The concept is an excellent one: conversation and concert with a veteran music figure. An interview to get the back story and a post-interview performance on the same, intimate stage.
Going up against the Vikings opener wasn’t the best timing but curator/interviewer Paul Metsa proved to be a knowledgable, engaging and nimble interrogator of violinist Scarlet Rivera at the first Blue Thursdays installment at the newly reopened and acoustically impressive but sparsely filled Music Box Theatre on Thursday.
He got the background before he got the big payoff – Scarlet’s legendary meeting with Bob Dylan on a Greenwich Village street corner. She had massive hair and a fiddle case in her hand. He rolled down the car window and asked if she could play the violin, invited her for a ride and an audition at his loft.
“He played a bunch of songs and asked me to play along,” Rivera explained. “He played me only things that weren’t recorded. He wanted me to have a real test. The things that ended up on ‘Desire.’”
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