Tin Hat Trio
Residence: San Francisco
Style: “Freewheeling chamber music for the 21st century.”
Members: Mark Orton (guitar); Carla Kilhstedt (violin); Rob Burger (keyboards)
By Erik Fong

Stop, collaborate and – okay, okay, sorry
At the core of Tin Hat Trio is an amalgam of contrasting worlds: classical vs. improvisation, the notated boundaries of orchestrated music vs. the uncharted territories in rock. Each song the trio creates is the result of those two contrasting elements fighting, shaking hands, wrestling and taking turns in the spotlight. But like a cook who never eats or a dog that never rolls in its own feces, the pride and joy for the trio comes more from the means rather than the end. “All the projects I find myself in are made up of people whose first intention is the writing and the collaboration,” explains violinist Carla Kilhstedt. “For me, emotional intention is the most important thing, whether it’s a super-sweet melodic passage or a super-aggressive, air-curdling, screaming passage. As long as your emotional intention is clear, then the genres and categories matter less, because hopefully the intention speaks beyond that.”

The great western movement
Raised in Pennsylvania, Carla trekked westward after college with eventual bandmates and Long Island natives, Mark Orton and Rob Burger. “We moved during the ice storms of early ’94,” says Carla. “It hit Tennessee, and there was only one snowplow for the whole state, so we ended up getting holed up in Motel 6s for days on end. The staff had been sent home; they’d just give us a pile of blankets and show us to our room.” Rob and Mark settled in Portland, and Carla moved to San Francisco, where she led a double life as both a disciplined minion of the classical arts and a John Zorn-loving experimental/improvisation aficionado. “San Francisco ended up being a really fertile place for me, because I was coming from this classical world that in some ways was really strict and myopic, and I needed to escape from it in a thorough way.”

Solos
Outside of Tin Hat Trio, all of the members pursue several other projects. Rob and Carla both recently released their own solo albums on John Zorn’s Tzadik label. In addition, Rob worked with guitarist Bill Frisell on the soundtrack to Gary Larson’s animated television special Tales From the Far Side, Mark composes regularly for film and radio, and Carla is a member of the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.

Classical girl gone wild
Carla, who pursued music on the collegiate level at Oberlin in Ohio, got her first taste of improvisation at the age of 15. And it happened at a place where all dreams come true: band camp.

“I went to the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada for a summer,” explains Carla. “They have a jazz program. Some of the staff members were a part of Ensemble Chicago, and there was a piece that involved an improvisation and they needed a violinist. None of the classical musicians would do it, so I jumped at the chance. That was my first time improvising, and it captured my imagination. I went to college and did the classical music thing pretty seriously, but I was living this parallel life to that, doing improvisation and checking out some other approaches to noisemaking.”

Both Rob and Mark grew up appreciating opposite musical worlds as well: Mark’s father was a composer and conductor, and Rob grew up studying piano, but both were involved in Led Zeppelin cover bands and competed in Bill and Ted-like “Battle of the Bands” competitions.

Coming soon
The Trio will head to Germany in early July for a live performance of soundtrack music that the group wrote for silent films by Ladislaw Starewisz, who is credited as “the father of stop motion animation.” Following a United States tour in the fall, the trio will temporarily have two more mouths to feed, as Zena Parkins (harp) and Brian Smith (tuba) will join the threesome to record an album as the “Tin Hat Quintet” in November. Soon to follow – in theory – will be an orchestrated record with guest singers and a live album.

Albums: Rodeo Eroded (2002), Helium (2000), Memory is an Elephant (1999), available through Amazon.com
Website: www.tinhattrio.com