Getting Groovy With Project Trio

The musical group channeled Ron Burgundy with a flute solo

Ron Burgundy's solo in Anchorman with flames shooting out of his instrument was the last flute solo I, and perhaps most people, have seen. So you can imagine the furrowed brows in the audience when the New York group Project Trio took the stage with a flute, double bass and a cello. 

When the music began at The Abbey in Banker's hill for the Mainly Mozart Festival, and the flutist started beat-boxing, I couldn't help thinking "What the...?"

But the group inspired with a mixture of classical, jazz and hip-hop, blending the genres into an entertaining musical performance that left traditional music fans confused, and opened minded music fans calling for more. 

The band members who met at the Cleveland conservatory gave the audience used Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as a standard and incorporated jazz and hip-hop into solo segments which filled the room with their unique take on modern music that is impossible to label or fit into any box.  The crowd loved it.

The Project Trio even played an Indian themed song Rana Raja, named after for the sister of Cellist Eric Stephenson. 

Half-way through the performance seeing Greg Pattillo beat-box with and without the flute, and Double Bassist Peter Seymour, it hit me that these were extraordinary musicians playing their instruments with incredible facility, all the while breaking down traditional ideas of what music should sound like.

Repeated requests for encores coaxed the group back on stage to play an original hip-hop number, leaving an impression on the crowd that this group found a way to make these traditional musical tools work together in a very nontraditional fashion.

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