Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday March 9th, 2011 with Bernard Stepien
Russian accordionist Evelyn Petrova

Evelyn Petrova started accordion at age 12 because her grand-mother thought she could play lots of weddings. A more classical training got her beyond weddings but she never forgot the Russian folk music that she grew up with in her grand-mother's village somewhere around St Petersburg. Tonight we will focus on her 2004 Year's Cycle CD that is devoted to the twelve months of a year in which she uses Russian folk songs material from different places in Russia for each month. The music has a very traditional presence. The folk songs are fully played but through various techniques of playing and singing, each of them gets transformed into Free Jazz where central elements of the tradition get boosted sometimes in a histerical way not to mention constantly shifting rythms.