BETHANY & RUFUS Bethany & Rufus are a cello and voice duo that push the boundaries of American roots music far into unexpected territories, sliding seamlessly between groove, world, blues, and traditional folk music -- and when Bethany Yarrow and Rufus Cappadocia join forces on stage they spark a fire-in-the-belly, soul-stirring experience of American roots music that lingers long after the concert ends . As the daughter of folk legend Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary), Bethany Yarrow absorbed much of this music through osmosis in her early childhood, but it's her tour-de-force stage presence, mesmerizing voice and deep knowledge of the material that allows her to turn these songs inside out and find their less explored, enchanted underside. Rufus Cappadocia is renowned for his cross cultural collaborations, taking the cello into previously unexplored realms. Cappadocia has collaborated with a wide spectrum of world music artists, and through his work with West African, Haitian Voudou and Arabic Music his unique musical voice traces the lineage of American music back to its root sources. In January 2007 Bethany & Rufus released their debut record '900 Miles' on Hyena Records. The press was universally positive. The UK Guardian called the CD "Intensely musical... a splash of sunlight between the grey cracks of mediated culture"; others called the disc "incredibly rich" -- Jazz Times; "inventive and haunting" -- Buffalo News; "intimate and of great beauty" -- Geotheque; and "transcendent" -- Le Nouvel Observateur. For the duo, it was a great triumph... not just personally, but for the genre of folk music. "It was so rewarding to get folk music out of the box of the usual expectation of voice and strummed guitar and turn a whole other kind of audience on to these old songs.", says Rufus. "It was like putting American folk music back into the context of the folkloric traditions of the world." Other recent projects have included two specials for PBS, "The Spirit of Woodstock" and "The Peter Yarrow Sing A Long Special" (with Noel Stookey, Keb Mo, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Billy Jonas), as well as a CD of children's songs with Peter Yarrow called Puff and Other Family Classics. The duo is currently back in the studio working on their next studio album with their expanded group, called the Bethany & Rufus Roots Project, (slated for release on Daqui Records in 2013). "There's a spirit and history alive inside the music we're making," says Bethany. "It's like there is something else that is pushing us along -- something that needs to be done and wants to be heard. There is a very beautiful and magical element of destiny in all this. It is awe inspiring to walk this road of folk music and follow the voices of your ancestors."She laughs, "It definitely keeps us honest and humble!" ******************** MORE ABOUT BETHANY YARROW: "Bethany Yarrow is the daughter of Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary, and so we might expect that she'd have a sense of the folk tradition, but what she does with and to that tradition is nothing short of brilliant. Her voice is rich, dark, and true... and it cuts right through to express all that the music needs... She has the rhythmic sensibility and depth of feeling to call forth the jazz and blues tradition and the breadth of textures to take a listener around the world. Yarrow's voice is stark and powerful, feeling both informed by years of tradition and yet brand new." -- Donald Elfman, All About Jazz Every now and then, an artist comes along who defies one's ability to classify them as they transcend labels, genres, and expectations. Bethany Yarrow is the epitome of such an artist as she mesmerizes music lovers across the board. With a voice chock full of soul, power and emotion; she reaches straight into the heart of the listener, transporting them to a place where there is no difference between the past and the present and which "genre" she belongs to ceases to matter. But if you ask her, she will say that she is, first and foremost, a folk musician... "Folk music is like a train that you get on," says Bethany. "If you let it, it will take you on the most amazing journey... across time, across continents, across cultures. It is the music that roots me -- the ground from which I grow -- but that doesn't mean that I have to stay in one place. It means that I can explore and incorporate the other musics of the world without losing sight of where I come from..." Although she released her debut CD "Rock Island" on the Little Monster label to critical acclaim in January 2004, Bethany is best known as one half of the dynamic duo Bethany & Rufus that she formed with world renowned cellist Rufus Cappadocia. "In 1999 I heard Rufus playing at The Knitting Factory in NYC," recounts Bethany. "I thought he was an incredible musician and I needed a bass player for a gig. He told me that I should hire him and I told him he was hired and that was that. Eventually, we started working together on all kinds of duo experimentations. The combination of cello and voice was so simple, real and beautiful that we started to just focus on that. Really, the duo formation took us both by surprise." As the daughter of a folk icon, Bethany grew up surrounded not only by folk music, but also deeply influenced by her father's belief in music as a way of bringing people together -- of reaching into their hearts and dissolving prejudices to create a common humanity. Some of her earliest childhood memories are of marches and rallies... of people singing together in an open hearted way that is unusual in today's world. But Bethany, although always involved in social and political activism, wasn't always interested in pursuing traditional music. Instead, she fled the folk earnestness preferring the downtown punk clubs of CBGBs and Danceteria. For several years, Bethany actually abandoned music altogether and began a career as a documentary filmmaker. In between her junior and senior years at college, she was awarded a fellowship to go