solo
“Seattle may not have the largest cello community, but its brightest star is unquestionably Goldston. This solo performance with projected visuals should showcase every facet of the Black Cat Orchestra co-founder: her love of improvisation, her ingenious adaptation of folk and classical tropes, and her incomparable skill at performing in accompaniment to film.”
silent film scores
“A few nights later, in the repurposed industrial shed called the Works, Seattle musician Lori Goldston took an entirely different tack, playing cello to Carl Theodor Dryer’s silent “La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc” (1928). The resultant dialogue — a counterpoint of acquiescence and resistance — was deeply ambivalent, complex where Miller’s treatment had been reductive. Perhaps her affection for the film is what allowed her to become its full collaborator. Goldston has responded live to Dreyer nearly as often as miller has dealt with Griffith, yet she managed to be truly “live” — present where Miller was, at best, indifferent.
“Goldston’s music constituted a kind of physical enactment of listening. She began in silence — absorbing the moment and the film — and then her sound emerged, shifting and responding to what she took in. This dynamic, listening (as well as its companion problem of not being heard), was a constant problem at the Works. In the bigger halls, it rarely appeared to matter. Performances on the main stages, whether pleasing or disappointing, came and went as thought the moment was neither here nor there, simply a wrinkle in the endlessly unfolding fabric of the artist’s motion through the world.”
about the 2005 TBA Festival in Portland, Ore. (contrasting Lori’s performance with a show by Paul Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky,
which included a live(ish?) electronic soundtrack
with D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation”)
“Lori Goldston uses her cello the way a king uses his army: to build empires, and then rule over them. This Saturday in Olympia, she joins forces with Kill Rock Stars artists C Average to present a new live score to F. W. Murnau’s legendary “Nosferatu”. If you have never taken in the decrepit splendor of Olympia’s Capitol Theater, be assured that ghosts are only one of its many charms. This should be a very enjoyable moviegoing experience.”
Nirvana's “Unplugged in New York”
“Alot has been made about the drumming of Dave Grohl on here, how soft and perfect it is, but the real star is Lori Goldston, who embellishes several of the numbers with her swelling cello. The cello adds alot to the stripped down sound Nirvana absolutly nails. Of course, the rendition of “Come As You Are” is terribly chilling, but the Leadbelly cover, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” is as great as a swan song anybody could ever hope for.
as one of the “Top 10 Live Albums Ever”, on last.fm
“Bathed in golden light, Kurt Cobain quietly sits, surrounded by billows of lilies and flickering candles. “What are they tuning — a harp?” he cracks in mock irritation to no one in particular when there’s a prolonged wait between songs. If it sounds like heaven with an edge, it was, or the closest one could get to it on an MTV soundstage, where Nirvana played an all-acoustic set last fall. What would become one of the band’s last U.S. performances can now be heard on a new album, MTV Unplugged in New York. And if that title seems a bit, well, obvious, it’ll have to do.
“There are spare and gorgeous spots everywhere: when Grohl’s voice wraps chillingly around Cobain’s on the disturbingly lovely “Polly”; the wounded “Something in the Way”; Lori Goldston’s cello welling up in mournful counterpoint, like Cobain’s alter ego, on the last word of the lyric “I think I’m dumb/Maybe just happy.” The band is never better than it is on “All Apologies”: subtle, passionate, intuiting exactly what is needed from each of them to make their union whole, nurturing the intensity at their center.”
The Black Cat Orchestra
“The Black Cat Orchestra is one of the most creative, cerebral, and critically celebrated jazz ensembles currently working in the Northwest. Under the leadership of Lori Goldston (cellist, formerly of Nirvana) and Kyle Hanson (on accordion), this seven-member set has been playing at concerts, clubs, and parties since 1991. Their original score to the silent film “Dante's Inferno” is, perhaps, the centerpiece of their renown — having been performed at least five times at major venues since 1993. Their second CD, “Mysteries Explained”, contains pieces from their new original scores to Germaine Dulac's surrealist piece “The Seashell and the Clergyman” (1928) and Hans Richter's obscure “Ghosts Before Breakfast” (1927). Their inventive contributions to contemporary jazz have had national exposure, most prominently on NPR’s “This American Life” and on David Byrne’s experimental and eccentric 1997 album “Feelings”. Scatting into second was Living Daylights, closely followed by Garfield High School’s prodigious jazz band.”
“When I hear the Black Cat Orchestra play — the deep moan of the cello, the resonant huff of the horn, the slightly sinister lilt of the accordion — I find myself longing for Old World things I know only secondhand. For a turn-of-the-century cafe in Vienna, with heavy burgundy drapes and a cup of strong coffee, served with a Sacher torte and a tiny glass of water on the side. For a night walk along the banks of the Bosporus, its backdrop Istanbul’s exotic mix of European and what was once called the Orient. For a seedy bar in Weimar Berlin.
