I missed my friend Brian Robinson’s set with his classically-tuned rock band Tet Offensive last night (July 28, 2011) at Café Nine. If you missed it too, you can get a taste of Brian’s vocal antics on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/user/thetetoffensive
I missed The Shellye Valauskas Experience too, though Shellye did show me a photo of her newborn niece.
At least I did arrive at the club in time to see the string quartet that backs Brian get back up onstage to accompany the evening’s headliner, the great Mike Viola. I’ve been a Viola fan since his early days as a performer, which were early indeed—with the Boston pop act Viola Project in the early 1980s, when he was barely into his teens. He’s now a comparatively mature 45-year-old singer/songwriter/producer/movie-soundtracker. He referenced both his mother and his daughter in his between-song patter. On the other hand, he made a lot of cocaine jokes.
The concept of having classical musicians back him up at Café Nine was proposed the last time Viola played the club, and Robinson was in his audience. Charts were arranged for several songs (some of them new). The results were calming, glowing, resonating and inspiring.
Viola would like to record the tunes he did with Tet Offensive on a future trip to New Haven, perhaps at Firehouse 12 studios. Robinson is looking to make Tet Offensive (for which he gathers students he knows from his day gig as Managing Director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra) a more solid and sustainable project.
The rest of us just want to see it happen again, however.