to South Africa to make a documentary about the women in the townships outside of Cape Town. What emerged was the award-winning film, "Mama Awethu!," which aired nationally on PBS and won numerous awards at film festivals around the world including the Sundance, Berlin, Human Rights Watch, and Bombay Film Festivals. Although Bethany put film making aside many years ago, she recently revisited to her cinematic roots to help with the filming of the feature documentary "The Grandmothers Speak: For the Next 7 Generations" a film about the Council of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers (for which she and Rufus also contributed to the film score). ...But whether she is performing music or making films, one thing is clear: Bethany Yarrow has proven herself to be compelling, compassionate, and a force with which to be reckoned for a long time to come. ******************** MORE ABOUT RUFUS CAPPADOCIA: "I've studied a lot of different musical vocabularies," Rufus Cappadocia explains. "And I've played with musicians literally from around the world. But, in the end, music all comes down to a single source. You can be pulled this way or that, but essentially it all converges on the same location. Every doorway leads back to one place." He pauses before adding with a laugh, "I guess you could say my whole life has been an attempt at getting to that place." Meet cellist Rufus Cappadocia, a multi-lingual musician, performer, composer and recording artist of incredible range and diversity. From the modalities of Middle Eastern, West African and pan-European folk forms to blues, rock and jazz along the way, adding elements American roots, Mediterranean textures, and Caribbean percussion for good measure, Cappadocia's effortless and natural embrace of all music is awe-inspiring. A native of Hamilton, Ontario, Cappadocia picked up his first cello at the age of three, but to call him a prodigy is to miss the point. "I've always had a problematic relationship with my instrument," he muses. "It's been the essential means of expression for me, but the standard career paths it can lead you down leave a lot to be desired." Cappadocia realized early on that the strictures of classical music couldn't come close to capturing the soaring sounds he heard in his head. "The first time I ever heard a walking bass line, something stirred deep inside. When I heard B.B. King's 'The Thrill Is Gone' for the first time, I actually wept. It was like suddenly discovering that I hadn't been alone all that time." Cappadocia moved to Montreal to attend McGill University, where he found the ethno-musicology section in the library, discovering everything from the Pygmy chants of the West African rain forest to vintage Bulgarian folk recordings. "It was a tremendously productive time," he enthuses. "I was learning Hendrix and Coltrane riffs note-for-note. I got deeply in the city's progressive jazz scene and developed and built a solid-body five string electric cello, so I could hold my own with other electric instruments. Eventually I'd hook it up to a battery powered amp and play on the streets and in the subway stations." Leaving school, Cappadocia relocated to Europe, where his busking landed him in Southern France and, eventually, Spain, where he was first exposed to the mix of Romish and Arabic influences that reached their apotheosis in Flamenco. "I used it all," he says. "The slapping techniques on the guitar; the way the dance steps carried the rhythms. It was all part of a search for something, even if I didn't know exactly what I was looking for." That search would subsequently lead him to New York where he set up a more or less permanent base, intent, in his words, "on playing with as many different musicians as I could. If my travels had taught me anything, it was the value of playing with other artists." In short order Cappadocia joined the multi-faceted jazz ensemble, The Paradox Trio, though the nomadic artist was embraced by virtually every artist and musical community he sought out, including such widely assorted musicians as Celtic pioneer Seamus Eagan and master Haitian drummer "Bonga" Jean-Baptiste with the Vodou Drums of Haiti; musical polymath Ross Daly, who was instrumental in introducing Cappadocia to Middle Eastern and Balkan music; Vishal Vaid, a virtuoso Indian Ghazal vocalist and guitarist David Fiuczynski, with whom he formed the Eastern Modal fusion group, Kif. Add to this list such marquee names as Aretha Franklin, Odetta, Cheick Tidiane Seck, and Vernon Reid, former guitarist of Living Color -- all of whom Cappadocia has worked with -- and his reputation as a world-class artist with a world-spanning musical reach makes perfect sense. And, like that list, it's a reputation that continues to grow as the cellist forges new alliances in the most unlikely musical domains. Which, in the final analysis, is the whole point. "I look back on everything I've been doing for the last twenty years," Cappadocia concludes, "and can see the way it's all linked and how it circles back to the beginning. With Songs For Cello, I've returned to solo performance again. It's all live, with an emphasis on the intuitive. Those are the things I've learned how to do through all my explorations and collaborations. Even as I've incorporated these experiences, it brings me back to the basics and it's the same with the music. Eastern modal traditions; Hendrix riffs; the blues and folk music; it's all one source that you keep tapping into in different ways." It's a lifelong quest that had made Rufus Cappadocia a master of music's universal language, in all its astounding diversity. Cappadocia plays a five-string cello and an eight-string quartertone guitar, both of his own design. He performs regularly with the Bethany and Rufus Roots Quartet (USA / Niger / Haiti), Bonga Jean-Baptiste's Vodou Drums of Haiti (Haiti), Peter Bethany & Rufus (USA) Ilham featuring Gaida Hinawi (Syria), Vishal Vaid Ghazal Ensemble (India), Paradox Trio (USA / Macedonia) and Stellamara (USA) as well as his Unacompanied Solo Performances.