“It reminds me of the way that Woody Allen uses Gershwin to evoke a New York that doesn’t exist (or at least never existed for me in the 24 years I lived there). It’s a kind of cinematic, or perhaps theatrical, evocation, unspecific but potent, not quite real but vivid nonetheless. It’s not surprising, then, that Black Cat Orchestra grew out of theatrical roots. The duo that forms the group’s spine, Kyle Hanson and Lori Goldston, played together in an orchestra for the theater group Run/Remain, along with Don Crevie, who is still with them, and Joseph Zajonc, who no longer plays with the group but is featured on a number of tracks on its new CD, “Mysteries Explained”.
“In its current core incarnation, the Black Cat Orchestra is Goldston on cello, Hanson on accordion, Crevie on horn (what you and I would call French horn, but what horn players call, simply, horn), Scott Granlund on saxophones, Jeff Teitelbaum on standup bass, and Emily Marsh on drums. They are sometimes graced with the presence of Jessika Kenney, a singer trained in gamelan music. The musicians’ extracurricular activities tell you a great deal about their depth of skill and the range of their interests. Marsh is formerly of Faster Tiger, and Teitelbaum was with Ensemble Sub Masa; Granlund currently plays with a polka band, and Goldston toured with Nirvana behind “In Utero” (1993-1994) and appears on MTV’s “Unplugged” with the band.
“Their first official gig as the Black Cat Orchestra was for a wedding in 1989, and since then they have certainly expanded the scope of their work. Although they still play lots of weddings, they have also played live scores for silent movies (for Shining Moment Productions, On the Boards, and at Bumbershoot), are featured on David Byrne’s album “Feelings”, and are much in demand for unusual events around Seattle. I’ve heard them at art openings and office parties, at readings and restaurants (this past winter Hanson and Goldston did a stint of weekly music for diners at the Pink Door), any time the mood needs to be just this side of real, anywhere that a mix of klezmer band and Fellini soundtrack is appropriate.
“Mysteries Explained” is a mix of found traditional works and original pieces, many of which the group has used for silent-movie scores. The films that the Black Cat Orchestra is often paired with are surrealist classics, such as Antonin Artaud’s “The Seashell and the Clergyman”, in which the challenge is to suggest a mood without imposing a narrative where no narrative belongs. The original works are frankly modern (some percussive, some lyrical, some Miles Davis-jazzy) but still evocative and theatrical; one very short piece by Zajonc, called “With Light at Window,” is like an entr’acte: there is a feeling of scenery being changed, of sorrow to come. Predominantly, however, there is a feeling of otherness, especially with the traditional songs. They seem to come from cultures — Balkan, Turkish, Bulgarian — that we know just little enough about to be transported without any of reality’s pesky insistence.
“There’s a lively song called “Bucimis” that must have had an equally lively folk dance to go with it. There’s “Introit,” a slow, heartbreaking liturgical piece originally written for voices alone. There are boisterous pieces that suggest large families celebrating together, and abstract works that speak to solitude, perhaps self-inflicted. The remarkable thing about “Mysteries Explained” is that despite this wildly swinging range of styles, the album has a gorgeous unity, a moody rightness that intensifies the more you listen to it. It’s the same kind of feeling I get from certain Tom Waits albums: density, emotion, a bit of humor.
“Hanson and Goldston do not claim to be ethnomusicologists; they are not of the school that demands that ethnic music be played authentically. Both admire the soundtracks of Ennio Morricone: the genuine, filtered — but not insincerely — through cinema, through kitsch. In fact, it’s the band’s very sincerity that gives its music both a slightly cheesy edge (which Hanson and Goldston love) as well as its loveliness. It’s the kind of music that makes people want to get up and dance the kinds of old dances no one knows the steps to. I’ve watched these dancers: They’re awkward, they’re ridiculous, and they’re so, so happy. (3 stars)
”I’ll admit straight away that I haven’t sat down and listened to this album yet in the best setting, mainly the car whose acoustics are doubtful at best. I also bought it without any previous experiece with the band or any real idea of what to expect. I say these things so when I tell you that it is the most fabulous mix of world music in an orchestra setting with an amazing vocalist, then you understand what the songs had to overcome in the first place. I am not an afficionado but this unique combination of bluesy old-world chamber music is twelve thousand brands of awesome. Sorry if I sound cheesey, but them’s the breaks.
“Founded in 1992, the Black Cat Orchestra has been acclaimed for its performances of live incidental music for silent films. Next weekend, On the Boards continues to present a triple bill from the ’20s, with original scores for two of them played by the eight-piece ensemble. Hans Richter’s short “Vormittagsspuk” (”Ghosts Before Breakfast”), his dadaist document from 1927, is full of flying derbies, self-ambulatory body parts, and twisted silliness that recalls Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations. A more serious affair is “The Seashell and the Clergyman”, a 1928 surrealist melodrama by Germaine Dulac and Antonin Artaud. Such plot as there is involves a love (or maybe just lust) triangle among a faintly psychotic priest, an oxlike military man, and a saucer-eyed blonde. Except for a few clearly descriptive moments (a waltz for a ball scene, a crash on the high hat as the titular seashell gets smashed), the BCO’s music for these two films stands independently; only rarely does the music directly respond to the films.
