An Evening with Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer (Sold Out)
Venue: Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg
Organizations: Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Zakir Hussain
Date: Thursday, November 8, 2018
Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM
Event Types: Music
Cost:

Description:
The Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech presents An Evening with Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer on Thursday, November 8, 2018.

Three masterful genre-benders and the undisputed leading virtuosos on their respective instruments, Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain, and Edgar Meyer move with ease among the worlds of classical, bluegrass, and world music. In the 2009-2010 season, they came together for the first time in trio concerts of original music. All three limitless creators and composers, Fleck, Hussain, and Meyer share an unprecedented array of projects and pairings among them that touch every geographical and stylistic corner of the musical world.

Béla Fleck will perform on banjo, Zakir Hussain on tabla and Edgar Meyer on bass. Rakesh Chaurasia will also perform on bansuri.

Just in case you aren’t familiar with Bela Fleck, there are some who say he’s the world’s premier banjo player. Others claim that Béla has virtually reinvented the image and the sound of the banjo through a remarkable performing and recording career that has taken him all over the musical map and on a range of solo projects and collaborations. If you are familiar with Béla, you know that he just loves to play the banjo, and put it into unique settings.

The recipient of multiple Grammy Awards and nominations going back to 1998, Béla Flecks’ total Grammy count is 15 Grammys won with 30 nominations. He has been nominated in more categories than any instrumentalist in Grammy history.

After graduation he joined the Boston-based bluegrass band Tasty Licks and recorded two albums with the group. In 1979 Fleck made his solo recording debut with Crossing the Tracks. He then toured with the Kentucky-based band Spectrum before joining the progressive bluegrass group New Grass Revival (NGR), with which he performed and recorded throughout the 1980s. While with NGR he also produced a number of solo albums, including the highly acclaimed Drive (1988). Following the release of NGR’s final album, Friday Night in America (1989), Fleck recorded The Telluride Sessions (1989), a landmark bluegrass album, with the all-star acoustic group Strength in Numbers. By this time Fleck’s technical proficiency on the banjo and his adventurous musical experimentation had earned him an international following.

Meanwhile, in 1988, Fleck assembled the Flecktones, the group with which he would record most consistently for the next two decades. In all of its manifestations, the Flecktones blended elements of bluegrass, jazz, rock, rhythm and blues, and world music on albums. The original Flecktones reunited for the first time in almost two decades for Rocket Science (2011), a Grammy Award-winning collection that was equally playful and provocative.

Between Flecktones recordings, Fleck continued to enrich his musical palette. While collaborating with numerous musicians, such as bassist and cellist Edgar Meyer and Indian tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, he also ventured into classical music with the release of Perpetual Motion, a compilation of interpretations of works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and others. In 2005 he made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the banjo, sub-Saharan Africa, where he studied, recorded, and performed with an array of locally prominent traditional and popular musicians. The trip yielded the documentary Throw Down Your Heart (2008) and its companion album Throw Down Your Heart: Tales from the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 3 (2009).

He joined clawhammer banjo player Abigail Washburn on Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet (2008), a bold experiment that fused American roots music and traditional Chinese folk songs. Fleck and Washburn were later married, and the two frequently performed and recorded together.

Links:

• https://www.belafleck.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/belafleckbanjo
• https://www.twitter.com/belafleckbanjo
• http://www.instagram.com/belafleckbanjo

Zakir Hussain is today appreciated both in the field of percussion and in the music world at large as an international phenomenon. A classical tabla virtuoso of the highest order, his consistently brilliant and exciting performances have not only established him as a national treasure in his own country, India, but gained him worldwide fame. His playing is marked by uncanny intuition and masterful improvisational dexterity, founded in formidable knowledge and study. The favorite accompanist for many of India’s greatest classical musicians and dancers, he has not let his genius rest there.

Widely considered a chief architect of the contemporary world music movement, Zakir’s contribution to world music has been unique, with many historic collaborations, including Shakti, which he founded with John McLaughlin and L. Shankar, Remember Shakti, the Diga Rhythm Band, Making Music, Planet Drum with Mickey Hart, Tabla Beat Science, Sangam with Charles Lloyd and Eric Harland and recordings and performances with artists as diverse as George Harrison, YoYo Ma, Joe Henderson, Van Morrison, Airto Moreira, Pharoah Sanders, Billy Cobham, Mark Morris, Rennie Harris, and the Kodo drummers. His music and extraordinary contribution to the music world were honored in April, 2009, with four widely-heralded and sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall’s Artist Perspective series.

Links:

• http://www.zakirhussain.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/Zakir-Hussain-22955051480/
• https://www.twitter.com/ZakirHtabla

In demand as both a performer and a composer, Edgar Meyer has formed a role in the music world unlike any other. Hailed by The New Yorker as “…the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively un-chronicled history of his instrument”, Mr. Meyer’s unparalleled technique and musicianship in combination with his gift for composition have brought him to the fore, where he is appreciated by a vast, varied audience. His uniqueness in the field was recognized by a MacArthur Award in 2002.

As a solo classical bassist, Mr. Meyer can be heard on a concerto album with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Hugh Wolff, Meyer’s own Double Concerto for Bass and Cello with Yo-Yo Ma, Bottesini’s Bass Concerto No. 2, and Meyer’s own Concerto in D for Bass. In 2006, he released a self-titled solo recording on which he wrote and recorded all of the music, incorporating piano, guitar, mandolin, dobro, banjo, gamba, and double bass. In 2007, recognizing his wide-ranging recording achievements, Sony/BMG released a compilation of The Best of Edgar Meyer.

His list of collaborators reflects the unique niche he’s carved in the musical world. Meyer has worked with some of the world’s top musicians from a variety of genres, including Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain, Stuart Duncan, Chris Thile, and Mark O’Connor.

In 2011 Mr. Meyer joined cellist Yo-Yo Ma, mandolinist Chris Thile, and fiddler Stuart Duncan for the Sony Masterworks recording “The Goat Rodeo Sessions” which was awarded the 2012 Grammy® Award for Best Folk Album. In all Meyer has received five Grammy awards for his collaborative work. In 2000, he became the only bassist to receive the coveted Avery Fisher Prize.

Links:

• http://edgarmeyer.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/EdgarMeyerBass
• https://www.twitter.com/EdgarMeyerJr
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgEuBrvB39laRlyJyQ1r_SQ/videos

Tickets can be purchased online, in person at the Moss Arts Center Box Office Monday-Friday from 10 am - 5:30 pm and Saturday 10 am - 4 pm and by phone at 540-231-5300.

To purchase tickets online, visit: https://artscenter.vt.edu/performances/fleck-hussain-meyer.html.

Season subscription packages are also available for purchase that save 20%-30% off regular ticket price.

For more information, visit: http://artscenter.vt.edu/ or https://www.facebook.com/artscenteratvt.