Warm sounds on a cold night; Duo of Malcolm Cecil and Garfield Moore jazz up the classics
The Daily Mail
Jan. 11, 2009

A small but enthusiastic crowd that braved falling snow and slippery roads were treated to a evening of jazzed-up classical music played by acclaimed musicians Malcolm Cecil and Garfield Moore at Imagine That in Catskill Saturday night.

The concert was held to celebrate the relocation of the pottery workshop to its new location at 397 Main St.

Cecil, who hails from Woodstock, won a producing-and-engineering Grammy Award in 1974 for his work on Stevie Wonder’s album “Innervisions” and has been featured on albums with the Isley Brothers, Joan Baez and Little Feat.

Although he is best known for playing jazz on the acoustic bass and synthesizer, Cecil is also an accomplished classical musician.

“I’m from the Duke Ellington school of music,” he said.

Cecil said he likes to play music across a variety of musical genres.

“There are two kinds of music. The good kind and the other kind,’ Cecil said, quoting Ellington, adding, “I play the good kind.”

Garfield Moore teaches music appreciation and history at Columbia-Greene Community College.

Moore has played on Broadway, with the Pacific Philharmonic and in Eastern Europe, and has a cello duo, Duoleo. The Catskill resident studied at Stanford University and at the Institut de Hautes Etudes Musicales (Institute of Advanced Music) in Switzerland and has lectured at the Juilliard School.

Baritone vocalist and guitarist Perry Beekman was scheduled to play with Cecil Saturday night, but was unable to do so because of the weather, giving Moore a chance to play with Cecil in Catskill.

Cecil’s plucked strings juxtaposed against Moore’s smooth bow strokes made for a unique interpretation of classic pieces by Bach and Vivaldi.

The pair enjoys mixing styles like this and think it a new way to engage audiences and fans of both genres.

Moore, Cecil and violinist Gwen Laster recently teamed up to create Super Stringz, a group, Cecil said, which plays classical pieces like jazz tunes and jazz songs like classical ones.

“I think people latch onto the feel,” Cecil said of the musical outcome.

The group will be playing a concert for the University of Albany at Albany public access radio station on Feb. 10.

Cecil, who is used to playing with larger groups of musicians, said that he likes playing with one other musician, because it gives him room to experiment with styles, as he did with Moore.

“I have a lot more freedom,” he said.

Cecil is particularly interested in astronomer Johannes Kepler’s theory that musical harmonies are connected to planetary orbits.

He demonstrated on a string of his bass the vibration arc of an octave. When only lightly touched by a finger, the string is allowed to vibrate for its whole length, creating two notes. The string vibrates in one direction above the finger and in the opposite direction below the finger, both together making a circle.

Planets, as they orbit, vibrate also, Cecil said.

“Vibrations are vibrations are vibrations,” he said.

Cecil’s visit to Imagine That Saturday night was not his first. At the suggestion of his wife, who herself is an artist, he has begun creating a large plate depicting the complete theory of music, including a diagram of all the notes and harmonics.

He said that pottery is a much more permanent medium for the diagram than its original, a yellowed piece of paper.