We went to see Cellofourte, Pittsburgh's cello rock band, at Duquesne University's Red Ring last night. We had first heard of them when they won a Battle of the Bands competition a year or more ago, and I've been hoping for an opportunity to see them play since then, so I was happy to find out about this show on Facebook the other week.
The Red Ring is a new restaurant/club in Duquesne's Power Center on Forbes Avenue. We were pleasantly surprised at its size, ambience, and food (both selection and quality). I tried the Mac 'n Cheese, just because I was so intrigued. It was gemelli with 7 kinds of cheese, roasted tomatoes, and a gratin topping. The menu said pancetta, too, but I realized later that seemed to be missing. But it was still very good, and lots of it. The salads were also good, and we especially liked the cool dishes they came in. For dessert, I had a hot apple crisp with ice cream, which was a little underdone, but otherwise very good, and no nuts!
Here are a couple video clips from the concert, but you really need to go to their website and listen to the music there. They're truly astounding… they play everything from Bach to the Beatles to U2 to Evanescence. They also did a cover of an Apocalyptica song, which I had never heard of, but I see now they're a Finnish cello rock band. But most of their music is of their own composition, written for their own style of playing. After the concert, we asked one of the band members about the different sounds of each of their instruments, and he said it's mostly to do with the age and construction of the cello; two of them have newer instruments, but his was made in the 1700's!
I never knew you could get sounds like these from a cello! We bought their new CD, Combustion, which is very very good.
Cellofourte will be at Your Inner Vagabond in Lawrenceville on Friday March 27 – highly recommended!
Where have the days gone? 