Wrapped in cello fame

The last time composer Chris Lancaster stood on the Irvine Barclay Theatre stage, he was a UC Irvine student who came to take a master class with cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

That was 10 years ago. But last weekend, Lancaster performed on the same stage — and people came to see him.

“It’s very surreal,” Lancaster said of the experience at the Barclay. “I just remember it being so big when I was a student here.”

Lancaster is a New York composer and electric cellist whose composition of “Fondly Do We Hope … Fervently Do We Pray” had its Southern California debut at the Barclay. The piece was composed for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.

“I didn’t set out to be a dance composer,” Lancaster said. “My music is sad; it makes people cry. It’s very melodic, and very, very layered.”

The “Fondly Do We Hope…” dance production honors Abraham Lincoln’s life and legacy. Lancaster worked with a team of composers and musicians to create an original score for the piece that borrows from a wide variety of influences, from folk music to contemporary rock to Mendelssohn’s St. Paul oratorio.

Lancaster primarily works with samplers and layers, often duplicating the sound of his own cello, which he plays using a custom pink bow, to create a song.

“The bulk of my career has really been Chris with eight other Chrises,” he said.

Before and after his performance, Lancaster found time to visit his accustomed haunts from the ’90s, taking people from the dance company to Cook’s Corner; visiting the Lab anti-mall; and taking part in a beach bonfire with his family.

“Everybody now knows what Orange County is,” Lancaster said. “I love it. It just felt like such a smashing-together of cultures, when I was growing up.”

Cook’s Corner, in a remote corner of Trabuco Canyon, is one the oldest and most famous roadhouses in Southern California, and was established in the 1920s.

The Lab became the de-facto second home for disaffected youth in the ’90s, with its moody coffee shop, art spaces and avant-garde retail offerings.

Child prodigy

At first glance, 30-something Lancaster seems an incongruous fit for stereotypical Orange County. Sporting creeper shoes with orange flames, and bright neon hair (the color changes frequently), Lancaster said he was never made to conform while growing up in Fountain Valley.

“I was really lucky in that I had good teachers all along the way, who encouraged me to be me,” Lancaster said.

He got his start playing the violin at the age of 3, taking lessons from his grandfather until he was 10 or 11.

“He had played violin before he was drafted into World War II, and he relearned it to teach me,” Lancaster said.

Lancaster recalled watching violin greats like Itzhak Perlman perform on PBS while he was a child, which further fueled his desire to play.

When he was 6, he became the youngest member of a local youth orchestra, where he became known as the “child prodigy.”

Lancaster recalls that he was a tiny boy with a high, soprano voice and a squeaky violin.

“I thought I could never change instruments, but I wanted a bigger instrument,” he said. The child Lancaster thought a cello’s large size and deep sound would somehow represent how he wanted to look and sound, he said.

He finally switched to cello when he was 11 or 12, and planned a speech to tell his youth orchestra that he was resigning from the violin, he recalled.

But the instructor led Lancaster to a closet where an unused cello sat, and gave it to him to learn.

Lancaster soon found classical music to be too limiting, and yearned to do things his way.

“There was no way for me to express what I wanted to express,” he said. “I’ve always really believed that I have to believe in what I’m doing.”

Going his own way

By the time he was entering his teens and beginning at Fountain Valley High School, Lancaster fell under the spell of MTV — and grunge and alternative music.

“I wanted to be part of it, but I didn’t want to play the guitar,” he said.

So he glued guitar pickups to his cello, he recalled.

“And I electrified my cello, and started playing along to Jimi Hendrix records,” he said. “Before long, I was playing in bands.”

That led to a gig performing on tour with metal band Black Sabbath.

“That was when I sort of figured out that it would be all right. … Everyone wanted a cello player,” Lancaster said. “I started performing with a lot of bands, and that led me just about into college.”

At UCI, Lancaster found himself frustrated by the routine options, and ended up going to the dance department, where he heard there were opportunities for musicians to learn and improvise.

“I walked in there and put down the cello and performed,” he said. “Those people really got me the way I ought to be thinking about improvising.”

“Chris was a unique and original student. It is no wonder he followed his improvising muse and ended up in New York writing and performing dance scores. He did so much of that here at UCI, and encouraged others to do it as well. He has always had a strong inner creative vision,” said Margaret Parkins, Lancaster’s cello instructor at UCI.

He also studied directing while he was there, and began to learn about the business and behind-the-scenes aspects of the industry that often aren’t taught to instrumentalists.

Dance legend Bill T. Jones saw him performing and told him that he would like to work with him, if he ever moved to New York.

After making the jump, Lancaster found the opportunities in New York to be endless. He also met others who, like him, modified their cellos and ended up there, back before the Internet made such inventiveness a communal experience.

He began performing and composing in Europe, Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere around the world, as well as becoming the band leader for Jones’ company.

Lancaster dabbled in the idea of film composing, he said, but put aside such thoughts when his girlfriend suggested he get into composing for dance.

“It was the easiest thing I ever did,” he said.

While in the master class with Yo-Yo Ma, Lancaster said the maestro taught him to tone down his playing, and to underscore his abilities by being subtle.

“He said power is what you don’t do with it,” Lancaster recalled.