In Monday’s (5/21) Wall Street Journal, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim writes, “Eric Stephenson sits in a basement studio near Brooklyn’s Manhattan Bridge Overpass, demonstrating how to slaughter a chicken on the cello. ‘In the end, when the chickens are in their deadly moment, it sounds like this,’ Mr. Stephenson says as he places his bow behind the bridge, digs in, and produces a sound that might also be the screech of a delivery van overshooting a red light. ‘You can imagine the faces of the audience when I pretty much cut the chicken’s head off,’ he says with a proud grin. The memory has bassist Peter Seymour and flutist Greg Pattillo, the other members of Project Trio, their Brooklyn-based chamber-music ensemble, bent over with laughter. The three classically trained musicians have achieved wide appeal by bringing their subversive humor to such works as Tchaikovsky’s ‘Nutcracker’ and Rossini’s ‘William Tell Overture.’ … The group makes a mission of performing for school-children, building its live programs to meet the National Standards of Music Education. … Throughout, there is the first-rate playing that grounds them in classical music. … ‘We can play really loud and wild, but what makes it wild is that we also know how to play really quietly and beautifully,’ ” Seymour says.
Posted May 22, 2012
