Around the Island

Anderson Trio opens Friends of Music season on April 25

COURTESY PHOTO | The Anderson Trio will open the Shelter Island Friends of Music season on April 25.
COURTESY PHOTO | The Anderson Trio will open the Shelter Island Friends of Music season on April 25.

BY JOAN BAUM  CONTRIBUTOR

The only downside to the Saturday, April 25 appearance at the Presbyterian Church of Grammy Award winners, Peter and Will Anderson, is lack of time. The audience will surely want more. Though these extraordinary 28-year-old twins, both virtuosos on sax and clarinet, are Juilliard graduates and occasionally riff on Bach, their abiding passion is jazz, augmented with infusions of Latin, R & B and pop.

Well-known pros continue to note that the Andersons are among the most expertly disciplined and joyfully improvisational young musicians around, not to mention being gracious and affable entertainers. Presentation is as crucial, they say, and playing before a live audience is the best way for musicians to grow. It’s an opportunity to show influences and also how they distinctively venture out. Even their patter shows how much they love what they play and enjoy performing — a repertoire that includes timeless standards from the American Songbook, “music rooted in America.” But it’s their arrangements of familiar songs that prove stunning. They go where you don’t think they will — or technically can -— and then you nod, yes!

Last year, with their steady partner, the acclaimed guitarist Alex Wintz, the trio wowed the crowd at the John Drew Theater in East Hampton. Some of that program will be reprised on the Island, but always as “something different.” For those who heard them at Guild Hall last July, they promise, “We’re the same guys, but better.”

That’s the nature of jazz, doing classics by “breaking out.” Even Cole Porter, whom they love, surprised folks back in the day, they point out. Their goal is always “to be original,” to continue to attract the audiences they have and win over new listeners. They dazzle, by way of  elegant musical conversations and with arrangements, so clean and warm, dissonant harmonies so subtly satisfying, that it’s as though they’re playing a piece for the first time.

The president of Shelter Island Friends of Music, Forrest Compton, said he is thrilled to have them open the five-concert season, knowing how the classically trained Andersons fit in with SIFM’s overall classical programs. SIFM is now into its 38th year.

Mr. Compton, a former film and TV actor, who is entering his fourth year at the helm of this non-profit organization, took over from the indomitable Dorothy Seiberling. He notes that 20 years ago or so, when he joined the board, SIFM was the only serious series in town. Now the Perlman Music Program and concerts at Sylvester Manor command attention, so Shelter Island can boast a plethora of music activities. Mr. Compton said that the organizations cooperate with one another on scheduling, though the embarrassment of riches has prompted SIFM to consider more diverse programming, such as the Andersons, without sacrificing its chamber music core. For the June 6 concert the audience will be treated to the violin magic of Areta Zhulla, a Perlman alum, and September will see the Lark Quartet.

The Anderson Trio concert will take place on Saturday, April 25 at 8 p.m. at the Presbyterian Church. It is free, as is the post-concert reception, although donations are always appreciated.