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August 13 at 7 PM
Ticket Information
Orpheum Bell
About Orpheum
Bell
Biography
Equipped
with an orchestral ensemble of banjo, accordion, trumpet,
shepherd's harp, musical saw, cittern, guitar and dobro,
double bass, various ukuleles and horned violins, Orpheum
Bell performs an original "Country & Eastern" songbook
of lullabies, stomps, dirt-road ballads, and gypsy suites
and waltzes.
The band came together in 2005
when former Chicago bandmates (Serge van der Voo, Aaron
Klein) reconnected in an old Michigan house to trade tapes
and listen. Combing through the ruins of originals ideas
and melodic fragments, they began to develop a lyrical,
percussive sound driven by Klein's "downtrodden rural
poetry" and van der Voo's fluid, Hot Club-infused bass
lines.
Over the course of the next two years,
several multi-instrumentalists coalesced around the core,
creating a stark, darkly ornamented sound heard on their
2007 debut release, "Pretty As You".
Relying
on old, acoustic instruments, the band's sound moves from
chiseled, plaintive song stories to articulate,
richly-played instrumentals. The members come at the music
from different angles - a classically trained
harpsichordist, a rural folk polymath, a church choir girl,
one from Holland, another from
Ukraine.
Merrill Hodnefield's drifting,
tin-cup vocals provide both contrast and complement to
Klein's thistled singing and her musical saw and autoharp
leaven the mix further.
Annie Crawford, a
classically-trained violinist with E. European influence
has a sound that is alternately plaintive, pastoral, and
brooding. Using traditional and aluminum-horned violins
(Stroviols), she threads through fine and coarse
textures.
Laurel Premo - equally accomplished
on violin, banjo, dobro, mandolin and cittern - plays with
a raw, driving folk intensity on everything from the band's
rolling clawhammer numbers to tightly woven 3-part vocal
harmonies.
Multi-instrumentalist Michael
Billmire contributes a textural range of sound; delicate
harp runs, open-air accordion swells, and gliding
silver-trumpet melodies.
Orpheum Bell will be
featured in several regional concert series and festival
events in '09 and are expanding their touring throughout
the Midwest. "Pearls", the band's follow-up recording
to "Pretty As You", is being produced by Jim Roll and is
due out for release in the later part of fall 2009.
Instrumentation
Merrill
Hodnefield - vocals,
violin, autoharp, saw
Annie
Crawford - vocals, violin
Laurel
Premo - vocals, banjo,
dobro, cittern, violin
Serge
van der Voo - double bass,
percussion
Aaron
Klein - vocals, banjo,
ukuleles, tenor & regulation guitars
Michael
Billmire - accordion,
trumpet, shepherd's harp, mandolin
Discography
'Pretty as You'
(debut release April '07) mixed by Jim Roll of Backseat
Productions in Ann Arbor, MI.
The (non-live) MP3's listed on this site were recorded on
'Pretty as You'.
Links
http://www.myspace.com/orpheumbell
"I do
wonder what to call your music - I grew up in Snyder,
Oklahoma, where my father played 'cowboy' music on the
radio loudspeaker each Saturday from dawn to midnight. I
heard hints of that - I went to school in Mississippi, near
New Orleans and loved visits to Beale Street. I grew up
dancing away every night every chance I got to big band
music. And I heard a little of each from you. As you can
see - the pleasure lingers on."
- Phyllis B. Wright (1916-2007)