The pros play at
Lily Pads
EDITOR’S NOTE: Music at Lily Pads has been presenting fine musical performances in Peace Dale, Rhode Island since 2009 in the sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of South County. For ticket information and the full schedule, go to their website musicatlilypads.org.
Last Sunday, a group of handsome Polish
guys came to town with flutes, shawms, clarinets and violins, and charmed our
women.
They assembled on a stage at Lily Pads
and perfomed the kind of rock 'n roll your ancestors danced to about 300 years
ago.
The group, called the Janusz Prusinowski
Trio, is more than just three guys (there were five, actually), playing more
than just Polish traditional village music; but five masters banging out wild
mazurkas that cross time and ethicity to rock houses across the planet.
The Janus Prusinowski trio have played in Warsaw taverns, Chicago world-music festivals, the Kennedy Center, Yoshi's, the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz in Los Angeles; and, last week, at our little Lily Pads in Peace Dale.
"Mazurka, or, Mazurek," said
Mr Prusinowski from behind his violin on stage last Sunday, "starts from
the idea, from poetry. And from the idea… to movement… to dance. Sometimes we
call it Polish blues… or Polish jazz."
For those who haven't heard a mazurka
live, take any Eastern European traditional village song, maybe a klezmer tune,
and add hot peppers and a storm. Then you have a mazurka.
The audience got mazurkas. They got
shepherd's melodies; heart-squeezing ballads sung a capella; a waltz; a wedding
song called Hops; and the "walking dances" we call Polonaises.
And the band brought the crowd to their
feet, twice. First with a Polonaise during which a dashing bassist stepped down
from the stage, took the hand of a lady in the front row, and led the audience
in a walking dance around the room. And second, at the close of the concert,
with a standing ovation.
Almost as rocking as the music were the
instruments: a trumpet, a flute, violins, a bass and a shawm; a hand-held drum
that looked like a bodhran/tambourine, called a baraban; and a golden,
triple-keyboard accordion called cimbaly.
The Janus Prusinowski Trio is but one of
a lineup that blows away the music snob who thinks good music means driving to
Providence or New Haven. This season at Lily Pads might make you cancel your
subscriptions. October 12 brings the "blazingly tight" Brazilian
Bluegrassers Matuto, October 26 Joe Fletcher
and the Wrong Reasons with Christopher
Paul Stelling and Dan Blakeslee and on November
9 Quebecois roots "sonic marvels" Genticorum. Yes, here in
rural South County, RI.