Excerpts from reviews of T. G. Vanini and the Princes of Serendip


    By day, Laurie Kirby is a professor of mathematics at Baruch College in New York City. By night, though, thanks to some mysterious detour on the royal road to geometry, he performs his poetry and music under the nom de perf of T. G. Vanini. But the arts of Euclid and the arts of Yeats are all of a piece to Kirby, who says he's been feeling "more and more" the unity between his disciplines.
    "I've never been satisfied with rational explanations of the connection between math and poetry," says the violinist, whose band, the Princes of Serendip -- featur[es] Don Yacullo on keyboard and Julie Parisi on frame drum and ethereal vocals . . . The work he's doing now, he adds, is "not an explanation, but maybe an embodiment" of that connection.
    Take, for example, a recent sequence of song-poems about trees. "Math is about looking at the world and abstracting out certain structures, and so is poetry," Kirby explains. "So for instance, if you take a tree and cut through it at any point, it falls into two pieces, and that's a mathematical property of a tree. Yet at the same time, a tree resonates poetically, and biologically, and any other way you can relate to a tree . . . [that's] what I'm ruminating on in the tree songs."
    Having caught Kirby's band at the Outloud Festival in Grahamsville on July 4, I can add that whatever math does manifest itself in his music and poetry has more in common with the playfulness of Lewis Carroll than the austerity of Albert Einstein (this, despite Kirby's unruly, Einsteinian shock of white hair). His song-poems limn the richness of both the mortal world and the deathless realm of enchantment, and that magical point at which they intersect: in the visitation of a chickadee, in a lover's "Chinese eyes," in the jewelry surrounding the skull of an ancient Sumerian concubine. Some of the songs have a tipsy Celtic lilt; others, the staccato edginess of Brechtian street songs. The melodies and harmonies are haunting; so, too, the prevailing sense of wistful, tender sadness at the fleeting nature of life and love.
    "The structures with which mathematics deals are more like lace, the leaves of trees, and the play of light and shadow on a meadow or a human face, than they are like buildings and machines, the least of their representatives," wrote Scott Buchanan in his book-length essay, Poetry and Mathematics. He might have been describing the song-poems of T. G. Vanini, aka Laurie Kirby.

-- alm@nac, July 9, 1998

Square root of the Devil's foreskin

You could wind up like the farmer who followed a horse into the fairy circle and suddenly finds himself trying to define enchantment and explain his danced-out shoes. But, oh, this isn't boogie-fever; this is something else entirely, something from a world nowhere near here.

T. G. Vanini, the mysterious gypsy whose violin has an unerring feel for the interdimensional qualities of dust showcasing in manifestation, has released a shimmering hour of song and song-poetry on the new musicians' co-op label, Rose Hill Records. A Shed World Production, the beautifully colorized treatment of the cover photos by John Kleinhans shows that there are definitely artists in residence here....

Sauntering an exquisite sense of irony through slivers of real life and wondrous flights of fantasy, myth and imagination, Vanini displays a quick-fingered and wide-sleeved respect for the nectar of nonsense and extra-rational philosophy in producing this absolute delight of ageless entertainment.

Here, there is no feeling of being patronized by overly deliberate wizards selling Peter Pan shadows to children in adult bodies. Here is a once-in-a-blue-month vault into a consistent otherness of approach that traverses dream landscapes in quest of the silly grail, in the company of a commanding wit who sets his own rules and seems to have more fun using the English language than most of the rest of us.

There's an incidental backgrounding in classical composers who used folk influences in their work, from Mozart to Bartok, and momentary strains of Irish folk in his fiddle, but Vanini's handiwork has its own distinct flavor....

There are scenes dark and gleaming behind fire-lit, wind-dancing foliage, and a stark over-ruling sincerity in this humble and laconically elegant production, which features Julie Parisi, Don Yacullo's piano, Allen Murphy's bass and a pick-up full of other contributors. The backing vocals are powder-thin at times, but suggestive of grander and lustier counter-melodies.

Vanini acknowledges the influence of the Rev. Charles Dodgson, who as Lewis Carroll wrote the children's books most extensively enjoyed by generations of adults. Besides satirist and story-teller, Carroll was a mathematician, as is Vanini's alter ego Laurie Kirby, who's a math professor at Baruch College in Manhattan. (And, we must add, it is not as if mathematicians describe the same sanity that's enjoyed by fishermen.)

Kirby notes that he has heard many theories on the relationship between math and music, and feels the connection but likes the contrast even better. Seeing emotion as key to the contrast, he recalls the passion for math burning within on his way to a Ph.D. and his researches in the philosophical tangles of mathematical logic in search of "the relationship between language and reality, assuming there is such a thing as reality."

And, assuming there was, would we look into mathematics to find that relationship? With a distant look Kirby pauses and answers with a twinkle; "No, but a mathematician might."....

-- Gary Alexander, Woodstock Times, Dec.12, 1996. 