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BETHANY & RUFUS

Bethany & Rufus are a cello and voice duo that push the boundaries of American roots music far into unexpected territories, sliding seamlessly between groove, world, blues, and traditional folk music -- and when Bethany Yarrow and Rufus Cappadocia join forces on stage they spark a fire-in-the-belly, soul-stirring experience of American roots music that lingers long after the concert ends .

As the daughter of folk legend Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary), Bethany Yarrow absorbed much of this music through osmosis in her early childhood, but it's her tour-de-force stage presence, mesmerizing voice and deep knowledge of the material that allows her to turn these songs inside out and find their less explored, enchanted underside. Rufus Cappadocia is renowned for his cross cultural collaborations, taking the cello into previously unexplored realms. Cappadocia has collaborated with a wide spectrum of world music artists, and through his work with West African, Haitian Voudou and Arabic Music his unique musical voice traces the lineage of American music back to its root sources.

In January 2007 Bethany & Rufus released their debut record '900 Miles' on Hyena Records. The press was universally positive. The UK Guardian called the CD "Intensely musical... a splash of sunlight between the grey cracks of mediated culture"; others called the disc "incredibly rich" -- Jazz Times; "inventive and haunting" -- Buffalo News; "intimate and of great beauty" -- Geotheque; and "transcendent" -- Le Nouvel Observateur. For the duo, it was a great triumph... not just personally, but for the genre of folk music. "It was so rewarding to get folk music out of the box of the usual expectation of voice and strummed guitar and turn a whole other kind of audience on to these old songs.", says Rufus. "It was like putting American folk music back into the context of the folkloric traditions of the world."

Other recent projects have included two specials for PBS, "The Spirit of Woodstock" and "The Peter Yarrow Sing A Long Special" (with Noel Stookey, Keb Mo, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Billy Jonas), as well as a CD of children's songs with Peter Yarrow called Puff and Other Family Classics. The duo is currently back in the studio working on their next studio album with their expanded group, called the Bethany & Rufus Roots Project, (slated for release on Daqui Records in 2013). "There's a spirit and history alive inside the music we're making," says Bethany. "It's like there is something else that is pushing us along -- something that needs to be done and wants to be heard. There is a very beautiful and magical element of destiny in all this. It is awe inspiring to walk this road of folk music and follow the voices of your ancestors."She laughs, "It definitely keeps us honest and humble!"

