Grammy-winning mandolin player Chris Thile is out with a new album. This time he is taking the music of J.S. Bach to different locations.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
It’s easy to think of classical music as being confined to a studio or to a recital hall, or to think it can only be played on certain instruments. On his new record, Chris Thile is breaking down those boundaries. The Grammy-winning artist is playing Bach’s violin partitas and sonatas on the mandolin, and he’s taking them to places that they’ve never been before. Derek Operle with member station WKMS has this story.
DEREK OPERLE, BYLINE: Chris Thile is known for playing mandolin in progressive bluegrass groups like Nickel Creek and the Punch Brothers. He’s also recorded pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRIS THILE’S PERFORMANCE OF BACH’S “PARTITA NO. 2 IN D MINOR, BWV 1004: IV. GIGA”)
OPERLE: In his latest release, he’s adapting Bach’s “Partitas For Violin No. 2 and 3” and “Sonata No. 3.”
CHRIS THILE: Just a changing human interacting with a fixed text, musical text. How do I represent that in a recording – in a recorded context?
OPERLE: He interacted with the compositions for a year and then decided to record his renditions in different locations. Thile starts the album in a Midtown Manhattan studio that he says is special to him. That’s where he plays most of “Partita No. 2.”
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRIS THILE’S PERFORMANCE OF BACH’S “SONATA NO. 3 IN C MAJOR, BWV 1005: III. LARGO”)
OPERLE: Then he takes his interpretation of the third movement from “Sonata No. 3” on the road to a gazebo on the Tennessee farm where a friend played Bach during Thile’s wedding.
THILE: You hear birds chirping, and you hear, like, the creek that flows by this little gazebo. And so that sets it apart from the studio recording. And then Tompkins Square Park smack in the middle of the East Village in Manhattan.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRIS THILE’S PERFORMANCE OF BACH’S “SONATA NO. 3 IN C MAJOR, BWV 1005: II. FUGA”)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Oh, that’s cool. I like that, yeah.
OPERLE: In the park, Thile’s sometimes rapid-fire picking of the fugue from Bach’s “Sonata No. 3” overlaps with the sounds of birds, barking dogs, passing strangers and even other musicians busking. It all comes together in what he described as the fugue of life.
THILE: Which, of course, sounds nothing like either of those first two locations. It sounds like a swirling mass of striving humanity trying to take a break.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRIS THILE’S PERFORMANCE OF BACH’S “PARTITA NO. 3 IN E MAJOR, BWV 1006: VI. BOURREE”)
OPERLE: At times, Thile’s mandolin brings the European classical tradition of Bach into the realm of bluegrass, his picking replacing the glide of a violin’s bow.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRIS THILE’S PERFORMANCE OF BACH’S “PARTITA NO. 3 IN E MAJOR, BWV 1006: VI. BOURREE”)
OPERLE: Grammy-winning composer/conductor Teddy Abrams, a friend and collaborator of Thile’s, says the album is 100% Chris.
TEDDY ABRAMS: It feels like it’s, like, Bach out in the wild. It’s like, you know, in nature, the way it was meant to be.
OPERLE: For Abrams, Thile’s record is a revelatory listen in a genre he says is now often confined to productivity playlists or background music.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRIS THILE’S PERFORMANCE OF BACH’S “PARTITA NO. 3 IN E MAJOR, BWV 1006: IV. MENUET I-V. MENUET II”)
ABRAMS: Even though this music is centuries old, and even in this last hundred years has been recorded probably hundreds of times, this is an interpretation that’s never been heard.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRIS THILE’S PERFORMANCE OF BACH’S “PARTITA NO. 3 IN E MAJOR, BWV 1006: IV. MENUET I-V. MENUET II”)
OPERLE: For Thile, the album gives him a way to add to the conversation Bach started centuries ago.
THILE: Interacting with this body of work made by a fellow human being, albeit a long time ago, makes me proud to be human. Like, look at this beauty that a human being is capable of making.
OPERLE: This new album completes Thile’s personal mission to record all of Bach’s sonatas and partitas for violin on mandolin. The first half came out in 2013. The second volume is out now. For NPR News, I’m Derek Operle in Murray, Kentucky.
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