OK, big deal.
Maybe that’s what happens when you call your CD “The Goat Rodeo Sessions.’’ A goat rodeo, they explained from the stage, is a situation so chaotic, it would take a miracle for everything to work out. And yet this quartet lassoed that goat, bulldogged it, and bronc-busted it - you’d have never guessed that fiddle, mandolin, cello, and double bass don’t really go together. Besides, these musicians are all multi-instrumentalists: Meyer switched off to piano, Duncan to banjo, Thile to fiddle. Well, all except Ma. “I’m your cellist for this evening,’’ he announced at the outset. No complaints were heard.
Indeed, the group got a rock-star welcome. The 90-minute set encompassed most of the original compositions on the 2011 CD. They explained quirky titles like “Less Is Moi’’ and “Franz and the Eagle,’’ they gave a master class in the interplay of bowing and plucking; Duncan and Thile blurred the boundary between fiddle and violin. It was mostly upbeat, but from time to time Ma would provide a slow, moody undercurrent, and the two vocal selections introduced a darker note, O’Donovan (daughter of “A Celtic Sojourn’’ radio host Brian O’Donovan) dueting with Thile on “Here and Heaven’’ (“With a hammer and nails and a fear of failure we are building a shed’’) and “No One But You’’ (“The torch you’re trying to carry burns for no one but you’’).
When Meyer announced the first encore as the last two movements from J.S. Bach’s First Gamba Sonata, the audience burst out laughing. “No, really,’’ he protested, and that’s exactly what they played, Ma finally getting to gambol on his own turf. After Duncan cut loose on “The Mason’s Apron,’’ they closed it out with the Welsh folksong “Ar hyd y nos,’’ O’Donovan and Thile singing it in English, “All Through the Night.’’ Too bad the concert couldn’t go that long.
