This week’s Song of the Week is a little different than previous selections.  It has no words.  What I have chosen is the first movement of a work called “Blackberry Winter” that was composed by Conni Ellisor and performed by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra.  It is a very interesting piece of music written for mountain dulcimer, Tennessee music box (a cigar box with a hole and strings) and strings.  It is very pleasant and evokes memories of the best of Aaron Copland’s compositions.

There are other songs called “Blackberry Winter.”  One, in fact, sold a million records as the the “B” side of Mitch Miller’s “Yellow Rose of Texas.”  This one sounds much better than Mitch Miller’s.

The term “Blackberry Winter” refers to a cold spell that occurs in the late Spring when trees or bushes, such as the blackberry, are already in bloom.  There was a best-selling novel of that name by Sarah Jio in 2012, and it was also the title of an autobiography by anthropologist Margaret Mead.

Conni Ellisor is an amazing, but little-known, musician and composer.  She is from Arvada, Colorado, and graduated from Arvada West High School five years after I did.  I became aware of her work when I was chairing a committee of choose the initial members of the Arvada West High School Hall of Fame.

She received her formal training at Juilliard and has been a member of the Denver Symphony Orchestra, concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic, first violin in the Athena Quartet and soloist in the Nashville Chamber Orchestra. She is also an in demand session violinist and arranger.  Her compositions have been performed in international venues by the London Philharmonic, the Hamburg Radio orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the London Symphony, Denver Brass, New York Treble Singers and many other groups. Her ballet, “The Bell Witch,” was premiered by the Nashville Ballet in 2005. Her works have been featured nationally on NPR.  Conni has also been successful as a contemporary jazz recording artist. Her “Night at the Museum” album reached #13 on Billboard’s Adult Alternative chart, and all four of her albums have been critically acclaimed.  Conni has lectured at various colleges and universities and was composer-in-residence for Northwestern Louisiana State University in 2008 and for the Nashville Chamber Orchestra from 1999 through 2002.

She has written for and played with performers ranging from Don Henley to Ray Stevens.  She toured and played with Lynyrd Skynyrd – sort of.  As you probably know, three members of  Lynyrd Skynyrd were killed in a plane crash in 1977, at the height of their popularity.  The surviving members have reunited from time to time, and they did so in 2004 for the so-called Vicious Cycle Tour – which featured a rock band with a rocking string section.  Conni arranged the music, conducted the string section and played on that tour.

I wanted to bring Conni’s work to everyone’s attention now because next month – on May 9 and 10, 2015 – her latest work is going to be performed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.  The piece is entitled “The Bass Whisperer – Concerto for Electric Bass and Orchestra.”  It was co-written by Victor Wooten, who will appear as the soloist.

Wooten has received several Grammy Awards.  He is best known as the bass player for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.  If you are not familiar with his work, you can click here to enjoy a really interesting version of “Amazing Grace.”

The performance by the Colorado Symphony is essentially a world premiere (though the piece has been done by the Nashville Symphony) so I can’t include any part of the new concerto here.  Ticket information for the performance is available at this link.  The Arvada West High School Foundation may be organizing a group to attend – and you can check its website by clicking here.

For the present, we have the first movement of “Blackberry Winter”:

As a footnote, let me add an old joke.  It seems that a group of foreigners were on a safari in darkest Africa.  As they walked along an ominous drum beat began somewhere in the distance.  They asked their native guide what that might mean and he replied, “Everything fine now, but it will be bad when drums stop.”  The drums continued to beat all through the day and into the night, and the guide kept repeating, “Everything fine now, but it will be bad when drums stop.”  After many hours, there was suddenly silence.  Fearfully, the group asked the guide what would happen then.  He replied, “Now trouble.  Now bass guitar solo.”