The string quartet has been a popular instrumental ensemble for some 300 years now, and it's easy to see why. It lends itself to many different kinds of music, and presents enough potential variety in arrangements to keep things interesting. It even readily lends itself to pop music in different ways -- on one hand you have a pop quartet like Kronos, that plays a variety of World music styles on the standard four instruments; on the other, a quartet like the Brodsky backing a pop singer like Elvis Costello on his mid-90s album, The Juliet Variations.
Fiddlers 4 is yet another twist on the string quartet idea, three players of different styles of American roots music on the violin, with an inventive young cellist to add some "bottom" and provide some of his own innovative ideas to the mix.
Michael Doucet is leader of the world-famous Cajun group BeauSoleil. Darol Anger, a veteran of the David Grisman Quintet and founding member of the Turtle Island String Quartet, is a leader in the genre of jazz-inflected "newgrass." Bruce Molsky is a top player of old-time music on fiddle, guitar and other instruments. And Rushad Eggleston is a sharp young cellist, apparently a fairly recent graduate of the prestigious Berklee School of Music.
Together on this album they explore a range of American vernacular music. It's sometimes not quite as much fun for the listener as it obviously was for the players, but it's a charming little album nonetheless.
The music is fairly evenly split three ways. There are the old-time tunes and songs, like the driving hoedown of an opener, "Pickin' the Devil's Eye," "Greek Medley/Polly Put the Kettle On," and the haunting standard, "Man of Constant Sorrow." There are the jazz-influenced numbers like Ellington's "East St. Louis Todalo" and the polyrhythmic "African Solstice." From the Cajun/Creole side come "La Betaille," "Chez Sechelles," "Mazurka/Acadian Two-Step," and "Danse Caribe."
All is not so easily classifiable, though. Molsky contributes a driving, swirling arrangement of the Malian tune, "Hidirassirifo," and Doucet brings the swampy surf-rocker, "Atchafalaya Pipeline."
Molsky plays guitar and sings on a couple of tracks. I find his singing cringe-inducing, especially on the jazz-pop number, "I Wish I Knew How It would Feel to be Free," and in a duet with Doucet on "I Know," a New Orleans Second-Line type funk-soul song. "I Know" is teamed up with a haunting snippet of "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" on Eggleston's cello, which I would like to have heard more of. Molsky's voice is more suited to old-time songs, and he does a fine job on the verses of "Constant Sorrow," although this song works beautifully as an instrumental -- see the late John Hartford's rendition on O Brother, Where Art Thou?
One of the most impressive aspects of this recording is the generosity of the three elder fiddlers, each of whom readily plays back-up to the others as often as he steps forward into the spotlight. Three soloists and frontmen (and one talented young turk) who don't mind playing second fiddle, makes for a tight ensemble. Fiddlers 4 is a class act.
