The floor seats were filled with eager audience members and excited patrons lined the three-sided perimeters of the mezzanine and loge levels as cellist Yo-Yo Ma, mandolinist/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Thile, fiddler/multi-instrumentalist Stuart Duncan and double bassist Edgar Meyer took to Boston’s House of Blues stage in late January 2012. Five numbers from that unique concert are featured on this exclusive EP, including “Quarter Chicken Dark” and “Here and Heaven” from the Goat Rodeo Sessions album, which birthed this supergroup. Guest vocalist (and proud Beantown native) Aoife O’Donovan reprises her role on the latter, duetting with Thile. The two also sing on the final encore number, a stirring rendition of the Welsh folk song “All Through the Night”. Thile, Ma and Meyer’s crisp trio interpretation of the fourth movement of Bach’s Gamba Sonata No. 1, in turn, is a fitting nod to the cellist and bassist’s formidable standings in the classical community.
