In musical performance, skill, talent and innovation don’t always coexist. But Time for Three, or Tf3, magically converge the tried, the true and the new.
Violinists Zach De Pue and Nicolas Kendall, along with Ranaan Meyer on the double-bass, rocked a full house at Boulder’s Chautauqua Auditorium on Thursday night with their distinctive delivery of technical virtuosity, spirited improvisation and amalgamation of musical styles.
In Chris Brubeck’s Colorado premiere of “Travels in Time for Three,” the atypical instrumentation of the youngish trio lay bare the physical and conceptual interplay among the work’s jazz idioms.
The ensemble was easily at home in the ambitious, four-movement piece, coolly navigating its swing, funk, bebop and tango effects. Like dancers who differ from one another, yet closely understand, anticipate and rely on one another, they exhibited individual and complementary flavors of music-making.
With music director Michael Christie and the dependably refined playing of the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra in accompaniment, the lush third movement highlighted the trio’s more thoughtful side in extended and unhurried musical thoughts and phrases.
In the final movement, Kendall’s kinetic showmanship stole the show — fingers on fire, he led the work’s last crescendoing sweep with power and gusto.
Tf3 then proceeded with a revival of a Hungarian dance (Johannes Brahms) delivered with a generous measure of flair, fun, trickery and unabashed schmaltz.
The orchestral program opened with the warm timbres of Brubeck’s mellow and mellifluous “Convergence” and continued after intermission with more American classics: Ferde Grofe’s atmospheric “Grand Canyon Suite” and George Gershwin’s charming and sophisticated “An American in Paris.”
Among the many fine solos of several orchestra members, principal violinist Calin Lupanu was superb in his delivery of the opening passages of “On the Trail” in Grofe’s suite.
