Phish out of water February 1, 2001 - Albany Times-Union (Pg. 20) by Greg Haymes Vermont Youth Orchestra to debut work by jam-band guitarist Trey Anastasio Paul McCartney has done it. So have Billy Joel and Joe Jackson. Now, it's Trey Anastasio's turn to make the leap into the world of classical music. On Friday night at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, the Vermont Youth Orchestra will perform the world premiere of the Phish guitarist's first orchestral composition, ''Guyute.'' ''It's so exciting,'' Anastasio gushes. ''I can't tell you what a great four months I've had working with these young musicians. It's been a big learning experience for me.'' Phish fans will certainly recognize ''Guyute'' as the title of an eight-minute song on the band's 1998 album, ''The Story of the Ghost.'' But that's not the same ''Guyute'' that will be heard in Troy on Friday. The new incarnation incorporates music from the original ''Guyute'' and another Phish song, ''My Friend, My Friend'' from the '93 album ''Rift.'' ''If you know those songs, you'll recognize huge stretches of the music,'' explains Troy Peters, the music director and the conductor of the Vermont Youth Orchestra, ''but there will also be sections that sound completely new. It ended up evolving into quite a new piece, his first real symphonic composition.'' Anastasio wrote the two component songs around the same time, during a 1982 trip to County Cork in Ireland. ''They ended up on different albums several years apart, but they both came from a common source,'' says Peters, who collaborated with Anastasio on the orchestration of the new work. ''This was an opportunity for Trey to kind of put them back together and explore the relationship between them.'' The piece will be played by the Vermont Youth Orchestra, a Burlington-based ensemble of 85 student musicians spanning grades 8-12. ''It's amazing to hear how good these kids are,'' Anastasio says. ''That's really the main thing. 'Guyute' is a big, 11-minute piece, and there's some really fast, ripping parts in it. When I went in the first day, put the charts down, counted it off, and they sight-read the whole thing -- boom! I was completely floored.'' A 'great ear': Anastasio ''has got a great ear for the orchestra,'' Peters says. ''While we were working on it, I'd say something like, 'Well, this is the bass line that Mike (Gordon, Phish's bassist) plays on the Phish recording.' And he'd say, 'Yes, but why don't we go in a new direction with that? Can we take it and do this with it?' Or I'd say, 'This is the guitar part that you played here.' And he'd say, 'Yeah, well, this is an orchestra now, so what can we do with that?' ''I spent two or three months orchestrating 'Guyute,' starting the last couple of weeks of the Phish tour, just sitting in the lounge on the tour bus,'' Anastasio recalls. ''I had a three-level process,'' Anastasio says of his first foray into orchestration. ''I used my imagination as much as possible. After I wrote out a bunch of stuff on the piano, I played it with a synthesizer, so I could hear a vague idea of whether I was in the ballpark or not. And then I was lucky enough to get to work with Troy for two or three weeks, working on it together. ''He gave me piles and piles of knowledge, things like if you have all of these strings playing at the same time, then you're not going to hear the bass line unless you double it with a bassoon. Things that I just wouldn't know. ''Of course, I had to hand in the parts months before the performance, which was an interesting experience -- because then it's really out of your hands. I'm not used to that.'' Anastasio won't be performing ''Guyute'' with the orchestra, however. ''Trey's piece is a purely orchestral work with no guitar parts. It's a piece that could be played by any standard symphony orchestra,'' Peters points out, noting that there have already been inquiries from several other orchestras concerning the piece. But fans can expect Anastasio to strap on his guitar to play with the orchestra during several other world-premiere performances on the program, including ''Chat Rooms'' -- penned by Anastasio's compositional mentor, Ernest Stires -- and ''Samson Riffs,'' a collaborative piece by Anastasio, Stires and Peters. ''Chat Rooms'' is a three-movement concerto for electric guitar and orchestra. ''Ernie's music is sort of a middle ground between 20th-century classical styles and Big Band swing. There's a lot of Swing-era rhythmic influences, but the language is a little closer to