unique construction that’s shared only by two or three other orchestras in the United States. And the local ensemble has been doing it that way for a long time—half a century to be exact.
Tracing back
Even before the Charlottesville Symphony’s official founding in 1974, seeds had been planted in the form of a faculty group.
“We don’t know a lot about it, like the early conductors’ names,” says Janet Kaltenbach, executive director of the Charlottesville Symphony Society, a community nonprofit supporting the organization. “But the narrative of the earliest symphonic music at the university is even older than the symphony itself.”
Four music directors have led the Charlottesville Symphony over its 50 official years: Douglas Hargrave from 1974 to 1991, Carl Roskott from 1991 to 2006, Kate Tamarkin from 2006 to 2017, and Rous, who took the job in 2017.
When Ben Rous took over as Music Director, he brought his own sensibilities to the role, which former director Kate Tamarkin says is welcome and expected. “[Each new conductor adds] something else very important, which is their temperament,” Tamarkin says. Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.
Each director has also served as the orchestra’s primary conductor, a job that requires more than simply dancing a baton in front of the musicians. The directors oversee the roster, select the music for each season, and bring their own style and energy to the way classical music is translated for the audience.
“Orchestral music is a re-creative art,” Tamarkin says. “The composer needs a partner, an interpreter. Every conductor adds their understanding of the composer and the time when it was written. And they add something else very important, which is their temperament.”
When Hargrave took the lead in 1974, he directed a group of 50 musicians. The orchestra began its subscription series in 1975. Roskott brought with him an impressive resume and bolstered the orchestra’s reputation. At the time, the symphony included six professional musicians as principals. When Tamarkin took over in 2006, 16 principals were on the roster.
Tamarkin again raised the bar in terms of experience as a director and conductor, leading the organization for a decade. In May 2017, Rous uprooted from Norfolk as resident conductor at the Virginia Symphony to move to Charlottesville.
Today, the Charlottesville Symphony is one of the primary public-facing arts organizations at the University of Virginia, according to Jody Kielbasa, UVA vice provost for the arts. “Along with the two museums, the Virginia Film Festival and the theater festival, these organizations have a long history with the university, but more broadly with the Charlottesville community,” he says. “They serve as a bridge to the community.”
A modernist turn
When Rous took the conductor’s baton from Tamarkin, he says he came into a healthy organization. His experience with other national orchestras had taught him that professional groups all share at least one flaw. Professionals, he says, treat playing orchestral music as a job by definition.
Rous immediately felt that the Charlottesville Symphony, with its focus on teaching students to play as well as professionals, had a different air, a more contented air than he’d ever experienced. “We had a great performance culture and a really committed, loyal audience,” he says.
Still, Rous wanted to take the symphony in a new direction. According to Tamarkin, that was expected. As part of the search team seeking her replacement, she wanted someone who would be as different from her as possible.
Rous’ intensity and willingness to experiment with new forms, to take orchestral music to the edge of what people think it can be, fit the playbill. “I decided I could trust this community to be curious along with me, and I made a little bit of a leap of faith that I could be my honest, curious self when choosing what music to program,” he says.
Janet Kaltenbach is the executive director of Charlottesville Symphony Society, a nonprofit that supports the Charlottesville Symphony. Photo by Alisa Foytik.
The result is an orchestra that, in addition to the standards, features music by unfamiliar composers, arrangements listeners have never heard before, and collaborations with novel artists. Last spring, Rous invited drummer, percussionist, and composer JoVia Armstrong to join the Charlottesville Symphony on her cajon drumset. Armstrong, whose own music draws on techno, future soul, hip-hop, and chamber jazz, was a hit. After the performance, concertgoers and players alike told Rous the symphony should feature Armstrong in every show.
Under Rous, the Charlottesville Symphony has also featured an afro-futurist improv jazz flutist, a standard jazz quintet, and music produced from the sound of melting glaciers.
This season, the lineup will include rapper A.D. Carson during the March 22-23 shows, which feature & metaphors commissioned from him for the anniversary season.
“The overarching goal I have is to expand on what people can get out of an orchestral concert—not just what sounds we are making, but what ideas we can represent, what societal issues we can confront,” Rous says.
Looking to the future
Taylor Ledbetter, like so many middle-class American kids, grew up taking piano lessons. In sixth grade, when many students are first introduced to band instruments—some influenced by programs like the Charlottesville Symphony’s own youth outreach efforts—Ledbetter began playing the flute. She took to it and joined her high-school symphony orchestra in Fort Worth, Texas.
When Ledbetter looked at colleges, she knew she wanted to continue playing music while not compromising her education. The University of Virginia was the perfect fit, in no small part because of the Charlottesville Symphony.
Ledbetter has since taken up the piccolo, with help from UVA professor and Charlottesville Symphony principal flute player Kelly Sulick, and joined the orchestra on the smaller instrument for the spring show last season. This year, she’ll play in the February show featuring Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.
