Collegiate Times

Beat-boxing and classical music are usually don’t go together. But Saturday, The Kandinsky Beat Down will bring the two genres together at the Lyric.

Headed by The Kandinsky Trio, The Beat Down project is a group of classical performers who are trying to do something a little different with music. 

Elizabeth Bacheldoer, Benedict Goodfriend and Alan Weinstein make up the classical piano trio that is the Kandinsky Trio, which includes piano, violin and cello. 

“We are a classical chamber music group,” said Weinstein, the group’s cellist and also a professor of music at Virginia Tech.

The trio is actually in residence at Roanoke College. Together, the group has been playing for 23 seasons.

“We are one of the longest running chamber groups with original members,” said Goodfriend, the trio’s violinist. He said he has been playing the violin for almost 50 years now.

After meeting at college in Boston, Weinstein and Goodfriend talked of someday forming a chamber group. Then Weinstein moved to the Roanoke area and met up with Bacheldoer, the group’s current pianist. Weinstein then called Goodfriend and said he thought they could all “make a go of it” as a group.

“The rest was history,” Goodfriend said.

Now, the trio has expanded its resume. 

“What we have done is commission five composers to write for us: a beat-boxer and four soloists, one of which is a singer and the others are jazz musicians,” Weinstein said.

They have also included some hip-hop dancers.

The trio combined with the other musicians and dancers make up the eclectic musical group, The Kandinsky Beat Down.

“It’s classical music, meets jazz, meets hip-hop culture,” Weinstein said.

The composers have written different pieces of music that incorporate different elements of the group in varying combinations.

The performers come from both the Tech community and elsewhere.

“The trombonist is a famous New York Jazz artist, Joshua Roseman. The trumpet player, John Dearth, runs a great jazz program at UVa. The guitarist is from Roanoke and the singer, Ariana Wyatt, teaches at Tech,” Weinstein said.

The two hip-hop dancers, called the Boogaloo Crew, are from Philadelphia.

“This is going to be our third performance of this project,” Weinstein said.

The group, while trying to keep the same idea for each show, has worked with a couple different people in each performance, making each show a little different from the last. The two previous shows the Beat Down performed at Roanoke’s Jefferson Center sold out. The group is also planning to start a nationwide tour. 

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A version of this article appeared in the Feb 17 issue of the Collegiate Times.