An impresario delivers the unexpected and the extraordinary. In view of his record with Muzik3, La Jolla bred cellist/entrepreneur Felix Fan is no exception.
The 10th anniversary season of Fan’s eclectic music festival, Muzik3, takes place this weekend (7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 14 and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 15) at The Other House, 7813 Esterel Drive, La Jolla. True to form, Fan presents a wacky, New York-based group that calls itself Polygraph Lounge.
Principals Mark Stewart, a conservatory-trained cellist and an original member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and Rob Schwimmer, a composer and arranger who has played in jazz and rock groups and recorded music for films and TV, may make fun of classical music, but they’ve got the experience, classical training, chops and funnybones to bring it off. This is supported by rave write-ups in The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine.
Further evidence of Polygraph Lounge’s extraordinary musical talent is heard on their self-titled CD and on Schwimmer’s disk titled “Beyond the Sky,” in which he proves himself a brainy and dreamy jazz composer/player. He also shows off his playing of the theremin, an electronic instrument invented in the early 20th century that sounds like the human voice and is played by the movement of the hand(s) around its antennae.
For their La Jolla gig, opera soprano Melissa Fathman and percussionist Joe Mardin support Polygraph Lounge. Fathman’s duet with theremin (the soprano/mezzo duet from Leo Delibes’ “Lakme”) is breathtakingly beautiful, and the extended work on Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” is outrageously funny. The Saturday and Sunday programs are not identical.
Fan and his wife Amany split their time between La Jolla, New York City and Santa Fe. They are currently in La Jolla because of his guest soloist performances of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra. One performance remains, at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 13 at St. Paul’s Cathedral (http://tickets.sdco.org). Fan, who has appeared with Bang on a Can All-Stars, knows Stewart from that group. Ever since hearing Polygraph Lounge, he wanted to bring them to La Jolla for Muzik3.
“I thought we needed to do something funny for a change,” Fan said. “These guys are hilarious.”
Tickets are $20 general and $10 for students. To purchase them, visit www.muzik3.com or call (858) 405-0413.
