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KETTERING — Fraze Pavilion hosts a pair of back-to-back concerts this weekend in which the first features two performers whose careers have defied stylistic labels, while the second spotlights a performer whose career helped define, and was in turn defined by, a single musical genre.
Elvis Costello and Emmylou Harris, who'll appear together this evening at the 4,300-seat outdoor amphitheater, don't, at first glance, seem like a natural pairing. The British-born Costello entered the international music scene as part of the hipster New Wave movement of the early 1980s, while Harris emerged out of rural America amidst the mots and country-rock strains of the 1970s.
And yet, they do share some similarities.
Distinctive voices, for one. Costello, an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, doesn't even have a very pleasing voice, really. But it's effective and evocative. As is Harris' textured alto. Both singers have a certain plaintive edge to their sound.
What's more, neither is stopped by genre definitions or boundaries. They'll go anywhere a good song leads.
And they both have a history of exploring a variety of collaborative experiences, Costello's career includes musical hookups with pop icon Burt Bacharach, as well as his own wife, jazz pianist and vocalist Diana Krall.
Harris, for her part, may well have sung with everybody. OK, that's an exaggeration, but the woman has been tirelessly generous in lending her voice — as partner or backup — to scores of recording projects.
That's how she came to be part of Costello's 2005 summer tour. After singing on several tracks of his latest album release, The Delivery Man, which draws on American musical roots, she agreed to hit the mad with him as well.
Their concert tonight at Fraze will be nothing if not eclectic.
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