Musician Gretchen Yanover performed on electric cello at a TEDx Seattle event in November 2019. She plays at Icicle Creek Center for the Arts this weekend.
Musician Gretchen Yanover performed on electric cello at a TEDx Seattle event in November 2019. She plays at Icicle Creek Center for the Arts this weekend.
LEAVENWORTH — An electric cellist and a videographer combine talents for an atmospheric show experience this weekend at the Snowy Owl Theatre at Icicle Creek Center for the Arts. The performances by Gretchen Yanover of Seattle, with visual projections by Ahren Buhmann, will take place at 7409 Icicle Road at 7:30 p.m., Saturday and 2 p.m., Sunday. Tickets are $15-$25 at icicle.org.
Yanover said by phone that the show “should feel like I’m getting immersed in different environments for each piece.” She and Buhmann prepared through “lots of collaboration via email and Zoom, which is fine in this age of technology. It’s been awesome."
Designer Buhmann’s previous works include credits with Seattle Public Theater, Book-It Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Rep, the Chicago Opera, Opera Philadelphia and more.
Four musical albums have been released by Yanover. She said the first, “Bow and Cello,” 2005, “grew from years of playing -- first classical in my neighborhood cafe in Seattle -- and taking a looping pedal with fragments of classical music" to eventually "making my own compositions.”
“Waves Wash Over Us” in 2014 came to be “after about a decade of taking a break and having a lot of life stuff happen,” said Yanover. It has original songs, with one being a virtual duet with her father, who is "a jazz pianist for fun."
From 2017, “Bridge Across Sand” expresses a little more range of emotion, she said. The latest is a holiday album titled “Cello Glow.”
A recent grant of $8,000 from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture is spurring on her fifth album by helping to cover the cost of production, Yanover said. She will work with the same engineer, Garrett Reynolds, who is also a violinist with “really good ears for strings.”
The electric cello with its unusual shape “has a wonderful appeal,” especially in more informal venues where there are less preconceived notions about classical music or instruments, said Yanover. Neo-classical is a term that has only been around for the last couple of years, she said, but it seems to suit the “spacious string atmospheres woven with warm melodies” that describe Yanover’s musical sound.
Yanover’s own classical music education began in public schools, and she has taught music education to students in sixth through twelfth grades, she said, adding that her "grand ideal" was to teach that the basis of music is listening, allowing the students time to reflect in “the slower, messier process.”
“It took me so long to lose a fear of leaving the page,” said Yanover. She says she gave students and herself “tools to make stuff up, to make their own fun,” with musical improvisation.
Of teaching and performing, she said: "It’s always been an interwoven path.”
On her way to a meeting with a diversity, equity, inclusion group, Tuesday, Yanover spoke about the mission of representation on the podiums, in the soloists, in orchestral membership, in composition and repertoire.
She also stressed the importance of audience representation. “It’s a huge issue for classical music … to really solicit from the community what it is we can bring that would entice them to come to classical music because it is often an aging population of patrons -- not always -- but we have to find ways we are sparking the interest of younger people," she said.
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