The hills are still alive ... but with a pop spin
Classics are there, with some original songs
When your last name is von Trapp, people assume Do Re Mi is in your DNA.
Sofia von Trapp, the 25-yearold great granddaughter of Captain Georg and Agatha von Trapp, along with her siblings Melanie (24), Amanda (23) and August von Trapp (20) can all carry a note with ease. But the musical gene skipped a generation.
“Our parents really can’t sing at all, not a note,” Sofia said. “In truth, we really never had any pressure to follow in the family footsteps, either.”
The children were generations removed from the legacy of the Trapp Family Singers immortalized in the smash hit 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and 1965 movie The Sound of Music. Climb every mountain in Montana and you’re unlikely to encounter any edelweiss.
But the four learned classic Austrian folk songs through their grandfather Werner (a.k.a. the character Kurt in the movie). Once the quartet’s ability to harmonize and belt out the classics became clear, it was inevitable they would continue in the family way.
“We had no plans to wind up recording or become professionals,” Sofia says. “But when our grandfather suffered a stroke, we did a recording of us singing the folk songs he’d taught us because it made him happy to hear it, and then someone else heard it and things took off.”
The von Trapps have been singing together for 14 years now. Growing up touring the world and singing to people on five continents, the group realized how much The Sound of Music and the family story had affected people.
Performing those musical classics became some of the group’s favourite things, playing in such famed locales as Carnegie Hall, Grand Ole Opry, Sydney Opera House, Beijing’s Forbidden City and, of course, TV’s Oprah!
Expanding its set list as the group’s a cappella versions of everything from the Rwandan national anthem (Rwanda Nziza) to music by Brahms and other classical composers kept things interesting. Yet, these were young adults ready to go to college and expand their horizons. They needed to take some time off.
“We had one of our last shows with the Oregon Symphony and after ward had a few free days, and were looking for things to do and someone asked if we would like to come sing with Pink Martini at the city’s annual Christmas tree lighting,” Sofia says. “We didn’t know who they were, only that the leader of the band’s guilty pleasure is Lonely Goatherd. We did that with them and a lot of others all fell in love with each other and wound up touring and recording with them.”
The result was 2014’s Dream A Little Dream CD with Pink Martini backing the family on everything from Abba’s Fernando to tangos and a trio of originals penned by August von Trapp. The experience inspired the group to move to Portland and go to work producing its recently released EP Dancing in Gold. Produced by Blind Pilot’s Israel Nebeker, the release is the first of three scheduled to introduce the world to the von Trapps v.2 — a hard-harmonizing dream pop band in the spirit of such present hipster faves as Fleet Foxes, Sufjan Stevens and everyone’s classic rock act to name-drop if you’re under 30, The Beach Boys.
“It feels really great to be out there singing August’s originals and doing something that is all our own,” Sofia says. “We were never going to be that Sound of Music group, not that they aren’t beautiful songs, because we sing in 10 languages, have studied serious classical works and always wanted a really huge repertoire. What’s interesting about venturing into this more folk/indie genre is that we are four really strong singers who harmonize so naturally that it just finds its way into whatever we do.”
OK, that might be the DNA. Sofia says the show ventures from their originals to a Hebrew lullabye or a French folksong set to bongos and — duh — some Sound of Music numbers — but they just might be in Japanese.
“There is so much variety and harmonic complexity mixed into the show with this indie/folk thing and then a global pop approach that it’s bizarre and also so cool,” she says.
“It feels really great to be out there singing … doing something that is all our own.”
— Sofia von Trapp