House Concerts: De Temps Antans and Lisa Ornstein with Dan Compton (12/10 & 12/17)

It wasn't until I arrived at Abbie's house that I realized her house concerts are the perfect community meal event.  About two years ago, one of Brett's fiddle classmates had our friend Matias build a stage for her living room and began hosting traditional music concerts occasionally.  She now hosts concerts every couple months and they are preceded by a potluck dinner. 

This month's concert featured De Temps Antans, a group from Quebec specializing in Old Timey music.  They were like a comedy routine to watch - it was by far the most entertaining and fun concert I've been to in a long time!  I think everyone bought both CDs in an effort to bring the spirit home with them, but what we really needed was a live recording to capture their energy and humor.  Or we need them to move out here.

The potluck was a great lead-in.  Abbie and family had prepared a zippy Thai dish that was delicious and everyone else filled in around that with good cheeses, homemade bread, salads and cookies.  Any pot luck is well worth it to me when people bring homemade foods and the house concert guests came through with shining colors.

One week after the concert at Abbie's we attended a concert at Scott Killops' house by Brett's fiddle teacher, Dan Compton, and the outstanding Québécoise-turned-Portlander fiddle player, Lisa Ornstein.  Dan pointed out she was a real Portlander now because her footboard (the piece of wood traditional musicians stomp on with their feet for percussion) was made of bamboo.  Lisa and Dan were in some ways the opposite of De Temps Antan.  Their music was technically outstanding - their finger work floored me at times - and their introductions to the music were very educational.  Their performance style was much straighter and more serious than De Temps Antan.

Scott's house was a beautiful, large place on Mt. Tabor - the views from his neighborhood must be priceless.  There was less focus on the potluck side of things for this concert - in fact I wanted to invite the Club, but I couldn't figure out if there would be a dinner or not, a critical criteria for the PDX Community Dinner Club.  It turned out that there was a snacky dinner and some tasty homemade cookies.  The star dish of the evening was a traditional Quebec dish called a Tourtière.  Lisa made it herself using her family recipe.  It's a seasoned meat pie - she used pork and beef seasoned with rosemary and a long list of other spices.

For the next potluck house concert I'll make sure to send out a notice to the club so more of us can attend.  It's a great way to share a meal and spend an evening!