“Opening the show was a sweet Felix the Cat cartoon titled “Felix in Germ Mania,” which I at first misread as “Felix in Germania” — an understandable slip, considering the pronounced neoCentral European idiom that’s the BCO’s trademark. The foundation of its style, a combination of haunting minor-key tunes in catchy dance rhythms, calls to mind a feast of influences: klezmer and Gypsy, Budapest coffeehouses and Italian restaurants, Kurt Weill and Fiddler on the Roof. The BCO's instrumentation — horn (Don Crevie), cello (Lori Goldston), saxophone (Scott Granlund), accordion (Kyle Hanson), voice (Jessica Kenney), guitar (Russ Meltzer), bass (Matthew Sperry), and percussion (Joseph Zajonc) — is rich with low- and middle-register instruments, an aural analogy to the shadowy cinematography it accompanies. Every now and then, Kenney or Hanson got to float above the crowd in a high, ethereal melody, a lovely effect.
“About two-thirds of this music was newly composed by BCO members; the rest was arranged by them from traditional folk tunes or, interestingly, early music. Their “Seashell” score opens with three Renaissance vocal works, two by Orlando di Lasso and one anonymous. This liturgical music, the BCO’s curious colors, and the expressionistic film made a striking combination. There are other ensembles in the area that do music for European black-and-white silents: the Young Composers‘ Collective (whose recently recorded Metropolis score should be out on CD any day now), and composer Timothy Brock and the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. These groups, including the Black Cat Orchestra, make up a popular local genre, and as with any “school” so well established, there are numerous clichés to avoid and multiple envelopes to be pushed. Which is what made the BCO’s Renaissance repertory so welcome — it shows a willingness to move musically beyond the time and place of each film and to explore where other music/image juxtapositions might lead.
“The Black Cat Orchestra succeed in creating what can only be described as a dream cabaret, pulling elements of klezmer and gypsy music out the foggy seaside air, inciting audience members to dance slowly and jerkily like puppets.”
Mirah with The Black Cat Orchestra
“Ahoy kids! We’ve got a Mirah double whammy! It’s mighty clear she’s been keeping herself knee-deep in music with not only this her collaborative albums with her Black Mountain Project partner Ginger Brooks Takahashi and here with the Black Cat Orchestra, but also her “C’mon Miracle” solo album. This woman eats, sleeps, dreams and breathes music.
“To All We Stretch The Open Arm” is a particularly potent and moving collaboration in that as the folks at YoYo Records describe it “(the songs) were chosen, arranged, and performed... because these times call for such songs. These songs come from places and decades that have seen dissent, passion, and revolution... Simply, this is an album of what would have once been called protest songs.
“It wonderfully displays her broad scope of style and delivery. Dramatic and dynamic yet very sensitive and down to earth, Mirah flits and flirts with haunting folk, jaunty old style musicals, and slinky cabaret — singing in Spanish, Italian and English. For those familiar with her last few of releases, it’s no surprise that she does so with ample impressive flair. Seattle’s Black Cat Orchestra keep perfect step right along with her for the length of this album. This collection features their versions of songs originally by such artists as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Kurt Weill, as well as her own song “Monument” from her fine last album Advisory Committee. Nonetheless, Cup heartily sez “Recommended!”
“My first exposure to Eastern European folk came earlier this year with Black Ox Orkestar’s “Ver Tanzt?”. It was a waltzing album of thickly spun beauty, but the casual espousal of violence in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict made me slightly uncomfortable. Mirah with the Black Cat Orchestra’s “To All We Stretch the Open Arm” provides a much more palatable, but equally barbed take on the traditional Old World protest record, preaching a message of universal acceptance rather than “us against them” ideology.
“Mirah and her cohort draw from a global litany of influences (Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Kurt Weill, Bertold Brecht, Horacio Guarany, Stephen Foster, along with a handful of Spanish and Italian traditionals) and unites them perfectly with a simple sweep of the cello, a squeeze of the accordion and the ancient creak of an acoustic guitar. There’s so much beauty in the dour, spare arrangements of “El Cant dels Ocells” and “Hard Times,” it’s surprising the more theatrical songs “What Keeps Mankind Alive?” and “Bella Ciao” don’t feel the least bit out of place or distracting from the album’s overall world-weary view. It’s fitting that a band so adept at unifying disparate source material so easily could do the same with conflicting emotional themes. The disc certainly benefits because of it, proving that even though we may currently live surrounded by distressing events, there has to be an occasional ray of light to be moving toward. Otherwise, what’s the point?”