MORRISBURG – “We genuinely love the various types of music we play,” said Colin Maier, a member of the four-man, classical crossover group, Quartetto Gelato. “We perform everything from Mozart to cartoon medleys to Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher. Ours is an on-going love affair with music.”
Quartetto Gelato was first formed in 1989, and from the very outset has proved hugely popular with fans: this group’s appeal is literally out of this world as Canadian astronaut Dr. Robert Thirsk took two of their CDs with him during his flight on the space shuttle Columbia in 1997.
Coming to Stone Crop Acres Winery, courtesy of Harmony Concerts, July 7, Quartetto Gelato’s performance will leave crowds clamouring for more. Multi instrumentalists and singers, Colin Maier, Kirk Starkey, Tino Konstantin Popovic and Matti Pulkki bring a wealth of talent and experience to the stage. They recently released a new album, ‘Tasty Tunes.’
“To some extent we were lucky during the two years of closures,” Colin Maier said. “We found online rehearsal technology which allowed us to work together. We did some concerts-in-care for seniors and shut ins, and we got a lot of on line work. We were able to carefully plan and polish the pieces in the ‘Tasty Tunes.’ Charles Cousins, an incredible arranger, helped us create an album with good balance and flow.”
There really seems to be no musical genre that Quartetto Gelato has not explored.
“The mandate for our group has always been ‘artist driven,’” Colin explained. “Over the years, every new member has brought different styles and tastes to our music, and that makes our shows different and special. Our violin player, for example, was born in the former Yugoslavia: now we include a Serbian gypsy drinking song in our show. I think we are willing to re-invent ourselves in order to perform with honesty. Our music is all memorized. We look at each other on the stage, and have a musical conversation when we perform. We say that we take our music very seriously – but not ourselves.”
Because each of the artists plays more than one instrument, “that becomes part of the fun. In the context of what we do, we can choose our instruments, and play as, and how, we want. We create our own repertoire: our music is always personal, unique and one of a kind.” Quartetto Gelato “will be doing a real mixture of tried and true songs that audiences love, fast music, slow music and tastes of other cultures. After all, our name, Gelato, comes from a delicious Italian ice cream: gelato come in hundreds of flavours. So does our music.”