Price: $10

After recently scoring TWO spots on the Huffington Posts’s Top CDs for 2011, the Orchestrotica--in its third-stream quartet formation--returns to the Lily Pad with a special guest soloist Nima Janmohammadi from Iran on oud. In addition, they will premier new music including an arrangement of George Gershwin’s first piano prelude.

"…just about all the original stars of exotica...are gone -- here, at last, is their successor." --Huffington Post

Referencing the exotica of Martin Denny, Milt Raskin, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich among others, Mr. Ho’s, Orchestrotica--as a vibraphone quartet--presents an original third-stream collection of updated jazz, chamber, and world music reaching towards the South Pacific via Asia, the Middle East, the Balkans, and Latin America. Led by, multi-percussionist, vibraphonist and composer Brian O’Neill (Mr. Ho) the group normally features bass flute/woodwinds (Geni Skendo), percussion (NorikoTerada), and acoustic bass (Jason Davis). While the "deliciously demented and entertaining" Orchestrotica (The Wall Street Journal) does perform classics by the original artists of the exotica style, the group focuses on "serious jazz and chamber-music writing" (Boston Herald) written by O’Neill that is highly influenced by his fifteen-year career as a percussionist. The quartet often reinterprets classical melodies, improvising over them and adding exotic sounds from around the world leading AllAboutJazz to say, "...if John Zorn is an exotica Picasso, O’Neill is his Georges-Braque counterpart [and] may be, in the long run, a stronger exoticist than Zorn." In June 2011, they released their debut quartet CD, Third River Rangoon, which the Boston Phoenix called "...a rigorous classical-jazz hybrid..." and Lucid Culture called "...a lushly nocturnal collection ...genius."

The CD continues their Exotica for Modern Living series, which opened with The Unforgettable Sounds of Esquivel, their 23-pc big band formation performing the lost space-age pop music of Esquivel. The debut CD reached #4 on theCMJ jazz charts, was a Top Album for 2010 (AllAboutJazz) and received 4 stars from the Sunday London Times.

"...marvelously flexible unit..."--The Boston Globe

"...incredible musicianship..."--Downbeat

FREE MP3s:

Get 6 free mp3s from the groups "Exotica for Modern Living" series including 3 tracks from Third River Rangoon, and 3 from their acclaimed 22-pc space-age pop big band CD, The Unforgettable Sounds of Esquivel.

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