Cello/Piano Project with Eugene Friesen and Tim Ray

This Concert is sponsored by the Friends of Reading Public Library:

Musical passion, sweeping melody, and rocking rhythm mark the one-of-a-kind performances of the Cello/Piano Project. Contemporary jazz, Brazilian classics, and American folk tunes are the soil from which the duo's joyful interplay blooms, and chamber music is changed forever.

As featured players with the likes of Paul Winter, Lyle Lovett, Bonnie Raitt, and others, both Eugene Friesen and Tim Ray have cultivated unique styles of accompanying and soloing. At their duo concerts, audiences are treated to the full range of their remarkable abilities in living color.

The melodic and emotional facets of Eugene Friesen's cello have been well documented on hundreds of commercial CDs and film scores. Less known are his unbridled improvisations featuring an almost percussive use of the cello, or his unique pizzicato techniques derived from African folk traditions. Friesen's use of his voice, doubling his cello lines in perfect intonation and nuance, is another distinctive sonic signature.

Ray has appeared on Jay Leno, and has been featured on national tours with Lyle Lovett. Fluent and brilliant in a myriad of American pop, folk, and swing styles, he is also highly regarded as a jazz performer and composer. Though a dazzling soloist, Ray is equally creative as an accompanist and producer and has served as musical director for singer-songwriters Jane Siberry and Victoria Williams on the road and in the recording studio.

Playing jazz as well as innovative compositions by both Friesen and Ray, the Cello/Piano Project traces a wideranging musical gamut in a program which is simultaneously imaginative, immediate, and original.