Original music group Water Bear presents Barnes Hall concert Friday

Water Bear is, left to right, Tim Reppert, Mer Boel and Ruth Roland. Courtesy of the Department of Music

The Department of Music premieres its 2003-04 season with a free concert presented by Water Bear on Friday, Sept. 5, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall. The program features original music based on people's names.

An Ithaca Times review described Water Bear as "part classical, part jazz, part folk ... they're in a class by themselves, making music that's as subtle as it is adventurous." An original music group, Water Bear members include Mer Boel (violin and voice), Ruth Roland (violin), Tim Reppert (bass) and, for this performance, guest keyboardist Bill Cowdery. While the instrumentation suggests a classical resonance, the group adds vocals, ethnic influences and improvisation to the mix, resulting in a refreshingly eclectic sound.

Water Bear has recorded 75 Name Music pieces, which are available as individual Name Gift packages (a recording of one piece with sheet music) and as compiled into full-length CDs. Composer and founder Boel has created a unique name-to-note system, which members of the group use in the composition process to write songs that reflect the special qualities of different names.

"I mapped the letters of the alphabet to pitches on the violin and use the series of pitches that result when I spell out a name to provide the opening motif and inspire the rest of the melodic material," Boel explained. "As in jazz or bluegrass idioms, the composed musical elements are used as a basis for improvisation."

Boel, who is lecturing in Cornell's music department this fall, has a B.F.A. in jazz vocal performance with a minor in violin from City College of New York, where she studied and performed with John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, Matt Glaser and Ron Carter. She was co-founder of The Daughters of Sweden and original music group Cymbidium, and she has played with and written string arrangements for singer/songwriters Karen Beth and Tom Knight.

Roland grew up playing Eastern European folk music with her father. She has a master's degree in violin performance from the University of Minnesota and is a member of the Binghamton Philharmonic and the Tri-Cities Opera Orchestra. She is a founding member of Women's Works and was awarded a Meet the Composer grant to present her own composition at Women's Works 2003. Roland also is a published poet and performed playwright and is a lecturer in violin at Cornell.

Reppert studied at the Berklee School of Music in Boston and has worked as a studio session musician in New York City, Boston and Ithaca. In addition to Water Bear, he is a member of the band Under Construction and has played with Crow Greenspun. Reppert also owns REP Studios. He has recorded for diverse clients, such as Sly Stone, Billy Ocean and The Beastie Boys, and such local artists as the Burns Sisters, Mbusi and Samite.

Cowdery, an adjunct instructor at Cornell, comes to Water Bear mainly from the classical side of music. A frequent soloist, accompanist and lecturer at Bach festivals in the Northeast, he has been a three-year fellow of the Bach Aria Festival at Stony Brook. Cowdery earned a Ph.D. from Cornell for a dissertation on the early cantatas of J.S. Bach.