The Goat Rodeo Sessions is a quartet album featuring Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. This ensemble is my new definition of professional. These musicians do not get to perform together everyday, they have not built their careers learning and performing together, and yet they have the uncanny ability to read each other's non-verbal gestures and move fluently and artistically through severally complicated music. Furthermore, they perform with beautiful blend and intonation; I do not remember the last time I marveled at an artist for being in tune, but I did here. This performance is brought to us by way of the fantastic NPR program Tiny Desk Concerts who offer style at a premium and have found the perfect balance of formal and informal.
For the most part, the quartet lets their music speak for them in this performance but the set list contains the songs, Quarter Chicken Dark, Attaboy, and Here and Heaven – which also features the lovely vocalist Aoife O'Donavan. Check out the video, Attaboy showcases some rippin' scale technique across the quartet and each piece also has a really cool way of tossing the melodic theme across each instrument for compositional cohesion as well as listener intrigue. I completely admire everyone involved in this project and cannot recommend highly enough that you keep your ears open anytime anyone from this group has music to play.