Lakeport >> The frittata is a dish best served warm. Eggs are mixed with whatever the chef has in his fridge that day, to form a delicious, albeit variable, dish. This is the inspiration behind the namesake for the Hot Frittatas, a band performing at the Soper Reese’s “Taste of Italy” concert this Saturday night. “Frittatas, they call it a mixed up omelet. You throw a little bit of everything in there,” said Don Coffin, guitarist and mandolin player for the group. “It’s an appropriate name for our type of music … We mix a lot of stuff up.”
Italian, Latin, French, blues, these are a few of the genres the Hot Frittatas explore, lending credit to their chosen name. “We all play different kinds of music, bluegrass, country and different types of Irish music,” Coffin said, though the group focuses on traditional music from across the sea. “We really kind of specialize in Italian music because it’s so unique. And dance music. It really corresponds to the dance music. Much European music was the dance music. We hope people will get up and dance at the concert. That would be a lot of fun.”
Gus Garelick, the Hot Frittatas violin and mandolin player, said the group will also be performing ballroom dances like polkas and waltzes, tunes that are sure to cause a some movement in the crowd. “This isn’t your serious classical music. Just popular music going back to the 19th century,” he said. “This is fun stuff to play and people can dance to it.”
Garelick described the band’s sound succinctly. “We call it European Café. It’s not Italian opera and it’s not Euro-pop,” he said. “It’s what you would have heard in cafes and coffee houses in Italy from 1900 to 1950. By that time it was replaced with American music and international music.”
Though the Hot Frittatas aren’t a band to play pop hits or familiar tunes, their music is sure to create a unique, enjoyable atmosphere. “Since it’s so deeply rooted it sort of wakes something up in people when they hear it,” Coffin explained. “You’re probably not going to hear it on the top 40 radio but it’s wonderful for weddings … Because it evokes that spirit, it’s joyous. When they hear this stuff it transports them, so it’s got that quality to it.”
Garelick supported this idea. “I think that [the audience] would be transported to another culture and that often happens when people hear the Hot Frittatas,” he said. “Even if they’ve never been to Italy, that paints a picture in their mind of being there.”
Fifteen years ago the group came together over a love of the more specialized style of music, introduced to the group by Garelick. “Gus Garelick had accumulated a repertoire of Italian music and we all fell in love with the music and decided that people needed to hear it,” Coffin said.
Garelick picked up the Mandolin at 17 years old, mostly due to his family. His grandparent’s came from Russia where they enjoyed the instrument and his aunt played in mandolin orchestras in the 1930s. “But my main instrument was violin,” he said. “I fell back on the mandolin as a fun instrument and I fell in love with it.”
For Garelick, the appeal of the mandolin rests on its versatility. “You can play really beautiful music on it in many, many styles,” he said. “You find mandolin-like instruments in every culture.” The stringed device is utilized in any number of Italian and French tunes, as well as American bluegrass music. According to Garelick, the mandolin’s origins likely begin in China.
With a great number of styles to choose from, Garelick settled on Italian music. Italy has heavily influenced the music scene in many large areas, which sparked a love of the genre. “There’s a huge Italian population in California and major cities,” he said. “I lived in San Francisco in the 70s … That’s where I picked up the repertoire.”
Since forming and perfecting their sound, the Hot Frittatas have continued on to perform on national radio and even wrote their own music which aired on a popular broadcasting network. “We wrote a whole season’s worth of music for the ABC television show The Bachelor,” Coffin said. “That was three years ago, four years ago and they played our music all season long.”
Though their style isn’t very well known, it can be said that the Hot Frittatas have accomplished a lot. “It’s kind of a sub cultural phenomenon but we’ve done pretty well with it,” Coffin said.
The group is spread out, from Clearlake to Ukiah to Santa Rosa and Calistoga, but they still find plenty of time to come together for rehearsals and performances. “We do a lot of Italian festivals,” Coffin said. “We usually do a couple of tours a year. One up in the North and we’ve travelled down to L.A. and Arizona … We’ve done a whole series of library tours.”
These tours took the Hot Frittatas to numerous public libraries in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, Santa Clara and the East Bay, to entertain and educate audiences around Northern California. “We’ve presented the music as a unique cultural presentation, something that has historic value,” Coffin said.
The group’s upcoming performance will be a reunion of sorts for the Hot Frittatas, who said goodbye to their accordionist, Dennis Hadley, when he joined another band, Gator Nation. “Dennis is rejoining us for this particular concert,” said Coffin. “So far this year we’re sort of reforming in which direction we’re trying to go. We’re trying to fill Dennis’ spot … It’s very hard to fill his spot.”
The Hot Frittatas have never performed at the Soper Reese as a group, but Coffin has played the venue multiple times for other projects and he’s excited for the “Taste of Italy” this Saturday. “I’ve been involved quite a bit with the Soper Reese,” he said. “It’s been wonderfully set up for listening. The sound system is one of the things I like best about it … It’s a big enough venue to get people in but its intimate enough to feel like you’re there.”
This close environment is sure to assist in a successful event for the band and audience alike. “What I enjoy about [performing] is the feeling that it closes the circuit,” said Coffin. “We’re putting something out but we’re getting something back at the same time. It’s a feedback loop. It just goes and that’s pretty exciting to be a part of from a performer’s point of view and probably for the audience too, when you feel a connection with something that’s happening.”
The Hot Frittatas aren’t the only musicians to look forward to at “Taste of Italy”. The Gravenstein Ensemble, headed by Garelick, is set to perform specialized music at the event. The group came together outside a Gravenstein apple orchard in Sebastopol and has grown from four players to 15 over the past 8 years. “We thought a mandolin orchestra would be cool in this part of California because there weren’t any,” said Garelick.
Though the Italians perfected the original mandolin, creating a smooth, rounded back, the ensemble opts to perform with a different variation of the instrument. “The mandolins that we use in the orchestra are American style. They don’t have the round back,” Garelick explained. “Americans revolutionized the instrument in the early 20th century.”
Coffin is excited to see his band mate perform with the unique group. “Gus Garelick, he’s the music director of both groups, a fabulously talented man and almost everything he does musically he does for the love of the music. You’ll get to see the results of his work in both groups,” he said. “It’s a rare treat to see a mandolin orchestra anywhere these days. The people who play in the ensemble do it purely for the love of the music. They play all types of mandolins, accompanied by guitar and bass. It’s really an opportunity to see something so unique and it might not be around to see again.”
“Taste of Italy” is Saturday, Jan. 31 from 7:30 p.m. to 10:30p.m. Tickets range from $15 to $20 and are on sale now at soperreesetheatre.com, the Theatre Box Office from 10:30 a.m.to 5:30p.m. and at The Travel Center in Lakeport Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Call 707-263-0557 for more information.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
