Anonymous 4 calls it quits
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Version 0 of 1. After this season, the glorious female vocal quartet Anonymous 4 is closing up shop as an ensemble, the singers going their separate ways. This happened for the first time in 2004 when, after 18 years of mesmerizing performances of medieval music, they decided to call it quits, only to resurface with a whole new repertoire that included early American music. But signs are that this is it. They laid to rest their program “1865: Songs of Hope and Home from the American Civil War” on Sunday with a concert at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue under the auspices of Washington Performing Arts (the rest of their season will feature Christmas music). And with this last performance, they also ended their collaboration with the wonderful fiddler and banjo player Bruce Molsky, whose quickstep strumming energy was irresistible and who also lent the occasional bass voice to the ensemble. For some of these pieces, the quartet has retained the hauntingly weightless, vibratoless delivery that gave its early music performances such a mystical feel — “Weeping, Sad and Lonely” and “Tenting on the Old Camp Grounds” were gossamer — but the twang the singers took on for pieces such as “Listen to the Mocking Bird” and “Darling Nelly Gray” gave these a decidedly earthy Southern flavor. The evening’s biggest surprise was Molsky’s rough and ready fiddle and vocal take on Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More” — a song that, with its opening line, “Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears,” evokes more sorrow and longing than tough-guy heft. If Anonymous 4 were not planning to disband, the members might have wanted to consider adding more variety to their harmonizations and finding ways to blend groups of songs into longer hunks uninterrupted by applause. But this is water over the dam. They are leaving us, and they will be missed. Reinthaler is a freelance writer. |