Trio Tritticali boldly goes where no string trio has gone before. Seeking out new sounds and musical genres, experimenting with voice and movement, Tritticali draws upon their training in jazz, classical, Arabic, Chinese, avant garde and improvisational traditions to create a new jamming universe of string sound.
It’s Turtle Island meets Haitian voodoo trance, and Jean-Luc Ponty in arabesque. It’s minimalism moves to Mongolia, and Thelonius Monk with a ticket around the world.
Since its founding in 2008 Tritticali has appeared at the Summer on the Hudson series, Roulette, Caffè Vivaldi, and The Stone, as well as a regular show at Linger Café. In 2012 Tritticali collaborated with choreographer Chris Ferris in Circuitous Body, a dance piece that blurred the lines between musician and dancer. Lucid Culture Blog named the trio’s debut CD, Issue #1, one of the top recordings of 2011:
“…Trio Tritticali have just released their new Issue #1, one of the most gripping, intelligent, richly eclectic albums of recent years. Drawing on elements as diverse as Egyptian dance vamps, the baroque, bossa nova, tango and European Romantic chamber music, they blend those styles together seamlessly and imaginatively for a bracingly intricate sound that’s uniquely their own.”
In civilian guise they are known as violinist Helen Yee, violist Leanne Darling, and cellist Loren Dempster, freelance string forces and composers in multiple musical genres. Helen brewed potent music for plays including Manon/Sandra at the 2010 Fringe Festival, cavorted among cellos and viola in the band Invert, and lets hammers fly with the yangqin as part of Music from China. Loren weaves amazing soundscapes for choreographers Merce Cunningham, Chris Ferris, and Harrison Atelier, lays it down in the Dan Joseph Ensemble, and shines as a part of Anti-Social Music. Leanne is crazy with the multiple loops and viola, jammed middle eastern style with the Near East River Ensemble, and rose to the spotlight winning the New York Innovative Theater award for best original music in 2007.