Vagabond Opera and Go Van Gogh @ Ashkenaz September 24, 2011

Vagabond Opera is one of our favorite groups. Her's what they have to say about themselves.
The Opera Electric:
Vagabond Opera Brings High Drama Cabaret-Close on Sing For Your Lives! and on Tour, September and October 2011
Playing Berkeley, CA at the Ashkenaz on September 24th

It’s a dark and stormy night. The cabaret swirls smoke, euphoria, danger. A burlesque beauty sings a swooping, eerie song and suddenly sprouts a full beard. An itinerant tenor and a melancholic balloonist croon to apocalyptic waltzers. The drums ba-da-boom, the cellos duel, the gitarrón’s been drinking.
It’s Vagabond Opera—you’d better Sing for Your Lives! (release: September 13, 2011)!
Like surrealist Marcel Duchamp packing an entire life’s work into a suitcase, the Portland, Oregon troupe tucks the high drama of opera into the tight squeeze of the sexy cabaret. By turns sinister and seedy, sweet and nostalgic, the brainy, sultry band mashes up Eastern European folk theater and classical grandeur, hot club act and avant-garde klezmer jams, perky musicals and edgy absurdism.
“We love storytelling, creating a world on stage or on a recording,” says saxophonist and songwriter Robin Jackson. “We bring people into a dark cabaret where they forget themselves.” “We draw on Old World elements and genres,” adds Eric Stern, Vagabond Opera founder, composer, and singer, “ them.”
And of course you already know that Go Van Gogh plays original music flavored by all the American sounds we
grew up with, and all the great international music we discovered
along the road. The music travels through Eithiopique melodies, Afro
Cuban rhythms, Bakersfield twang, Balkan brass, and an ocean liners
worth of other musical flavors. All with a get up and dance energy.
Our instrumentation of Sax, Trumpet, Steel Guitar, Congas,
Bongos, minor percussion, Guitar, Bass, and Vocals, helps us take
a roots approach to whatever we hear that catches our ears. So when we
say "mixing country music from many countries", it really means we
don't cover it, we incorporate it. And that is a real distinction.

http://www.vagabondopera.com
http://www.govangogh.net