Two Star Symphony Releases Titus Andronicus, This Weekend

This coming Saturday (August 6th) sees a cool event featuring a band I’ve desperately wanted to check out for a long, long time now, since way back when I heard amazing things from a fellow writer about their performances with the Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre…

I’m talking about {Two Star Symphony}, the instrumental outfit that manages to A) be both avant-garde and awesomely unpretentious and B) blow any attempts at genre classification right out of the water. They’re mostly in the classical realm — with two violins, a viola, and a cello, it’d be hard not to be, I think — but they also pull in all kinds of folk/gypsy music influences, crazy No Wave-esque noise, and older, almost medieval-sounding themes. It’s an incredible mishmash of sounds, and it works better than you could ever expect it to, seriously.

Back to the actual event; the reason I’m mentioning these folks is because on Saturday at the Divergence Music & Arts studio (which is located in Spring Street Studios, at 1824 Spring St., in the old First Ward area), they’ll be releasing their brand-new CD, Titus Andronicus. The album’s actually an original score the Symphony did for a production of the often-overlooked Shakespearean tragedy done not too long ago by the Dominic Walsh Dance Theatre, and while I unfortunately didn’t get to see the actual ballet performance (how do you kill that many people while dancing, I wonder?), TSS will be doing two full performances of the score, one at 8PM and one at 10PM.

Apparently the venue a fairly intimate one, so only 85 people can fit in there for each show — get your tickets early via the band’s Website, for a measly $10. Along with the music, there’ll also be tattooing going on, courtesy of artist Antone Pham of Texas Tattoo Emporium; you can get your very own Two Star Symphony tattoo, and if you’re a lucky fan, you might get it for free, courtesy of Pham, since Pham’s giving away two tattoos that night. Plus, out in front will be the Tie-Dye Taco cart, in case you get hungry.

Jerry Ochoa of TSS was kind enough to swing by and drop off a copy of Titus Andronicus, btw, and it’s pretty mindblowingly cool. I’ll admit that Titus isn’t my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, but I’m liking the often-creepy, unsettling vibe of the whole thing; it fits perfectly with the dark, murky, ridiculously violent events of the play itself. Look for a “real” review soon…