Breeding

Occasionally, you have to encounter art in a different context to understand the genius of its source.

This happened most powerfully for me when I saw the Houston Ballet’s Rooster in the late 1990s. I’d grown up listening to oldies, and I was no stranger to the Rolling Stones.

The ballet’s associate choreographer Christopher Bruce depicted the mating rituals of hip Londoners in the 1960s, all to music by the Rolling Stones.

When one of the principal dancers seemed to escape gravity in “Ruby Tuesday,” the essential greatness of the song just opened in front of us. We could all sing along with the song — “who could hang a name on you?” — but as the dancer in the scarlet dress was wheeled, tossed and shared by shirtless young bucks, “Ruby Tuesday” gained a new meaning. Mick was sparing a few moments on The One Who Got Away. And the dancer did, too. Her body and her face were full of light. The shirtless gents were supremely disappointed.

Thanks to Ashley Lancz Toman and Patricia Kline, Metallica is getting an unlikely tribute.

Together, Toman and Kline are Harptallica, a harp duo that has reinterpreted a spate of Metallica songs. It’s the sort of project that is ripe for National Public Radio’s arts and culture analysts. Why? The project reaches deeper than a gimmick. Toman and Kline didn’t wake up one morning and say, “This harp thing needs more horsepower. I know! Let’s cover the icon of American heavy metal!”

Toman was a graduate student at the Eastman School of Music in 2006, where she decided to arrange Metallica’s song “Fade to Black” for two harps. That project turned into covers of 10 Metallica songs.

Harptallica is something of a counterpoint to Metallica. The testosterone-soaked anthems of the heavy metal men became the soundtrack for young men, especially in the 1980s and ’90s. The original players were James Hetfield, rhythm guitarist and lead singer; Dave Mustaine, lead guitarist; bass­ist Ron McGovney and drummer-founder Lars Ulrich. Cliff Burton replaced Mc­Govney and Kirk Hammett replaced Mus­taine. Burton was killed when the band’s bus overturned in Sweden. After several changes in the lineup, Robert Trujillo took over the bass. The band’s sound is loud, fast like a machine gun and usually dour. Oh, and there were many, many instrumental solos.

Metallica’s fans are legion, and the band’s critics have been high profile. Perhaps the band’s most indignant fan was Kathy Lee Gifford. She ranted to Regis Philbin that their music was “satanic.” You must mean a lot to the kids if you merit a jeer from the Gifford, the patron saint of sugar and spice.

Toman credits a teacher at Eastman for her exposure to Metallica, by playing it during a theory class. Kline helped out, and now the two have a serious devotion to affirming the symphonic aspects of Metallica for a new generation.

They’re good, too. You don’t get into Eastman School of Music unless you’re talented and committed. But each of these young women has enough confidence in her instrument and her skills to apply the simple, quiet sound of the harp to what might be the loudest music on earth.

So what happens when you hear Toman and Kline play “The Unforgiven” on two harps? First, you notice that the harp isn’t just capable of supplying the lighter-than-air sound associated with Disney princesses and fairies. The harp can sound as tart as the acoustic guitar sauced up to play flamenco. It can whip out bright, tangy notes before hushing into the deeper, darker registers.

Toman and Kline are fearless players. In the 1980s, I heard adolescent boys talk with reverence about the speed and agility of guitarist Eddie van Halen’s fingers. Toman and Kline can keep up with him, and Metallica’s virtuosos, Hetfield, Mustaine and Hammett. The harp can also recall the piano’s color palette.

Toman and Kline also achieve what any musician strives to do when paying tribute to a peer. They unearth the wealth of baroque strokes in Metallica’s body of work.

These rock stars wrote and played music of complexity, in meter and in music. The band is perhaps remembered for its theatrics — guys punching and raking madly across the fretboard, exorcising the demons of the human condition on an innocent noisemaker. But thanks to Harp­tal­lica, we get to hear the harmonies with much, much less distortion.

Harptallica, thanks to the group’s old, genteel instrument, clean up the sonic blare that made Metallica an ear-bleeder. On the harp, we hear the music wheel and dive, then start the exhausted climb out of the wizened human condition for which Hetfield and company never showed much hope.

Toman and Kline lift the music out of its angry pit. As their fingers dance during “Orion,” the listener gets it. The sky is vast, it’s fathomless and it’s always, always there.

Another thing: Toman and Kline are clearly gifted and serious musicians. But they honor the wink-worthy part of their project. This is the stuff you see spoofed on Saturday Night Live. You know, what if James Galway covered MC Hammer?

They clearly enjoy the incongruity of their pet project. They laugh with us. The duo even chuckles by way of its musical “influences” list on its MySpace page: Metallica, Bach, Mega­deth, Bang on a Can, Debussy and Ozzy Osborne. Do yourself a favor and visit their page at www.my
space.com/harptallica and revel in the richness of the music and the harp’s surprising range.

They get the immediate comedic value of their endeavor. Then, they shoulder their harps and play this heavy metal stuff, for real and for keeps.