© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Tiny Desk Concerts from NPR's All Songs Considered features your favorite musicians performing at Bob Boilen's desk in the NPR Music office. This is the AUDIO only archive.Are you a fancy A/V nerd and need video? Visit our new Tiny Desk Concert video channel. Eye-popping video and all of the music you've come to expect.

Time For Three: Tiny Desk Concert

Pigeonholing the classically trained string trio Time for Three isn't easy, but that's also a blessing. The musicians — violinists Zachary De Pue and Nick Kendall with double bassist Ranaan Meyer — say they love a kaleidoscopic spectrum of music. "If we like it, we play it" is their motto. That's why you'll find them riffing on Daft Punk and Kanye West in their popular anti-bullying video or blending Bach and Bon Iver at a Macy's. Their own compositions tend to swing wildly among pop, bluegrass and jazz.

Meyer, De Pue and Kendall don't act like your average classical conservatory grads (they met at the esteemed Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia). They come off as just three high-spirited dudes in a band — a "classically trained garage band," as they like to say. But they certainly don't play like it. Watching them weave together the colorful strands of their music, as they huddle behind Bob Boilen's desk, it's hard not to be swept up in the force of their staggering technique and contagious energy.

What fuels that energy, at least in part, is a strong urge to improvise. "Intuitively, we create a structure and then loosen the vibe up when appropriate," De Pue says.

You can feel it, along with the sheer joy of playing, in the opening tune "Banjo Love," in which two contrary violin solos get support from Meyer's expressively propulsive bass. "Sundays," with its slowly unfolding melodies, is a wistful homage to a weekend hangover. And the onomatopoetic "Don Don" spirals out as a funky, high-octane hoedown wherein violins chase each other while Meyer counterpunches the side of his bass.

These three short tunes are brimming with surprises. When the set ended, I longed for at least one more, just to find out what the band would come up with next.

Set List

  • "Banjo Love"
  • "Sundays"
  • "Don Don"
  • Credits

    Producer: Tom Huizenga; Editor: Parker Miles Blohm; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Denise DeBelius, Gabriella Garcia-Pardo, Mito Habe-Evans

    Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Tom Huizenga is a producer for NPR Music. He contributes a wide range of stories about classical music to NPR's news programs and is the classical music reviewer for All Things Considered. He appears regularly on NPR Music podcasts and founded NPR's classical music blog Deceptive Cadence in 2010.
    Related Content
    • Guards' music captures the pop sound of the late '50s and early '60s, but with more power and polish. Hear three sturdy pop songs from the band's first album, In Guards We Trust, performed live at the NPR Music offices.
    • The multi-talented singer, instrumentalist and music therapist showcases some of the quieter, moodier moments from Among the Grey (the slinky "Raymaker," the dreamy "Whole Heart") before closing with the more forceful "Wait for It." Along the way, Mize's voice rings out assertively in every style and setting.
    • There's nothing restrained about an Alice Russell performance: It's emotionally fiery from the start and just gets hotter and grittier — especially when she's singing "To Dust," the title track from her new album. Watch the British singer perform three songs live in the NPR Music offices.