Anni Rossi likes noise but loves pop

PHOTO by ROLIN HUNT

Ask about her influences, and Anni Rossi will start listing off a diverse who’s who of music’s most infamous left-fielders: Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, John Cage, etc. A lot of that comes from her near-virtuoso background: Rossi was born in Minnesota to a creative family of non-musicians who encouraged her to take up the violin only a couple years after she learned how to walk. The barely three-year-old Rossi’s interest in performing classical music never stopped, and 15 years later landed her in our state’s own hallowed California Institute of the Arts, where she spent a few semesters studying, practicing and performing anything from Bartok to Beethoven to Ghanaian drumming.

But after a while, she realized her heart wasn’t in it. Young Rossi preferred listening to Modest Mouse on her way to violin lessons or watching MTV for hours on end in the hopes that the latest Björk video might come on. She says it was her time at CalArts that really shaped her into the unforgettable viola- (that’s a string instrument similar to violin but larger and lower in pitch, by the way) toting songwriter she is today: “CalArts helped me realize my own need for self discipline,” she says. “I made my own system for pushing myself and my instrument in as many ways as I could. Studying classical music from the get-go was really good for me!”

Rossi, now an LA resident, took to the viola originally just to make a few extra dollars. String quartets are popular—especially at weddings—but the integral viola players are few and far between. In her free time she began writing songs—pop songs, you understand, not “compositions”—opting to stick with the viola instead of picking up a guitar. Though the instrument is in no way meant for pop music, Rossi firmly believes she’d be nowhere without it: She is most at home when standing straight up and singing, her chin pressing down on the oversized violin that rests on her shoulder. “There’s a lot of malleability in the viola, it’s really flexible,” she says. “I didn’t really make a conscious decision to do it, I just think that the technique I have naturally brought me up to where I am now. And, I’m just not as comfortable with the guitar.”

It’s a challenge, sure, but the product is wonderful. Her 2008 EP, Afton, is a warm and organic pop record, if not a little schizophrenic: There’s the bouncy pizzicato opener “Machine,” where you hear Rossi plucking her viola gently as drums, bassoons and cellos creep in around her Monk (as in Meredith, still) vocal delivery—and it’s around then that you begin to imagine what this song would sound like with standard rock instruments, instead of all the orchestration. It’s not that difficult: the bassoon is the bass, Rossi’s viola the guitar and the drums are drums. (There’s no replacing a drum.) Hardly anything would change. Rossi’s music is—above all other things—great pop music. The production might suffer a little bit, but nothing else: the quality pop song doesn’t marry itself to an instrument (if it did, Radiohead’s “Creep” wouldn’t be anywhere near as chaotic, touching and innovative as it is when Rossi performs it live).

Then there’s “Venice.” “Venice” sounds a little bit like I’d imagine Laurie Anderson would if she had never touched a synthesizer: the main hook is a thundery start-stop rhythm that almost defies time signatures. Before you’ve had time to adjust yourself, and maybe to figure out where the downbeat is going to land, Rossi has moved on to a heart-achingly beautiful chorus that’s equal parts Emmylou Harris country crooning and Chelsea Girl string arrangements. For all of the avant-garde and classical influences Rossi carries with her, her talent is obviously in writing pop songs. But because of those influences, her music transcends standard pop into an art that leaves an impression you’ll carry with you long after the last note has been played. She’s unforgettable.

ANNI ROSSI WITH WHITMAN AND MYCROFT HOLMES {OPEN} | 2226 E FOURTH ST | LONG BEACH 90814 | 562.499.6736 | THESTORYOFOPEN.COM | FRI 7:30PM | $5 | ALL AGES

Tags: anni rossi, Long Beach, Music, outsider folk, {open}