Meet Your Musician Bravo! Vail Edition: Time For Three

Editor’s Note: The Vail Daily is showcasing area musicians in a series called “Meet Your Musician” so you can learn a bit more about the voices behind the tunes. In the “Meet Your Musician: Bravo! Vail Edition” we give you a chance to meet some of the artists coming to the valley to perform during the Bravo! Vail Music Festival.

Q: What is your name/your ensemble’s/orchestra’s name?

A: My name is Ranaan Meyer with Time For Three

Q: What instrument(s) do you play?

A: I play the double bass and the other guys in the band play violins. So, that’s two violinists, Nick Kendall and Charles Yang and one double bass, and we also sing.

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Q: How long have you been performing? How long have you been with your current orchestra or ensemble?

A: Time For Three has been together for two decades now, but there was a member shift about seven years ago when we had the great pleasure of adding Charles Yang to our band. It’s been just a pleasure ever since.

Q: How long have you been coming to the Bravo! Vail Music Festival?

A: Hey, guess what, this is our first time at Bravo! Vail and we are so excited. We’ve played with The Philadelphia Orchestra several times before, but this is our first time being invited to join them in Vail.

Q: Where else you do perform?

A: Well, all over the world. It’s really kind of amazing. We play everywhere. We usually play the performing arts venues. So, when we are in Vienna, we play at the Musikverein, and in the Czech Republic we’re currently playing at the top of their castle overlooking the Moldau River. Recently, we played the Ford Gala and it came with a visit to the White House. So, it’s kind of a pinch-me career if you will.

Q: What’s your dream venue?

A: Two-part answer here. We do a lot of different things. For example, we’ll play for 15,000 people here in the Czech Republic for an open-air concert with the Czech Phil. We’ll play for an intimate audience for a very special event in somebody’s living room to raise awareness for an incredible cause. We’ll even go into schools.

Personally, my favorite venue in the whole world is to go and play for children and to inspire them to find their passion and their voice. But really, and not just because we are coming to Bravo! Vail, we’ve heard such tremendous things about it over the years because of the incredible orchestras that you bring. We can only imagine that it’s going to be a complete dream to play in Vail.

Q: What other styles of music do you/does the ensemble listen to or like to play?

A: This is a tricky one for Time For Three—or should I say an easy one—because we are an ensemble that plays everything, and we are very curious about all the languages that are music. So, that list is almost too extensive to list, and that goes along with our listening; what we perform; and the way that we homogenize our music when we’re creating it together.

So, it’s a never-ending journey. In fact, it’s almost like the insects out there in the world, there’s like, a new discovery every couple of hours.

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Q: What can the crowd expect from one of your performances?

A: In this case at Bravo! Vail, we are playing our piece “Contact” written for us by Kevin Puts, which was on our album “Letters for the Future” with The Philadelphia Orchestra. We were honored to take home a Grammy Award for it this past year. We will be playing and singing on Saturday night.

I think the idea with our performance is that you really can’t expect what we’re going to do, and that’s what’s most exciting. I think there’s no sort of regularity when it comes to Time For Three and maybe that’s what you can expect. The irregularity of the performance. I like to think that it’s pretty exciting and pretty full of joy and on an emotional level, we’re going to take the listener on a journey.

Q: Anything else we should have asked, anything else you’d like to share?

A: We could advertise dates and upcoming projects, but I think what is important to Time For Three is that the more people who support our band, the more we can have mission-driven work to help the world through the healing arts and educational outreach. We really believe in the next generation and helping them find their passion, their voice, their inspiration.

There’s a whole world out there that doesn’t know about certain types of music and it’s just really incredible when, as an artist, you can take them from ground zero on a journey. And with classical music, it’s amazing to demystify that or I should say, literally just take them on a journey where the very first taste in their mouth is desirable, and they’re excited to immediately learn about it. I think it’s pretty exciting when, as a musician, you can help inspire those new listeners to a whole world that is vast and stood the test of time.

And, I’d like to say thank you to you for the interview and to everyone who is reading. We’re really looking forward to playing for them on Saturday night. Thanks for this.