SMV: The Thunder! (Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, & Victor Wooten)
S.M.V. “Thunder,” the new collaborative project of bassists Stanley Clark, Marcus Miller, and Victor Wooten, could easily degenerate into the muddled, dark, booming sound of thunder. Amazingly, the only thing thunderous about this collaboration is its sky splitting force. Each member finds a space to play in that doesn’t compete with but complements the others, no doubt because each has so distinct a style. Wooten punctuates the high end with a bubble-wrap slap technique; Clarke plays the one acoustic bass, able to support a softer bowed sound or a resonant walking line; Miller’s polyglot bass clarinet and synthesizer skills supplement a funk-inflected bass.
SMV: The Thunder! (Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, & Victor Wooten)
8/26, 8 p.m., $39.50
Regency Center
1290 Sutter Street (SF)
415-421-8497
www.goldenvoice.com
20th Annual Fiddle Summit at the Downtown Berkeley Music Fest
How can you tell a fiddle from a violin?—No one cries when they spill beer on a fiddle. From Ireland to Scotland to Appalachia, the hardy fiddle followed common folk wherever they settled. In pubs and on back porches, fiddle tunes trickled down the generations, learned by ear from fathers or friends. Styles evolved within the regional confines of community, variously emphasizing and echoing chosen parts of the homeland’s repertoire.
The 20th Annual Fiddle Summit reunites three fiddle masters from different styles under one roof: Alasdair Fraser, a Scottish fiddler, his bow heavy, his sound thick and peaty as his brogue; Martin Hayes, an Irish fiddler, with a high-lonesome, lilting style, his tempo wistfully stretched, yearning; Bruce Molsky, an Appalachian fiddler, his sound percussively bright and bouncing, his melodies drawn chordally across multiple strings. Though each will showcase his own style for a set, the three end the show together; embracing the commonalities of their instrument and the debt each style owes to its heritage in the others.
As the opening night act for the Downtown Berkeley Music Festival, the Fiddle Summit is but one course among a brilliant banquet of sound. That morning, organist Will Blades and drummer Scott Amendola’s dueling solos will offer a gratis gun-sling at high noon on the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza. On Sunday, Chad Manning plays what the fiddle summit forgot: a set of bluegrass, Texas-style, and swing fiddling at Jupiter Brewpub, where you can try and tell for yourself a fiddle from a violin.
20th Annual Fiddle Summit at the Downtown Berkeley Music Fest
8/21, 8 p.m., $22.50
Roda Theatre (Berk)
2015 Addison Street
510-548-1761
www.downtownberkeleymusicfest.org
