One set to heal them all: Ostara Project at Magee Theatre
With a new lineup and a hugely diverse set, how did this show compare to Ostara’s origin?
The Ostara Project played one set only at the Magee Secondary School Theatre on Sunday, March 10, 2024 in the biggest Infidels Jazz show yet by venue, the culmination of their latest tour, and the afterglow of the studio sessions for their upcoming double album called Roots and Wings.
Ostara has become a quintet: Rachel Therrien on trumpet, Allison Au on saxophone, co-leaders Amanda Tosoff on piano and Jodi Proznick on bass, and Valérie Lacombe on drums. And to my intrigue, they dedicated three of their twelve pieces to that lineup, giving a break to the four magnetic vocalists who played a big part in drawing hundreds to the theatre that afternoon.
All three quintet tunes carried the theme of the show: personal stories of lineage, family, and nurturing that allowed each member to express herself in depth. In order, we had Therrien's "Papa", dedicated to her father whom she called "an old boat captain... 420 friendly"; Au's "2601" which she identified as one of her Jewish grandparents' numbers at a Holocaust concentration camp; and Proznick's arrangement of the Ukrainian folk song "What a Moonlit Night". These tunes were diverse in how they felt to hear, going from subtly playful to sensitive to exuberant, as opposed to diverse merely in where they came from.