the sounds of classical music,'' says Peters, who is currently in his sixth season with the VYO. The history of ''Samson Riffs'' is considerably more convoluted. Stires originally wrote a piece called ''Samson Riff'' several years ago, which Peters describes as ''kind of a Louis Jordan-style jump tune.'' With Stires on piano and Anastasio on guitar, the song was recorded on Stires' '97 album, ''Samson Riffs: The Music of Ernie Stires.'' Later, Anastasio wrote a variation on the tune for brass instruments, which he retitled ''At the Barbecue'' and included on his '98 solo album, ''One Man's Trash.'' The collaborative ''Samson Riffs'' debuting at the Music Hall fuses the two together. ''We took Ernie's piece, added Trey's variation, and then I wrote a little sort of finale that includes a new variation that I wrote along with their music coming back all together so it gets layered on top of each other there at the end,'' Peters explains. The VYO program -- which will be repeated at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vt., at 3 p.m. Sunday -- also features the work of such classical composers as Samuel Barber, Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel. Classroom project: Anastasio's apprenticeship with Stires began when the guitarist was a student at the University of Vermont, and has continued throughout the years. Stires, in fact, served as the catalyst to bringing the VYO and Anastasio together. ''The Vermont Youth Orchestra has a long-standing relationship with Vermont classical composers,'' Peters says. ''Almost two years ago, I talked to Ernest Stires about maybe writing something for the orchestra. As we talked, he came up with the idea of perhaps writing a concerto for Trey to play with the orchestra. ''So I approached Trey with that idea, as well as possibly having him write something himself for the orchestra. Frankly, it was just really good timing, because it was exactly the time that he thought that was something that he might like to do.'' With Phish on an open-ended hiatus since October, Anastasio was eager to dive into the project. The creative process actually began last summer, when small groups of VYO musicians would go to Anastasio's recording studio. ''They sat together for a while and improvised, so that Trey could explore their playing style and get to know them,'' Peters recalls. ''Then he built some of those ideas into the orchestral piece as we were working on it; there are a couple of spots during 'Guyute' that are taken straight from those sessions.'' ''I had the leaders of each section meet at the studio, and I would put out the charts and we'd start playing. Then I'd just ask for suggestions,'' says Anastasio. ''I'd say, 'Is there any way that we could make this sound cooler?' That's the way I'm used to working with other musicians. Some of the musicians were a bit reluctant, but a lot of them really got into it.'' The extended rehearsal period with the musicians allowed Anastasio the opportunity to experiment with the orchestra -- a perk most classical composers are rarely afforded. ''Usually, if you write for a professional orchestra, you put the piece together in advance and give it to the orchestra two days before the concert,'' says Peters. ''With us, it was a real collaborative process, and he worked with our kids over the summer, and they were able to rehearse the material for three or four months. There was time for him to get to know the players and to tailor the piece to their strengths.'' Next up on Anastasio's calendar is a tour with drummer Russ Lawton and Saratoga Springs bassist Tony Markellis and a young horn section of VYO alumni. The tour begins on Wednesday, Feb. 21, and Anastasio promises to be playing a lot of new material that he's been writing. But the guitarist is also eager to flex his newfound symphonic muscles as well. ''I've got some offers to do some more orchestral work with other orchestras during the next year, and I'm really excited about that,'' he says. ''It's just such an amazing opportunity for me.'' On Friday night, Anastasio embarks on a new adventure, and so too does the Vermont Youth Orchestra. ''Musically, this is a new horizon for us,'' Peters says with obvious enthusiasm. ''It's the biggest risk that we've taken musically, and it's paying off incredibly. This is an exciting new direction.'' FACTS:NEW WATERS THE VERMONT YOUTH ORCHESTRA Featuring Trey Anastasio When: 8 p.m. Friday Where: The Troy Savings Bank Music, State and Second streets, Troy Tickets: $ 35 Info: 273-0038