Ledbetter’s story isn’t unique among the hard-charging, intellectually minded students who make up the youngest portion of the Charlottesville Symphony. But symphonic music isn’t for everyone, especially those who’ve never seen it live before. According to Tamarkin, most folks who see it even once come to love it.
UVA student Taylor Ledbetter will play piccolo with the orchestra in February’s performance of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. Supplied photo.
If the Charlottesville Symphony wants to keep playing for another 50 years, it has to continue to put people in the seats. One way it does that is through education, from the organization’s youth programs up through the students who learn to play pieces like Beethoven’s 5th alongside professional musicians and community members.
According to Concertmaster Dan Sender, the educational structure of Charlottesville Symphony rehearsals is unlike any other experience for young players. While Sender admits “first rehearsals are the worst” as the students sit down in front of a new piece of challenging music, the opportunity to play alongside professionals and accomplished community members in their section brings the students along quickly.
“We develop a language to coach and critique our section play,” Sender says. “Could you imagine how good a student’s essay would be if the teacher was sitting next to them and helping them with each sentence? The final product would be outstanding.”
The Charlottesville Symphony’s efforts are paying off. After five decades of continuous operation and overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic, the local audience remains strong.
“It has become a real challenge for many orchestras,” says community member and clarinetist Rick Kessel, who’s played in multiple national orchestras over the past 20 years. “The fact that this community comes out to support us is just amazing, and we see a lot of young faces in the audience. That is why Charlottesville is so unique. They pack the house.”
Symphonic riches
The Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia is the longest-running classical music organization in the city (by a margin of five years), but it’s not the only place to get your orchestra on.
Waynesboro Symphony Orchestra Waynesboro Symphony Orchestra, the 2021 American Prize winner for Best Community Orchestra Performance and 2024 recipient of the Shenandoah Valley’s Circle of Excellence in the Arts Award, plays an extensive season of classical music at the First Presbyterian churches in Waynesboro and Staunton.
Albemarle Symphony Orchestra Formerly the Crozet Community Orchestra, the Albemarle Symphony Orchestra typically has around 70 players on the roster. Launched in October 2013 by co-founders Denise Murray and Philip Clark, the orchestra plays two to four shows per season at churches and schools in Crozet and Charlottesville.
Youth Orchestras of Central Virginia In addition to the area’s award-winning high school orchestras, the Youth Orchestras of Central Virginia, founded 45 years ago, play a full season of classical concerts. The orchestras, headquartered in Charlottesville, feature players from elementary, middle, and high schools around central Virginia. The two full symphony orchestras, string orchestra, and chamber music club draw public, private, and homeschool students from the surrounding counties to participate in their annual programs.
Youth Orchestra of Central Virginia. Photo by Caleb Davis and Abe Granger.
Other organizations Still haven’t reached your cap on classical? The Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival held its 25th annual show in September and shows no signs of stopping heading into next year. Charlottesville Classical, a service of WTJU and available for streaming at charlottesvilleclassical.org, plays the full classical repertoire, from medieval chants to modern compositions, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Tuesday Evening Concert Series, founded in 1948, features shows on semi-monthly Tuesdays in Old Cabell Hall. And go off the orchestral path with Three Notch’d Road—The Virginia Baroque Ensemble’s performances of historical repertoires offered in a subscription series, or the Cville Band, one of the oldest amateur community bands in the nation, which performs locally several times a year.
If you’ve listened to Illiterate Light, you know it can be hard to pin down the band’s sound. The task hasn’t gotten any easier with new album Arches, the third LP from singer-guitarist Jeff Gorman and drummer Jake Cochran. Moving between easy indie rock, kaleidoscopic neo-psychedelia, and electro-embellished Americana, the duo weaves together a sonic world full of enigmatic energy. Celebrate the official release of the new album as Illiterate Light returns to the region that gave birth to its singular Shenandoah Valley sound.
Friday 11/8. $25–50, 8pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. jeffersontheater.com
Universally hailed for its instrumental prowess, emotive performances, and wide- ranging repertoire, the Danish String Quartet kicks off a series of seven eastern U.S. dates at UVA’s Old Cabell Hall. The Grammy-nominated foursome, who have been tearing it up for more than 20 years, will perform a program rich in traditional classical bangers, eschewing their inclination to include Scandinavian composers or folk numbers from their home region.
The set begins with high drama, Quartet in G minor Op. 20/3 (1773) from Haydn, prime mover of the quartet form. Noted for its dramatic use of pauses and other creative choices, the innovative and enigmatic piece was revered by Haydn’s pupil Beethoven, and later by Brahms, who kept an autographed manuscript of it.
