Additional Details

Additional details

Been Together Since: 2002

Sounds Like: Ethereal, haunting, edgy and elegant.

Members

Jo Bird -- viola
Debra Brown -- violin
Margaret Lejeune -- cello
Jerry Ochoa -- violin

MP3S

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Something She Said

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Hell Hound

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Napoleon's Grudge

Audio Interview

Additional Videos

Discography

Twostarsymphony, 2003
Danse Macabre: The Constant Companion, 2004

More

• Live from Joe Mathlete's living room: Two Star Symphony
• Two Star Symphony unveils Girl Shy

Where To Buy

• CDBaby.com

Review

Envision a string quartet. Perhaps you're seeing four stern people on an important stage. Perhaps you're seeing artsy young things milling about a gallery opening while four musicians saw away in a corner. Whatever you're imagining, it's not Two Star Symphony.

"We open for rock bands and play fancy parties," violist Jo Bird explains.

"I kind of like playing at the bars more," violinist Debra Brown says. "When we play at fancy events, nobody cares that we write our own music and nobody cares who we are. We're the hired help."

"But we get to eat fancy cheeses and drink free wine," cellist Margaret Lejeune adds

Two Star Symphony - which includes violinist Chenoa Mauthner - turns your idea of classical music on its head.

The group, whose members have various levels of classical training, won a talent show at a strip club and jokingly started on this journey three years ago in an effort to score some free ice cream. Since then, it has provided a score for a silent-film program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, worked in New York while Dominic Walsh created a ballet based on the quartet's Goblin Attack and collaborated on an ongoing production of Danse Macabre with Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre.

The wicked foursome writes songs inspired by darkness, Halloween, ghosts and the like. The juxtaposition of strings and sadness is nothing new; what instrument wails with more conviction than a violin or conveys the depths of sadness more than a cello? What makes Two Star Symphony interesting is its fearlessness, creativity, sense of humor, and, well, you can't deny there's something sexy about girls playing stringed instruments in a bar.

Each member has played in rock bands, and Two Star's bar shows aren't that different from a standard rock outing. Once you get past the shock of seeing a string quartet at, say, Rudyard's, it's all the same. The audience is puffing on cigs and throwing back shots. Some bob their heads or sway in a trance. And, more than likely, the audience will talk over the music.

"The talking can make you crazy," Lejeune says. "It's like people need a visual when listening to classical music. If we had a screen up showing a film, they would probably be quiet. But then we get to do other things, like play with a ballet where people are quiet and those are the shows that make me really nervous."

Lejeune has always been interested in scoring films, which is why she feels the MFAH performance has been the highlight of their career.

"I felt like we got to do something we talked a lot about; we got to stop talking about it and actually do it," Lejeune says.

The quartet's next big project is performing the third installment of the Danse Macabre collaboration, from a classical piece by Camille Saint-Saëns.

"It's based on a poem about death coming at midnight and waking up all the skeletons on Halloween eve, the one night of the year that they get to come out and dance. The first show was death on a personal level, the second one was death on a mass scale, and in this one we go to the graveyard and make them get up and dance."

Opportunity continues to knock for the quartet: Another ballet with Dominic Walsh may be forthcoming, more silent film projects are in the works and they are happy to continue playing in Houston bars.

"We're really lucky here," Lejeune says. "There are people who really believe in us."

-- Sara Cress | February 2, 2006