Description
Steve Pichan & Laurie Jarski, Broughton Music, The Lab in Kalamazoo
4:00 pm, December 4th
Advance $15, Door $20
*This show is not wheelchair accessible. The show at 141 N. Center, Ste. 103, Northville, MI on Friday, December 2nd, at 7:30 pm is wheelchair accessible.
Steve Pichan & Laurie Jarski team up to combine vocals, acoustic guitar, mandolin, cello and banjo for their shows of all original music with cultural, social, spiritual and nature themes.
Steve Pichan became passionate about music at a very early age. While attending parochial grade school, he was singing in the choir learning to appreciate both melody and harmony. There, he learned a love of old hymns that were flowing and melodic, inspiring his compositions at the age of ten. When he was nine years old, Steve’s parents bought him his first guitar which eventually became the pathway to performing in middle and high school rock bands. One of those early bands, Devonshire Market, successfully competed and performed at the Michigan State Fair in the late ‘60’s. By the time Steve entered college at Western Michigan University, he had exchanged his electric guitar for an acoustic having been influenced by the sounds and compositions of artists like James Taylor, Neil Young and many more. During that time, he began performing solo at various Southeastern Michigan venues, eventually teaming up with other musicians and forming duo acts from the early seventies until 1984. Some of the popular clubs included Mr. Mike’s in Westland, the entire Win Schuler’s chain, the Backseat salon in Keego Harbor, Rick’s cafe in Ann Arbor, Captain Ahab’s in Wyandotte among others. Business interests and a growing family finally demanded his full attention and he, temporarily, retreated from his career in music. His guitar resided in the basement untouched for six years. Eventually, someone at the church he was attending got wind of his past love of playing and convinced him to return to music with his guitar and singing. To this date, he continues to write music for services, performing with orchestras and contemporary bands. Steve’s music has been used in a number of big screen films over that past 15 years, having produced music for filmmaker, Keith Famie, and his military tribute documentaries including “The Greatest Generation” which debuted at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. Additionally, Cuban refugee and filmmaker Augustine Blazquez, commissioned Steve for two films of his own which debuted in the Miami Film Festival in 2010, The first and most notable was “Che Guevara, the Other Side of an Icon” which featured Steve’s song and video “You Don’t Know Che”.
Laurie A. Jarski is a composer, cellist, singer/songwriter guitarist, and owner of Broughton Music Center and Northville Center for Music & Art. She is a professional cellist in the C•O•R•Etet String Quartet, Presence of Three Trio, Red Willow Dream, the Battle Creek Symphony, and has served as principal cellist with the National Women’s Music Festival Orchestra under Nan Washburn. She studied composition with Anthony Iannaccone and Ramon Zupko, and cello with Winifred Mayes (asst. principal cellist in the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy) and Nina Deveritch (master class pupil of Pablo Casals).
Laurie has composed commissioned works for orchestra, chamber orchestra, choir, and a variety of chamber ensemble pieces. The most recent compositions include ‘Nine Trees of KL Ave Sent Underground’ for Folk Band, String Quartet, Percussion and Electronic Music (2021); ‘Untitled ( Brazilian Mirage) for Mixed Quartet’ for Cello, Minstrel Banjo, Classical Guitar, & Percussion (2020), ‘Egyptian Blue Jazz Bowl’ for Solo Guitar (2020); ‘God Rest Ye! Orchestral Renderings for Full Orchestra (2015) and ‘Funky Blues for Cello Quartet’ (2012).
In Laurie’s compositions, the interplay of antiphonal, rhythmic, and colorful fabric is woven around lyrical song-like melodies, a natural extension of Laurie’s folk music origin as singer/songwriter from age 9 onward. A natural tendency to have percussive attributes cross over to instruments not usually slated as percussion is of particular interest, and vice versa. Instrumental role switches provide some interesting sound textures. In a recent work, Rhythm Cordia for Solo Cello, Laurie further blurs the idiomatic lines between cello and guitar with a variety of pizzicato technique and col legno variations embedded into the piece. laurieajarski.com
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