Children’s bad dreams are usually about scary animals, abandonment, monsters, bugs, being eaten, getting lost and toys that come to life, not about becoming a music teacher.
“My nightmare as a child was that I was going to become a music teacher,” said Eric Wright, cellist for the classical-folk band The Fretless.
Currently on tour, the quartet will play Powell River Tuesday night with Karrnell Sawitsky and Trent Freeman on violin, Ben Plotnick on viola and Wright on cello.
Wright started out studying classical music, “but there was always this little mosquito in my ear,” he said. “My father was in an old-time band playing guitar and fiddle. He taught me fiddle tunes from a pretty young age and I always loved it.”
Wright said he never considered a cello would fit in a fiddle band. While studying pre-med and philosophy in university he decided he was doing the wrong thing and dropped it all to follow his fiddling dream with The Fretless. His grandmother would be pleased, said Wright.
“The really funny thing is, I remember my grandmother saying, ‘You know Eric, don’t become a doctor, become a musician, where you know you can make money,’” he said.
The Fretless have made folk-music followers take notice. Its 2012 debut album Waterbound received a Western Canadian Music Award (WCMA) for instrumental album of the year, and international group of the year and ensemble of the year honours at the Canadian Folk Music Awards (CFMA).
In 2014, the group won the WCMA instrumental album of the year and ensemble of the year at the CFMA for its self-titled album The Fretless.
The style of classical folk played by the band is nouveau chamber, taken from Celtic, Metis, old-time Canadian and America fiddling tunes and arranged for a classical quartet with the finished songs coming out as new folk, said Wright.
According to Wright, the textures and unique sounds The Fretless bring to new folk separates them within the genre.
“We can have the viola and the cello filling up the low,” he said. “There’s not the usual guitar, bass and violins you’d see in a sort of a normal string band.”
The Fretless play Cranberry Community Hall 7 pm on Tuesday, April 5.