********************

MORE ABOUT BETHANY YARROW:

"Bethany Yarrow is the daughter of Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary, and so we might expect that she'd have a sense of the folk tradition, but what she does with and to that tradition is nothing short of brilliant. Her voice is rich, dark, and true... and it cuts right through to express all that the music needs... She has the rhythmic sensibility and depth of feeling to call forth the jazz and blues tradition and the breadth of textures to take a listener around the world. Yarrow's voice is stark and powerful, feeling both informed by years of tradition and yet brand new." -- Donald Elfman, All About Jazz

Every now and then, an artist comes along who defies one's ability to classify them as they transcend labels, genres, and expectations. Bethany Yarrow is the epitome of such an artist as she mesmerizes music lovers across the board. With a voice chock full of soul, power and emotion; she reaches straight into the heart of the listener, transporting them to a place where there is no difference between the past and the present and which "genre" she belongs to ceases to matter.

But if you ask her, she will say that she is, first and foremost, a folk musician... "Folk music is like a train that you get on," says Bethany. "If you let it, it will take you on the most amazing journey... across time, across continents, across cultures. It is the music that roots me -- the ground from which I grow -- but that doesn't mean that I have to stay in one place. It means that I can explore and incorporate the other musics of the world without losing sight of where I come from..."

Although she released her debut CD "Rock Island" on the Little Monster label to critical acclaim in January 2004, Bethany is best known as one half of the dynamic duo Bethany & Rufus that she formed with world renowned cellist Rufus Cappadocia. "In 1999 I heard Rufus playing at The Knitting Factory in NYC," recounts Bethany. "I thought he was an incredible musician and I needed a bass player for a gig. He told me that I should hire him and I told him he was hired and that was that. Eventually, we started working together on all kinds of duo experimentations. The combination of cello and voice was so simple, real and beautiful that we started to just focus on that. Really, the duo formation took us both by surprise."

As the daughter of a folk icon, Bethany grew up surrounded not only by folk music, but also deeply influenced by her father's belief in music as a way of bringing people together -- of reaching into their hearts and dissolving prejudices to create a common humanity. Some of her earliest childhood memories are of marches and rallies... of people singing together in an open hearted way that is unusual in today's world. But Bethany, although always involved in social and political activism, wasn't always interested in pursuing traditional music. Instead, she fled the folk earnestness preferring the downtown punk clubs of CBGBs and Danceteria.

For several years, Bethany actually abandoned music altogether and began a career as a documentary filmmaker. In between her junior and senior years at college, she was awarded a fellowship to go to South Africa to make a documentary about the women in the townships outside of Cape Town. What emerged was the award-winning film, "Mama Awethu!," which aired nationally on PBS and won numerous awards at film festivals around the world including the Sundance, Berlin, Human Rights Watch, and Bombay Film Festivals.

Although Bethany put film making aside many years ago, she recently revisited to her cinematic roots to help with the filming of the feature documentary "The Grandmothers Speak: For the Next 7 Generations" a film about the Council of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers (for which she and Rufus also contributed to the film score).

...But whether she is performing music or making films, one thing is clear: Bethany Yarrow has proven herself to be compelling, compassionate, and a force with which to be reckoned for a long time to come.

********************

MORE ABOUT RUFUS CAPPADOCIA:

"I've studied a lot of different musical vocabularies," Rufus Cappadocia explains. "And I've played with musicians literally from around the world. But, in the end, music all comes down to a single source. You can be pulled this way or that, but essentially it all converges on the same location. Every doorway leads back to one place." He pauses before adding with a laugh, "I guess you could say my whole life has been an attempt at getting to that place." Meet cellist Rufus Cappadocia, a multi-lingual musician, performer, composer and recording artist of incredible range and diversity. From the modalities of Middle Eastern, West African and pan-European folk forms to blues, rock and jazz along the way, adding elements American roots, Mediterranean textures, and Caribbean percussion for good measure, Cappadocia's effortless and natural embrace of all music is awe-inspiring.

