The objects adorning the stage last Saturday night in Crowell Concert Hall were set in a most intimate fashion: two simple chairs, a small coffee table with a tiny picture frame on it, and an old-fashioned lamp. As if she were inviting us into her living room, dazzling singer/songwriter Abigail Washburn, along with accompanist Ben Sollee, regaled a captivated audience with personal stories, jokes, and passionate musical performances that revealed a love of Chinese language, Chinese culture, and old-time banjo music.
Both performers connected on-stage in a way that went beyond the typical musical collaboration required of a duet. With constant eye contact, smiling, laughing, and even some hand holding, they shared a genuine love for the music, and for sharing it with each other and with the audience, that was simply enchanting.
“I saw Abigail Washburn this summer, and she’s the reason why I’m taking the banjo,” said Anna Gevalt ’09.
While singing a gospel song, entitled “His Eyes On The Sparrow,” Washburn mesmerized the audience with her exceptional command of the music, as did Sollee with his skilled and passionate cello playing.
From traditional Appalachian tunes to a modern interpretation of a ninth-century Chinese poem, Washburn deftly explored Eastern and Western music and culture. Washburn explained that she first fell in love with Chinese in college. Around the same time, she also discovered a Doc Watson song that compelled her to buy a banjo.
“As an artist, I don’t feel like I have to be an educator, but I hope that it’s educational,” Washburn said.
Washburn has taken many traditional Chinese songs that she learned while studying as a college student in China and adapted them for the banjo and cello combination. In recent years Washburn has returned to China and to Tibet with a group known as The Sparrow Quartet, which includes banjo player Bela Fleck and Sollee. They are the first U.S. band to officially tour in Tibet.
Washburn and Sollee entertained the audience with stories of their tour, collaborating with Tibetan boy bands, performing at Animal Husbandry schools, and playing with the young local musicians who Washburn called “kindred spirits.”
For each song, Washburn told a story or gave a detailed description of the background of either how she came across the piece or what her process of original writing had been. One song, “The Lost Lamb,” told the story of a Chinese man living in Montpelier, Vermont, who Washburn tutored in English. He had been working for years to send his family over to America when he received a letter from his wife in China telling him she was starting a new life without him. She and the family could never come to him and he could never go back to them. The song beautifully represented this tragic tale, and Washburn later followed it with another original composition, “Journey Home,” about this same man. She sung both songs in Chinese.
“The whole point is no matter where you are, you’re home,” Washburn said.
Both performers stayed not only for a question-and-answer session after the performance, but lingered for almost two hours to talk with Wesleyan musicians and fans. They hosted an impromptu square dance, listened to an original composition by a student, and talked at length with many students.
Leave a Reply