notlob Music presents Rushad Eggeston

notloB Music presents Rushad Eggeston

Tickets on sale September 24.

Thursday, October 9, 8pm

Davis Square Theater

255 Elm Street, Somerville

Legend, clown, goblin, cello-shredder, acrobat. Wild "jazz" vocalist, bundle of laughs, writer of hit songs in other galaxies, Ambassador of Sneth. Inventor of bluegrass cello, time traveler, creator of worlds. Pentecostal dancer, proprietor of igwarfnees, president of Norwegian Ostrich Society, winner of some contest in 1725.

There's more to a Rushad Eggleston show than fantasy, though. His show is a performance, complete with flashy gallivanting, intricate playing, wild storytelling and some of the most unique sounds ever produced on a cello. It isn't chamber music, but it isn't bluegrass, rock or folk music, either. Much like Sneth, it's whatever Eggleston wants it to be... Eggleston isn't just weird for the sake of being weird. [His] playing is dynamic and complex. His right hand bounces from bow to plucking with indefatigable precision and the fingers on his left hand scuttle across his cello's neck like a tarantula jigging it up. The music is upbeat, playful, well-composed and as diverse as Sneth is ever-evolving. Eggleston is constantly developing new cello methods and writing new material... "It's every musician's duty to fill the world music that they wish was in the world," Eggleston said. "It's your job to put that music out there. I'm really just representing a lot of sounds that I like."

Shaun Kittle ~ The Adirondack Daily Enterprise

Rushad Eggleston presents himself as an ambassador from another world, and it can be easy to believe him. Onstage, the cellist and fountain of off-kilter creativity looks like an overgrown elf in his pointed cap and brightly colored stretch-pants. His songs are populated by strange characters and littered with inscrutable neologisms, with story lines sometimes taking place in an imaginary world he playfully calls the Land of Sneth... But behind the boisterous showmanship and dogged weirdness is a natural talent who netted a Grammy nomination while still an undergrad at Berklee College of Music. “It's been rare to find players who can really move around on the cello with a lot of facility in an improvisational way,” says cellist Eugene Friesen, who’s won three Grammy Awards himself ...and taught Eggleston as a faculty member at Berklee. “...It’s thanks to a handful of pioneers who have really been out there trying to push the envelope. And Rushad is one of them."

Jeremy D. Goodwin ~ The Boston Globe