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Feb-25-2006, 9:52pm
The Providence Mandolin Ochestra presented a free concert today at the Providence Public Library. I live about an hour away in Connecticut so we decided it would be nice to attend the concert today and explore Providence a little for our family day. WOW! The concert exceeded all of my expectations.
The music was all classical and there were quite a few surprises. The biggest of which was that they had guest musicians from Russia. They are known professionally as the "Russian Duo." Tamara Volskaya played mandolin and domra. He partner Anotoliy Trofimov played bayan, an instrument much like an accordian except there are buttons in place of the keyboard.
Tamara is one of the most accomplished mandolin players I've ever heard. Her playing was simply astonishing! The mandolin she played was a large bowl back with an intricately carved head. The domra looked like a bowl back, but it had four strings and a round sound hole about the width of a person's finger. Interestingly, she had a device fitted to the back of it that reminded me of a tone-gard. This device had a foot attached to its bottom that rested on her leg as she played. It raised the instrument up high on her chest.
The orchestra had about a dozen mandolins, 4 mandolas, 3 mandocellos, 1 upright bass, 2 mando-basses, and 4 guitars. The instruments were all high end. The were almost all A-types. There were only 2 F-types and 2 2-points. There were a lot of Gibsons, including some very old ones. I saw a Collings and a Lebeda as well
One more suprise was an appearance by the Bradford Mandolin Quartet. They consisted of 2 mandolins, 1 mandola and 1 mandocello. The music was just awesome.
You can read more about Tamara and the Russian Duo here (http://www.tamaravolskaya.com/). I didn't see any music you can listen to on their web site, but if you truly want to be inspired, try to find something of hers that you can listen to.
The music was all classical and there were quite a few surprises. The biggest of which was that they had guest musicians from Russia. They are known professionally as the "Russian Duo." Tamara Volskaya played mandolin and domra. He partner Anotoliy Trofimov played bayan, an instrument much like an accordian except there are buttons in place of the keyboard.
Tamara is one of the most accomplished mandolin players I've ever heard. Her playing was simply astonishing! The mandolin she played was a large bowl back with an intricately carved head. The domra looked like a bowl back, but it had four strings and a round sound hole about the width of a person's finger. Interestingly, she had a device fitted to the back of it that reminded me of a tone-gard. This device had a foot attached to its bottom that rested on her leg as she played. It raised the instrument up high on her chest.
The orchestra had about a dozen mandolins, 4 mandolas, 3 mandocellos, 1 upright bass, 2 mando-basses, and 4 guitars. The instruments were all high end. The were almost all A-types. There were only 2 F-types and 2 2-points. There were a lot of Gibsons, including some very old ones. I saw a Collings and a Lebeda as well
One more suprise was an appearance by the Bradford Mandolin Quartet. They consisted of 2 mandolins, 1 mandola and 1 mandocello. The music was just awesome.
You can read more about Tamara and the Russian Duo here (http://www.tamaravolskaya.com/). I didn't see any music you can listen to on their web site, but if you truly want to be inspired, try to find something of hers that you can listen to.