Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Fishtank Ensemble and the musical saw
Past Event
Fishtank Ensemble
- Friday, February 7, 2014, 8 p.m.
- Dizzy's, 4275 Mission Bay Drive (in the showroom at San Diego Jet Ski Rentals), San Diego
- $20
Something you don’t hear every day: musical saw. And a virtuoso musical saw at that, which is hard to define since there are so few people practicing that antediluvian backwoods art. Opera singer Ursula Knudsen may have gotten buzzed off the first round of season three of America’s Got Talent, but what she can do with a bow and a piece of tuned metal is another thing. With a hot jazz group from Los Angeles called the Fishtank Ensemble, Knudsen coaxes her blade into releasing intricate jazz patterns I didn’t think were possible from such a stubborn instrument, and her call-and-response with flamenco guitarist Douglas Smolens at times borders on the witty. At the finish of a Knudsen solo, a listener feels as if a conversation has just taken place — albeit one with a toothless saw.
The road to Fishtank Ensemble, a world-music band, was not at all that straight and narrow. Prior to the big TV snub, Knudsen immersed herself in opera by singing it on the streets in Italy. Smolens holed up in gypsy camps in Spain where he took a hands-on approach to Flamenco and the ancient art of gypsy jazz. Fabrice Martinez, the fiddler, got a big dose of gypsy life by touring Europe in a mule caravan. Add trombone, slap-bass, accordion, and banjolele (a banjo-ukulele combination) and the result is a group of performers that is feverish from a concert standpoint and a band that is likewise well-received in fashionable and trendy clubs or at road festivals — take your pick. Think: Devotchka minus the oom-pah, or Arcade Fire when they were fresh; the eccentric Fishtank Ensemble seems as if poised to be the next new thing. Not likely, even though the band’s albums are all keepers, going back to their debut, a live recording made of their inaugural performance in Oakland in 2004.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Fishtank Ensemble and the musical saw
Fishtank Ensemble and the musical saw
Past Event
Fishtank Ensemble
- Friday, February 7, 2014, 8 p.m.
- Dizzy's, 4275 Mission Bay Drive (in the showroom at San Diego Jet Ski Rentals), San Diego
- $20
Something you don’t hear every day: musical saw. And a virtuoso musical saw at that, which is hard to define since there are so few people practicing that antediluvian backwoods art. Opera singer Ursula Knudsen may have gotten buzzed off the first round of season three of America’s Got Talent, but what she can do with a bow and a piece of tuned metal is another thing. With a hot jazz group from Los Angeles called the Fishtank Ensemble, Knudsen coaxes her blade into releasing intricate jazz patterns I didn’t think were possible from such a stubborn instrument, and her call-and-response with flamenco guitarist Douglas Smolens at times borders on the witty. At the finish of a Knudsen solo, a listener feels as if a conversation has just taken place — albeit one with a toothless saw.
The road to Fishtank Ensemble, a world-music band, was not at all that straight and narrow. Prior to the big TV snub, Knudsen immersed herself in opera by singing it on the streets in Italy. Smolens holed up in gypsy camps in Spain where he took a hands-on approach to Flamenco and the ancient art of gypsy jazz. Fabrice Martinez, the fiddler, got a big dose of gypsy life by touring Europe in a mule caravan. Add trombone, slap-bass, accordion, and banjolele (a banjo-ukulele combination) and the result is a group of performers that is feverish from a concert standpoint and a band that is likewise well-received in fashionable and trendy clubs or at road festivals — take your pick. Think: Devotchka minus the oom-pah, or Arcade Fire when they were fresh; the eccentric Fishtank Ensemble seems as if poised to be the next new thing. Not likely, even though the band’s albums are all keepers, going back to their debut, a live recording made of their inaugural performance in Oakland in 2004.
Comments