Rare is the musical group that can both amuse and frighten you at the same time. Case in point: the Princes of Serendip and their nutty YouTube video, "The 7 Deadly Plastics." This horrifying tune, which can be found on this, their sophomore CD, is a lengthy ode to those curious little numbers on the bottoms of your plastic food containers. Performing what sounds like a whimsical children.s tune (in their distinctively upbeat folk/Celtic/classical style), the Princes rag on plastics right down to the 90,000th one: "It makes your fat cells its long-term home / And it reaches in your ovary and tweaks a chromosome."

The songs on What She Said span multiple millennia of storytelling, from the burial musings of an ancient Sumerian princess ("My silver comb will succumb to the acid secretions of my decomposing body," from the title track) to the modern day toxic horrors that will stick around for the next million years ("Plutonium POPS"). Though the cardstock CD case is environmentally friendly, the disc is still made from polycarbonate...oh well, whatcha gonna do? Kudos to Don Yacullo (piano), Julie Parisi Kirby (vocals), and T. G. Vanini (vocals/violin) for informing and entertaining simultaneously.

[Read this review on Chronogram]

Shamefully I must confess that this was the first time I've experienced the Princes, even though I've been acquainted with the trio for some time now. With a beguiling and mischievous understanding of all things mythical and musical, an evening with The Princes Of Serendip is equal parts chamber recital, story hour, and poetry reading. Coalescing Old World balladry with mountain folk, Celtic swing with Vivaldian flourish, these baroque pranksters entrance their audience, creating entirely new worlds of child-like, though adult themed, wonder.

Sprung from the vivid imaginings and lyrical weaving of songwriter/violinist/vocalist and possible past life court jester T.G.Vanini, fellow Princes, Don Yacullo (piano) and Julie Parisi Kirby (vocals), create in harmonious tandem the full pallette upon which Vanini tells his tales. 'Miranda' 'Plutonium Pops', 'Sheffield Square', and the shanty 'Onions' were revisited on this night. Songs performed from the new CD included the hauntingly majestic 'Like an empty room', 'City of Visitors', the playfully prophetic 'The dinosaur's advice' and '42 years on'.

But listing song titles, throwing around critical qualifiers, and assuring you the audience responded energetically to each performance, does The Princes no big favor. Not needing to be cranked up to ten, or fronted by some hot shot chick singer or fire-for-fingers lead guitarist, The Princes Of Serendip prove, both onstage and on their recordings, that imagination, and a fearless originality, go a long, long, way.

In R.M. McKenna's award-winning short story, "The Secret Place," there is an invisible landscape which is both 'there' and 'not there.' It's a matter of perspective.

Likewise, in Edwin A. Abbott's classic social satire of 1884, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions , the inhabitants of the author's two dimensional universe change dramatically with shifts of perspective.

The hidden universe which Laurence Kirby maps musically with his talented cohorts in The Princes of Serendip will be on display in concert at the Woodstock Artists Association on Saturday, December 7th, starting at 7:30 pm.

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