Vinta EP
Vinta
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Four-Leafed People 3:370:00/3:37
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0:00/3:44
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0:00/4:24
VINTA, A VIRTUAL CONCERT EXPERIENCE
Premieres Saturday, March 20, 2021, 7:00 EDT
Vinta, a new quartet playing European folk music, and SoundStill Production, are releasing an exceptional virtual concert on March 20th, 2021. A 30-minute video in pristine quality features five original fiddle tunes interspersed with casual conversations with the musicians.
Nathan Smith, Emilyn Stam, John David Williams, and Robert Alan Mackie are seated in a circle in a snug and shadowy loft in Hamilton, Ontario. They play down a diverse setlist of original music, based on the animated folk dancing styles of France, Sweden, and Canada. The intimacy and focus between these four musicians is unmistakable in these single-shot takes that sail around and weave through the group.
Like the homecoming show after a long tour, this video was recorded at the tail-end of a summer packed with pop-up concerts in public parks and on back porches. The power and confidence of a few straight weeks playing for audiences, most of them hearing live music for the first time since March of 2020, is recorded here in this energetic and highly engaging video.
This video will be the first in a series of virtual concerts presented by SoundStill Production, soon to feature Teilhard Frost and The Lonesome Ace Stringband. Rather than attempting to replicate a live performance and suffering the shortcomings, SoundStill creates an entirely distinguished film and music experience, capturing a perspective that isn't available even to the front row of a live show.
About Vinta
Vinta is Nathan Smith, Emilyn Stam, John David Williams, and Robert Alan Mackie, four brilliant performers and close friends at the cutting edge of European traditional music in Canada. Nearly a decade of these four musicians hanging out at fiddle jams around Toronto has culminated in this quartet, bringing new intensity to old tunes, and growing new tunes from old sources. A band of multi-instrumentalists and genuine scholars, Vinta is making music that is powerful, profound, and fiercely danceable.
In the great void of 2020, the four bubbled together and passed what seemed like a lifetime of otherwise empty days in a breezy backyard in Guelph, ON. They played every fiddle tune they could remember, and got to learning new ones when they ran out. A somewhat improvised concert in that very backyard showed them how dynamic and emotional an experience they could bring to audiences who had not heard a band for months, and they quickly reinvented what touring could look like in those new peculiar circumstances. Their unshakeable resolve to bring live performances to live people saw them parading through farming communities on oxen-towed hay wagons, popping up around corners on downtown bar patios, and rigging up elaborate decorations in parks from Stratford to Mont-Laurier to attract anyone and everyone to their energetic performances.