Time For Threeis not an act for musical purists. The group’s repertoire includes explorations of folk, Americana, bluegrass and classical music. The bandmate’s co-founder Ranaan Meyer says that he and his bandmates Zach De Pue and Nick Kendall, both on violin, came together at exactly the right time a little more than a decade ago. They were students at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and back then, the dividing lines between classical and popular music were beginning to erode, perhaps more than ever.
“We were just on the wave of a more liberal minded classical music world, which was really healthy for us," he says. "We have this funny story where the legendary pianist Seymour Lipkin walked in one summer when we were rehearsing Bach’s Double. We play [that piece] in a very silly way where we play it seven times as fast and I have a walking bassline. Nick and Zach swing the violin parts. Seymour Lipkin walked and said, ‘What is that?’ We said, ‘Bach’s Double.’ He said, ‘Too fast,’ and walked out. That was the interaction we had.”
Meyer continues, “We’ve known that this speaks to people. What we do is fun and exciting, so we’ve always had that confidence to back it up when we go to play. We’re not really worried with a purist’s attitude.”
Although some see Time For Three and other acts of its kind as smashing boundaries, Meyer sees the trio in a more traditional light.
“It’s really fun for us to take folk music of today--which is what classical composers did for so long, Dvorak, Brahms, etc. etc.--where they would take something that was super famous and put it into their original music,” he says. "We really love taking covers of pieces and making it our own arrangement and marrying classical themes and other influences. It’s somebody else’s with our own original take on it.”
Time For Three performs Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra at the Century II Concert Hall.
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