Good Vibrations
Natalie Dietrich gets down with her bad self at Lilypad on Sunday, 6 April 2025.
Hiro Honshuku joined her on flute, Oscar Stagnaro on electric bass, and Mark Walker on drums.
NuRAD in the house!
Ace the Quiz, Win the Tix
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Hump Nights
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Ace the Quiz, Win the Tix 〰️ Hump Nights 〰️
Hump Nights
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Ace the Quiz, Win the Tix
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Hump Nights 〰️ Ace the Quiz, Win the Tix 〰️
Honshuku on the NuRAD
NuRad?
Add “vibraphone” to my list (along with harp) of somewhat exotic instruments to track. The real exotic at this show, though, was the NuRAD. But that specimen – a kind of electronic flute – is so rare, it’s not worth the trouble of cataloguing.
For the rest, I’ll defer to my Cambridge Day writeup.
Natalie Dietrich and Friends
The vibes were good.
The vibraphone was even better.
That’s right, a real groaner to start this live review. But it fits, because the atmosphere at Natalie Dietrich’s afternoon of music at the Lilypad was laidback, congenial, and more like a room of old friends, trading inside jokes, than anything like a stiff recital. Since the show marked a kind of musical reunion of the vibraphonist with her old pals at Berklee College of Music, the afternoon was all of the above.
Dietrich led a quartet through the set with her vibraphone. The instrument, if you’ve never seen one up close, belongs to the percussion family, and consists of a long series of variously-sized metal bars struck with mallets to produce a sound with punch and oblong character.
She held as many as four mallets at once, splayed between her fingers in order to strike multiple bars simultaneously. And no square inch of the surface area of the vibraphone was out of bounds: Dietrich beat the top, the sides, and the underbelly of the instrument to squeeze out conventional and unconventional sounds alike.
Hiro Honshuku joined her on flute, Oscar Stagnaro on electric bass, and Mark Walker on drums. The quartet collaborated on Deitrich originals as well as invigorating interpretations of standards like Gershwin’s “Summertime,” which you never knew needed a vibraphone, until you hear it played.
The real head turner of the show, though, was an odd instrument resembling an electronic flute, which Honshuku later identified as a NuRAD.
Created by Johan Berglund, a self-described “genius developer,” the NuRAD translates breath and vibrato inputs into digital music outputs. To be honest, most notes sounded like a dying cat. But a dying cat that had lived a rich and rewarding life. Retails for about $1700. Available in the colors of Purple Reign, Radioactive Green, and Honshuku’s choice, Profondo Rosso.
Photo Gallery
Natalie Dietrich gets down with her bad self at Lilypad.