Princes of Serendip put on Royal Show

T. G. Vanini and the Princes of Serendip paid a visit to Rip's Cafe Saturday night.

Although they were disguised as common folk rockers, the animate resonance of musicianship illuminating their eclectic, whimsical repertoire exposed the royalty of their ensemble from the first set.

A fiddler of British origin, Vanini has surfaced among sundry groups in the Hudson valley. His gift for ghosting behind a band and lighting it up is a wee facet of the talent that possesses the man. Wispy and slim, more like a king's wizard than a prince, he is a member of a vanishing species -- half mortal, half instrument -- the music world's equivalent to a centaur, whose play is its elemental force of life.

Although Vanini's violin makes verbal conversations superfluous, what the Princes played mostly gilded his original songs and poetry of fey, cosmos-touching imagery. Julie Parisi was the princess on vocals, Don Yacullo graced the keys and Allen Murphy did the bassline painting....

Electronic keys are like a harpsichord in their flat and single reaction to touch -- still Yacullo drew sing from the lines.

Vanini paints the phrases -- polyphonics and all -- with the encompassing, conversant simplicity that classical fiddlers take years to effect....

-- Kitty Montgomery, Kingston Daily Freeman, Dec. 31, 1996. 

"Growth & Gravity" by T. G. Vanini

**** (out of 5)

...Vanini...sparkles on violin, vocals, synthesizers and piano, not to mention lyrics and composition of these varied and interesting works. His violin work, in particular, is deeply emotional and forceful. While many of the songs rely on sophisticated synthesizer backdrops, there remains an organic, human quality to all of it that may be the most intriguing aspect of this music.

The lyrics are pure poetry, often ambiguous and suggestive in unusual ways. They are imagistic and borderline surreal. While elements of this kind of music are reminiscent of progressive rock of the late 1970s, the classically-derived sound combined with the interesting lyrics gives Vanini's work a timeless quality that may not bring it to record sales charts any time soon, but will likely develop a strong following in the long run.

-- Philip H. Farber, Kingston Daily Freeman, Jan. 3, 1997. The Tuned In To Hudson Valley Music site has the full text of Farber's review. 

Veni, vidi, Vanini

...Charged with Celtic mystery and wonder, Vanini's early lyrics, musically spoken or sung, were conveyed upon an envelopingly mellow interplay of bass and keyboard. Kirby's sharp, faunish features would lean into the microphone to deliver an individual, precisely controlled line before swaying back for separate consideration of the next, all the while melding a seemingly solitary time-sense to the lock of his rhythm's step. Layered over strands of familiar folk melodies that settled into the ear like old friends or joined to boldly embroidered and exquisitely crafted original melodies, Vanini's sublime flights into mists of fantasy in search of "the jewel that changes shape" swept listeners along like a current.

"Blue Stone Shine Blue," "Bright-Eyed Boy," "Chinese Eyes" and "Orchid of Night" featured enchanting violin solos moving from mournful to enticing to exhilarating, while Kirby's well-modulated vocals glided over a convenience of meter, articulating each word with a gleam upon its importance in the line, stringing the lettered gems like fabulous necklaces as rare and bewitching as a Vermeer painting.

Glancing traces of Roy Harper or even Nick Drake are misleading, in that Vanini's style is distinctly his own. To draw analogy to the finer moments of Bread, Love & Dreams or Al Stewart is to do him disservice....

It's about time, we'd say, to draw the curtain from the deeper dimensions of a masterfully entertaining talent. Bravo.

-- Gary Alexander, Woodstock Times, Jan. 18, 1996. 

A shy violinist dropping masks

"Lois and Clark" may have left the TV lineup, but the dual identity phenomenon lives on in the form of one T. G. (The Great) Vanini -- by day, a mild-mannered Englishman and a professor of mathematics who answers to Laurie Kirby; by night, a fiddler and teller of magical tales in the gypsy and Celtic traditions.

Vanini and his Woodstock, N.Y.-based band, the Princes of Serendip (pianist Don Yacullo and vocalist Julie Parisi) will bring their engaging srory-songs to Northampton's Fire & Water Cafe on Saturday....

Vanini said his stage act is "tongue-in-cheek, based on a view of the world as a big joke, or at least a big mystery." But the music itself is no joke, drawing on Vanini's talents and the considerable skill of the classically-trained performers....

-- Julie Melrose, Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, MA), July 1, 1997. 

Music lovers take notice. A transcendental, magical, spiritual evening took place at the aptly named Mystery Cafe in Sheffield (MA). It was an evening of original poetry, beholden to yet not imitative of Yeats, A. A. Milne and Celtic minstrels...

Added reference to Native American and Buddhist imagery was in evidence. The basic keynote of T. G. Vanini's genius is his haunting creative violin, augmented by the brilliant piano of Don Yacullo and enhanced by the angelic backup harmonies of Julie Parisi.

A perfect marriage of word and song... TG's music is as much of the present as it is of time gone by... Catch them when they appear again in the county.

-- Sam Rand, Berkshire Record, June 13-19, 1997. 

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