Time For Three rock out with the New Jersey Symphony in an impactful performance
The New Jersey Symphony presented their much-anticipated collaboration with Time For Three with Kevin Puts’ Contact, the GRAMMY Award-winning composition originally conducted by Music Director Xian Zhang, in three performances in Morristown and Newark on February 26–March 1, which also featured guest conductor Markus Stenz leading the Symphony in Wagner’s Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin and Beethoven’s iconic Fifth Symphony. James C. Taylor of NJ Advance Media was at NJPAC to review the collaboration.
The NJS sounded very much at ease letting Time For Three’s rhythmic, poppy playing take center stage. “Contact” called to mind some of the collaborations Zhang and the Symphony had with Daniel Bernard Roumain a few years back — as did an epic encore where the trio performed a surprise string arrangement of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” Right when they started playing, and you could just detect the melody, a woman screamed out: “Jersey!” ... Then the trio pulled out one more stop, inviting members of the NJ Symphony Youth Orchestra on stage to join them in a new song they’d written as a riff on Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” It was a joyous, youthful, and energetic display of old and new music coming together.
James C. Taylor of NJ Advance Media