Organics over mechanics

Concord Ballet Orchestra Players are strictly improv

PROFILE. When you have eight people in your band, it’s sometimes hard to get everybody together to practice. Boston-based Concord Ballet Orchestra Players have the solution. They simply don’t practice.

The Krautrock-influenced improv band comprises  Kyle Bittinger, Jeff Breeze, Ben Lucal, Ben Macri, Joe Mahoney, Andy Tefft, Ramsey Tantawi, and Kris Thompson. An unwieldy group perhaps, but sometimes its useful having a large band.

“With eight members in the band, even if a couple of the guys can’t make it, we can still do a show,” says founder, Breeze. It was after his prior band flaked on a gig at the last minute that CBOP formed last fall.

“I ended up enlisting a bunch of people I knew around town to play the show with me,” Breeze recalls.

“Kris [Thompson, Theremin player] just showed up and plugged in during our first song. No rehearsal at all. He just started playing these harmonies.”

Theremin fans will note that playing harmonies over making whirly sounds takes some skill.

But playing harmonies on a song you’ve never heard before is quite something.

“It was just that kind of harmony that we all fell into,” remembers Breeze of the organics over mechanics that has become the band’s modus operandi.

The players, whose ages range from early 20s to late 40s, have other bands too. Breeze has his “pop” solo project, the deliciously named Most Bitter. He’s something of a packrat musician playing everything from bass to keys to a shruti box, a classical Indian instrument similar to a harmonium that produces a hypnotic drone.

And he’s a multi-tasker, though pretty much, it seems, within music-related activities: He books bands for the Middle East, hosts WMBR’s veteran  “Pipeline” show, which features local bands performing live in-studio, and he’s also a music journalist, sometimes for this very publication.

“I try to do other things than music otherwise I’d go totally insane,” he exclaims.

Do we detect a note of frustration with the often-tedious business of being de facto bandleader? Especially one with eight different guys on eight different schedules.

“I wouldn’t do this if it were frustrating. I’d drop it immediately and do something else instead,” he says.

“This is all about having fun and being with a bunch of people you enjoy playing music with.”

Concord Ballet
Orchestra Players
With Donny Hue and the Colors, Shrinking Islands, and Bleatbox
Tonight, 8:30
P.A.’s Lounge
345 Somerville Ave., Somerville
$7-$10, 18+, 617-776-1557
www.paslounge.com