BRATTLEBORO — New Amsterdam Records recording artist and frequent Yellow Barn contributor Travis Laplante performs his composition “Dissolving Mirror” in SOLOs Episode 5.
Filmed on the Hooker-Dunham stage, Laplante's performance premieres simultaneously on BCTV and YouTube at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 26.
Rolling Stone describes Laplante's tenor saxophone artistry as “head-spinning flights of circular breathing” combined with “sparse, prayerful lyricism” and cites his album Human among its selection of the “currents that shaped the [jazz] genre [in 2019] and the must-hear releases that exemplified them.”
“Travis is an amazing performer. His improvisational saxophone ranges from sounding like the wind wafting through the forest to the haunting melody of a love song to the roar of a tempest. It's hard to believe that all this music comes from a single instrument played live on stage,” Jon Mack, director of the Hooker-Dunham Theater, said in a news release.
SOLOs is a collaborative production of the Hooker-Dunham and the Rock River Players designed to bring creativity to the fore in this challenging time for performers, directors, venues, and audiences.
“It's a pleasure to see the talents of so many people combine to create authentic performances. The outpouring of talent and the ability to reach a wide audience both locally and internationally is deeply rewarding,” says Mack.
Coming up next for SOLOs is “Episode 6: Originals.” Bahman Mahdavi, who produced this episode, describes it as “our most ambitious undertaking yet with all original material and enhanced production values.”
SOLOs “Episode 7: Sense and Nonsense” follows. It combines “challenging the nonsense of narrow gender stereotypes with the delightful nonsense of Lewis Carroll's poems,” says Mack.
Links to the Episode 5 premiere will be posted at HookerDunham.org, RockRiverPlayers.org, and brattleborotv.org.