Metronome: Tanya Donelly & Chris Brokaw (duo)
About the show
Support: Vanishing Lakes
Two of Boston’s most influential and enduring voices have joined forces for a bold new project. Tanya Donelly—co-founder of Belly, Throwing Muses, and The Breeders—and Chris Brokaw, guitarist/singer for the legendary Come, Codeine drummer and long-time collaborator with Thurston Moore, have come together to reimagine the centuries-old form of medieval music for the modern.
Bringing together decades of experience shaping alternative and indie rock history for the first time. Donelly’s unmistakable voice and songwriting has inspired generations, while Brokaw’s genre-spanning guitar work has pushed boundaries in rock, folk, and experimental music. Together, they’ve created a remarkable new project that is at once stark and lush, rooted and progressive, whilst bridging Renaissance tradition with richly layered arrangements and contemporary songcraft.
Having always been a big fan of all of Chris Brokaw’s music, bands, and projects, I asked him if we might team up to play a song or two for our mutual friend Hilken Mancini’s annual holiday event last year. He had the unusual and very cool idea to perform a medieval carol, in Latin, something far outside of anything I’d done before. Tanya Donelly
I’d been listening to the Norwegian vocal group ‘Medieval Trio” and kind of on a lark suggested that we perform a medieval Christmas piece. I felt like we immediately came upon a new language, sound, dialect. It sounded more like Bedouin music to me than anything particularly ‘Christian’, or much like anything we were ostensibly drawing from. I’ve always loved Tanya’s music but her voice here is, I think, on an entirely new level. Chris Brokaw
Vanishing Lakes are Adrian Crowley and Matthew Nolan. Their music is austere, low-key and often bleak instrumental improvisations. However, these are more than mere musical vignettes, this is chamber folk set in an extremely sparse and desolate soundscape of agonizing notes and frustrated melodies. Occasionally they veer into more angular territory before levelling out again, providing an unpredictable edge to largely meditative music. Often the musicians don’t even play music but hint at playing music. The instruments emit notes, but hardly connect them.
"Vanishing Lakes occupy a twilight zone between avant chamber music and experimental folk. The contrasts between urgent and gently persuasive voices, between repetitive and flowing lines—which all gradually fade to nothing—make for an absorbing sonic journey."
Ian Patterson, All About Jazz
Presented by NCH
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