The ethereally high violin strains that open Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Pisachi (Reveal) for string quartet echo a traditional southwest Indigenous American buffalo dance melody. Soon the piece transitions through a host of different time signatures that build to electrifying rhythms. In this 2013 work, Tate reimagines the drums, rattles and chants of Hopi and Pueblo dances through the lens of his classical training at Northwestern University and the Cleveland Institute of Music.
When would one ever hear such a piece live in Vermont? Fortunately, we have Jukebox, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra’s 9-year-old series of casual, intimate string-quartet concerts held in bars and other nontraditional venues. An excerpt from Pisachi is one of eight small gems on Jukebox’s spring program, “Porch Songs: Americana Roots,” which the Jukebox quartet will perform in Rutland, South Pomfret, Burlington and Barre between April 16 and 19.
VSO’s artistic advisor and project conductor, Matt LaRocca, curates Jukebox with the freedom afforded by the extraordinary flexibility of its musicians — violinists Brooke Quiggins-Saulnier and Joana Genova, violist Stefanie Taylor, and cellist John Dunlop.
“They can switch from Mozart and a classical style of performance to something that’s modern or jazz very easily,” LaRocca said. In past Jukebox concerts, the musicians have tackled LaRocca’s arrangements of Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” alongside Ludwig van Beethoven and Dmitri Shostakovich string quartets. (The latter are usually represented by one movement, in keeping with the more relaxed atmosphere of venues that serve alcohol; LaRocca tends to introduce pieces with a beer in hand.)
The curator keeps a running list of unconventional works that interest him, he said. Tate’s happened to fit into a group of pieces informed by folk and other homegrown traditions — among them the 2014 “American Haiku,” by Kronos Quartet cellist and second-generation Japanese American Paul Wiancko, which blends Appalachian and Japanese folk traditions.
LaRocca isn’t trying to make a timely statement about diversity or immigration with the program, he said, but he did note that the wide range of styles is “so American when it all comes down to it.” So is his idea of seating audiences in the round to re-create the intimate vibe of hearing musicians on a front porch.
A lot of this music leans into the idea of being easygoing.
Matt LaRocca
Appalachian fiddling will be on full display in works by Mark O’Connor, Robert Paterson and Vermont-based bluegrass composer and mandolinist Matt Flinner. LaRocca, who has played with Flinner in TURNmusic concerts in Waterbury and other gigs, arranged the latter’s bluegrass-inflected “Raji’s Romp” for strings. And “Reel Time,” the second movement of Jennifer Higdon’s Southern Harmony, honoring fiddling traditions from her childhood in Georgia and Tennessee, will inspire serious foot tapping.
“Porch Songs” gets wonky, too, with Black composer Florence Price’s Five Folksongs in Counterpoint (circa 1951), sophisticated contrapuntal treatments of simple folk songs, spirituals and enduring ballads such as “Oh My Darling, Clementine” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
What’s not on the program are New England folk traditions. To fill that gap, VSO executive director Elise Brunelle tasked Lyn Lauffer, a retired school librarian and former board member who volunteers with the symphony, with plumbing the depths of the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection of ballads, folk songs and folklore archived at Middlebury College. For 30 years, beginning in 1930, Flanders visited New Englanders in their homes and captured them singing and playing songs on wax cylinders and other recording devices. She left behind 4,800 field recordings.
Lauffer pulled samples of Franco-American dances collected in Vermont, ballads about lost love and logging, and plenty of fiddle tunes, she said. They’ll be accessible through a QR code in a display that will also include printed music and a fiddle that can be handled — “so people can see how light they are and how to make a sound on them,” Lauffer said.
Jukebox’s primary mission is to demonstrate the continuing relatability of music played by a string quartet, an ensemble born 250 years ago in Europe that can also present in a formidably formal way. But in its lack of that formality, “Porch Songs” might be the most quintessentially LaRoccan program yet.
“One of my favorite parts of Jukebox has always been the intimacy of it,” the curator said, “and a lot of this music leans into that — the idea of being easygoing.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Toe Tappers | VSO’s Jukebox series takes listeners out to the “porch” with its spring Americana program”
This article appears in April 15 • 2026.
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