Hooked on classics February 01, 2001 - Burlington Free Press by Sally Pollak Trey Anastasio of Phish grooves to a new rhythm with the VYO Tres cool. That's what it's like for the teen-age musicians in the Vermont Youth Orchestra who are playing with Trey Anastasio. "It's brought the orchestra together," said Adriane Post, 16, the principal violinist. "We're all so psyched about it. There's a lot more energy there." Tres cool. That's what it's like for Anastasio to play with and compose for the young musicians of the VYO. "It's an amazing opportunity," Anastasio said. "It's just a gift." Anastasio, leader of the rock band Phish, is collaborating with the VYO in two upcoming concerts, joining the 85-piece orchestra as featured performer and composer. The VYO pieces -- which will premiere Friday night in Troy, N.Y., and be performed again Sunday afternoon at the Flynn Center -- are musical firsts for Anastasio. His band, on an extended break, is one of the most successful acts in popular music. "It's a very, very different experience," Anastasio said. "There's no beat to sit on. No light show to hide behind. Nobody dancing in the front row." Anastasio will perform a guitar concerto that was written for him by his longtime mentor, Ernie Stires, a composer from Cornwall. The piece, "Chat Rooms," is a swing-based classical composition that allows Anastasio to demonstrate a virtuoso musicianship not typically heard in rock music, even that with a jazz influence. "I've worked harder on this than anything I've done maybe ever," Anastasio, 36, said at a recent rehearsal. Anastasio also has composed his first piece for orchestra, "Guyute," a version of which was recorded by Phish on its 1998 album, "The Story of the Ghost." Working with VYO conductor Troy Peters on the orchestration, Anastasio has created a piece whose sound and energy resonates with the joy he experienced writing it. "The fun thing is I was able to write a lot more parts, which is an interest I've always had," he said. "It's been immensely rewarding and one of the most exciting projects I've worked on in a long time. ... "There are bass lines and piano parts that Page (McConnell) and Mike (Gordon) played that I left in cause I loved them so much. I tried to leave as much of the spirit of Phish as I could." Anastasio has welcomed VYO musicians to his studio, where he listens to their ideas and works out arrangements. He's so enthused by his work with the VYO, he has composed a guitar quintet based on the acoustic "The Inlaw Josie Wales" from Phish's recent CD, "Farmhouse." The ensemble will likely perform the piece as a surprise encore this weekend. Anastasio is so "completely knocked out" by the VYO's version of "Guyute," he proposed an idea to the orchestra last week: He wanted the VYO to open for him on the Northeast leg of his upcoming tour with Burlington musicians Russ Lawton (drums) and Tony Markellis (bass). "If it's something you want to do, I think it would be fabulous," Anastasio said. Though it appears that the VYO will not, after all, be joining Anastasio on tour, the impulse plainly shows the guitarist's current interests. "I'd rather play with the VYO than go to the Grammies," said Anastasio. His song "First Tube," written with Lawton and Markellis, was recently nominated for a Grammy for best rock instrumental. (The trio might perform under the name "The Gramminators.") The musicians in the VYO say that Anastasio, far from being a self-important or detached rock star in their midst, has been a generous and inspiring collaborator. He has brought boundless energy and enthusiasm to the VYO and a seemingly endless supply of ideas. They're impressed by his musicianship, his devotion and ambition, and the fact that he's a flat-out nice guy to be with. (Peters calls him "the most normal guy I know.") "When you have a personal relationship with him, you don't want to interrogate him with questions about his songs or his band or his plans," Post said. "You see how excited he is by what he's doing. The music is what it's about, and Trey's music doesn't seem to have boundaries." The collaboration formed in the fall of 1999 when Peters, who is committed to presenting pieces by Vermont composers, approached Stires about writing for the VYO. Stires suggested he compose a concerto for Anastasio. The two have known each other since the mid-1980s, when Anastasio came to Stires to learn the tools of formal composition. "It's a thrill and a half for the kids to play with Trey," Stires said. "He's a hero of their generation and Vermont's great white hope. I'm (subway) strap-hanging a rock star, just riding along with him." Anastasio's collaboration with the VYO soon expanded to include an orchestral piece by the guitarist, the kind of composing Stires has been encouraging Anastasio to pursue for more than a decade. Stires' own three-movement piece, which he calls "composed jazz," is an atonal, rhythm-driven composition that draws on the influence of swing-era musicians like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. They are the musicians whom Stires, 75, fell in love with as a boy. "I was trying to show (with "Chat Rooms") that Trey is a real musician, which he damn well is, and that he could tackle something of this caliber," Stires said. "Instead of Chop City, which is what rock stars have to play to show off and please the folks, this is a completely composed piece and very, very elaborate for him. And he's cutting it like crazy." That was evident at a rehearsal last Sunday, when Anastasio played a (mostly) improvised cadenza in "The Blue Room," the opening movement of "Chat Rooms." The solo, more than five minutes in length, was a technically proficient and beautifully rendered interpretation of Stires' melody. The performance inspired Peters to remark to his attentive orchestra: "Ladies and gentlemen, Trey Anastasio." The orchestra applauded its soloist, who was playing on a custom-made, hollow body guitar with a picture of Marley, his beloved dog, inlaid on the head. "I thought it was really exciting, very eclectic, with lots of different styles, which is kind of what the whole piece is about," Peters said. "Trey brought some of his own ideas and techniques into the mix, and made his own music built around Ernie's." The musical moment was a snapshot of the full collaboration, which represents both an exciting and innovative project artistically, and a measure of respect and attention unlike any the VYO has received. The concert in Troy, N.Y., sold out through telephone sales in five minutes; tickets to the Burlington concert were gone in a day and half -- unprecedented rates for VYO concerts. "My impression is that it's been a kind of validation of what the kids do here. It gives them a new level of respect," Peters said. "Partly because Trey comes to the table with a tremendous respect for their musicianship, and also because their friends at school wake up and say, 'Wow. You must be doing something really cool.'"