Cello, I love you

How to get ‘Under the Covers’ with Chix

PROFILE. When the Cello Chix play their CD release show this weekend at the Lizard Lounge for the toyingly titled, “Under the Covers,” don’t expect the female cello trio to stick closely to the album’s classic rock covers. The girls are already exploring new anti-classical terrain. Chix’ Susanna Porte won’t divulge everything they’ll be adding to their flamboyant repertoire of Hendrix, Cream and Beatles romps. But she says the band, which also includes fellow classically trained cellists Becca Thornblade (both went to the Oberlin Conservatory) and drummer Nancy Delaney has learnt some of Jethro Tull’s prog-rock anthems, including its tour de pomp, “Living in the Past.”

“It’s fantastic stuff, very complex, and we’ve found a flautist to play with us,” says Porte. Not just any flautist, but Alicia DiDonato, who often plays with the Boston Pops.

“We’d like to do a little recording, an EP or something with her if she agrees,” Porte says with a bashful giggle. Chix do Tull!

Cambridge-based Porte, 37,  works for Massachusetts Peace Action by day. “That’s what I feel I have to do, and Cello Chix is what I like to do,” she says with a sigh. Peace sells, but few are buying. Until 2002, Porte says she had only played classical music.
She still plays with the Lexington Symphony.

“I like having my foot in both worlds,” she notes. Though she and Thornblade switched to electric cellos for this project, Porte thinks the versatile cello can take on all comers. They haven’t tried anything like punk or rap just yet, but Porte notes that Kanye West uses a lot of cello in his songs. Oddly, or not, it isn’t rock or pop that Porte finds the most demanding music to play.

“The hardest, for me, is jazz, because I am not an improviser,” she admits. “The classical world is very dictated. No improv. One false move, and you’re out. The rock world is so much more forgiving and freeing.”

The Cello Chix
Friday, 9 p.m.
Lizard Lounge
1667 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
MBTA: Red Line to Harvard
$10, 21+, 617-547-0759
www.lizardloungeclub.com