Stravinksy’s Three Pieces for String Quartet (1922) follows, flaunting its unsettling early 20th-century inventiveness by rushing out in blunt stabs and dark, languid turns—in a very succinct seven minutes. Next, O’Carolan’s Three Melodies from the blind Irish harpist whose “Mabel Kelly” kicks off DSQ’s latest record, Keel Road. O’Carolan seems the outlier among the genre’s biggest marquee names. The evening is rounded out with teenage Mozart’s cheerful Divertimento in F Major, K. 138 (1772) and Schubert’s final quartet from 1826, No. 15 in G Major, D. 887.
There’s no disputing the serious talent and dedication of the DSQ, Danish boyhood friends Frederik Øland (violin), Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen (violin), and Asbjørn Nørgaard (viola), who were joined by Norwegian Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin (cello) in 2009. Yet it’s refreshing to discover that they handle the whole endeavor without the life-sucking stoicism of many of their robotic contemporaries. On their website they joke about being compared to Vikings (“We are only pillaging the English coastline occasionally”), and mention that while playing string quartets is a difficult job, the pleasure they get from playing together keeps them performing—and exudes a palpable joy shared by their audiences: “Music is a way to hang out with friends, and we hope we can continue to hang out for many, many years.”
Shaboozey may be third on the bill for award-winning country rap headliner Jelly Roll, but he’s already proven to have much of what mainstream music fans want: a No. 1 track (“A Bar Song [Tipsy]”), big name collabs (Beyoncé), and the strength of a heady country-hip-hop mix capable of pulling fans from multiple musical neighborhoods to meet in the middle.
NoVa-born to Nigerian parents, and as a teen schooled in his family’s homeland, Shaboozey, aka Collins Obinna Chibueze, steps over genre barriers without hesitation or hangups. You want f-bomb-infused tirades over Appalachian-flavored fiddle and acoustic guitars supported by a stompy trap beat? Dude’s got it. It all comes through as radio ready, pristine enough for Hollywood music supervisors, and sung with an emotional overshare that likely appeals to people under the drinking age and those beyond it who’ve got real problems that you couldn’t possibly understand.
Above all else, the authenticity that colors Shaboozey’s voice seems to be the real selling point. It’s likely the true reason for his success, which lifted off in 2018 when he blasted into the public ear with the heavily aggro crowd-frenzy-whipper “Start a Riot” (with Duckwrth). That track could be considered a type of red herring, as a good chunk of the singles that followed are a steady stream of depressed, regret-laden glimpses into the fallout from partying too hard and the mistakes that come with it.
The lonesome whistle that leads in the loss of morality that is “Vegas,” the self-destructive boozing of “Drink Don’t Need No Mix,” and “Highway,” the latest single from Shaboozey’s questionably punctuated record Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going, offers a not-so-subtle suicide threat on the heels of a hard breakup. He shows the tortured soul of classic country greats with production that hooks itself squarely in this century. Can’t be sure if he’ll hit up JPJ backed by a full band or singing over playback, but the choice may reveal what he values most about his musical contributions.
Are you struggling with life, love, stress, and setbacks? Are you well aware that the modern man must hustle? Have you been trying to find a balance since the aughts? Have you been a staple of the Midwest hip-hop scene and a defining force in Minneapolis music since the 1990s? Then you must be Atmosphere! The duo of emcee Slug and producer Ant have been churning out underground hits for more than 20 years, reveling in the unpopular and angsty. Nowadays, the lyrics weave in a little more positivity, but the ruminations on drugs, depression, and being ugly persevere with trademark witticism, wordplay, and self-awareness. $35–40, 8pm.
Wednesday 10/23. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. jeffersontheater.com
Southern sounds abound in the setlists of Americana music purveyors Whiskey Myers. Bridging country crooning and rock ‘n’ roll with a foundation of folk, this six-piece outfit from east Texas has been bringing its smooth, full-bodied blend of sonic spirit to stages since 2007. The band’s latest release, Tornillo, is self-produced on the group’s own Wiggy Thump Records—a testament to Whiskey Myers rugged individualism. This same temperament found the band on the “Yellowstone” soundtrack (and in a season-one cameo), serving straight up to a whole new crowd of the hit television series’ eager enjoyers.
Friday 10/25. Tickets start at $45, 7pm. Ting Pavilion, 700 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. tingpavilion.com
Electronic music and intermedia art collide at the annual TechnoSonics Festival. With the theme of immersion, the 2024 iteration explores aspects of the world that envelop minds, bodies, and spirits. Sounds that surround, and environments that encapsulate, are all fair game at events on UVA Grounds and at Visible Records. The featured work in electronic music, intermedia, and sound art comes out of UVA’s composition and computer technologies program. Special guest artist Rohan Chander—aka BAKUDI SCREAM—offers a presentation covering his creative process on Friday afternoon, followed by performances on Friday and Saturday nights.
Thursday 10/17–Saturday 10/19. Free, times and locations vary. music.virginia.edu/technosonics-2024