A native of Hamilton, Ontario, Cappadocia picked up his first cello at the age of three, but to call him a prodigy is to miss the point. "I've always had a problematic relationship with my instrument," he muses. "It's been the essential means of expression for me, but the standard career paths it can lead you down leave a lot to be desired." Cappadocia realized early on that the strictures of classical music couldn't come close to capturing the soaring sounds he heard in his head. "The first time I ever heard a walking bass line, something stirred deep inside. When I heard B.B. King's 'The Thrill Is Gone' for the first time, I actually wept. It was like suddenly discovering that I hadn't been alone all that time."

Cappadocia moved to Montreal to attend McGill University, where he found the ethno-musicology section in the library, discovering everything from the Pygmy chants of the West African rain forest to vintage Bulgarian folk recordings. "It was a tremendously productive time," he enthuses. "I was learning Hendrix and Coltrane riffs note-for-note. I got deeply in the city's progressive jazz scene and developed and built a solid-body five string electric cello, so I could hold my own with other electric instruments. Eventually I'd hook it up to a battery powered amp and play on the streets and in the subway stations."

Leaving school, Cappadocia relocated to Europe, where his busking landed him in Southern France and, eventually, Spain, where he was first exposed to the mix of Romish and Arabic influences that reached their apotheosis in Flamenco. "I used it all," he says. "The slapping techniques on the guitar; the way the dance steps carried the rhythms. It was all part of a search for something, even if I didn't know exactly what I was looking for."

That search would subsequently lead him to New York where he set up a more or less permanent base, intent, in his words, "on playing with as many different musicians as I could. If my travels had taught me anything, it was the value of playing with other artists." In short order Cappadocia joined the multi-faceted jazz ensemble, The Paradox Trio, though the nomadic artist was embraced by virtually every artist and musical community he sought out, including such widely assorted musicians as Celtic pioneer Seamus Eagan and master Haitian drummer "Bonga" Jean-Baptiste with the Vodou Drums of Haiti; musical polymath Ross Daly, who was instrumental in introducing Cappadocia to Middle Eastern and Balkan music; Vishal Vaid, a virtuoso Indian Ghazal vocalist and guitarist David Fiuczynski, with whom he formed the Eastern Modal fusion group, Kif.

Add to this list such marquee names as Aretha Franklin, Odetta, Cheick Tidiane Seck, and Vernon Reid, former guitarist of Living Color -- all of whom Cappadocia has worked with -- and his reputation as a world-class artist with a world-spanning musical reach makes perfect sense. And, like that list, it's a reputation that continues to grow as the cellist forges new alliances in the most unlikely musical domains.

Which, in the final analysis, is the whole point. "I look back on everything I've been doing for the last twenty years," Cappadocia concludes, "and can see the way it's all linked and how it circles back to the beginning. With Songs For Cello, I've returned to solo performance again. It's all live, with an emphasis on the intuitive. Those are the things I've learned how to do through all my explorations and collaborations. Even as I've incorporated these experiences, it brings me back to the basics and it's the same with the music. Eastern modal traditions; Hendrix riffs; the blues and folk music; it's all one source that you keep tapping into in different ways."

It's a lifelong quest that had made Rufus Cappadocia a master of music's universal language, in all its astounding diversity.

Cappadocia plays a five-string cello and an eight-string quartertone guitar, both of his own design. He performs regularly with the Bethany and Rufus Roots Quartet (USA / Niger / Haiti), Bonga Jean-Baptiste's Vodou Drums of Haiti (Haiti), Peter Bethany & Rufus (USA) Ilham featuring Gaida Hinawi (Syria), Vishal Vaid Ghazal Ensemble (India), Paradox Trio (USA / Macedonia) and Stellamara (USA) as well as his Unacompanied Solo Performances.

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