Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Monastic Music Mingles With Modern
Trillium Salon Series co-creator Katy Henriksen’s concept for the small, intimate performances — often held in unexpected venues — was to make classical music more accessible to audiences who might otherwise be intimidated by the conventional, formal nature of the concerts.
That concept dovetails perfectly with the ethos of guitarist Tashi Dorji, who will be headlining an acoustic set Sunday at the Matt Miller Studio in downtown Fayetteville. University of Arkansas musician Haley Bowman will open the concert with a solo upright bass performance.
Dorji frequently uses the word “democratic” to describe the improvisational nature of his music.
“I see more accessible, more dialogical music, that’s more democratic, when it’s put in an environment where the audience and performer is less divided,” he says of Trillium’s efforts to blur the lines between audience and performer. “Improvised music is more of a collective interactive. It’s emotive. You feed off the energy and environment and physicality — everything that surrounds you affects how you play.”
Dorji is based in Asheville, N.C., though he originally hails from Bhutan. A self-taught musician, he says that the cultural music he grew up with steered him toward his current path.
“I come from a culture where the music is very monastic,” he says. “A lot of that music is improvised. There are obviously words and chants that are pretty ancient, and it’s been codified in some ways, but there’s no such thing as ‘theory of music’ for that. So I grew up around this, where there’s always a sense of improvisation in traditional music, both in monastic and other folk music.”
Moving to the United States contributed to his musical evolution, he says. “Eventually, I started hearing free jazz — people like John Coltrane — and a lot of that music reminded me of monastic music: big horns and big drums and a big mass of sound that is very elevating. It didn’t alienate me — instead, it made sense.”