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Banjo player Bela Fleck and bassist Edgar Meyer will open Lafayetteâs 20th anniversary Sound Alternatives series with their acoustic duo program 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 17, at the Williams Center for the Arts. They also will give a pre-concert talk at 7 p.m. in Williams Center room 123 about the chamber music aspects of their concert tours and recordings together.
Single tickets are sold out for the concert, which is now available only through a limited number of remaining Sound Alternatives subscription packages. The subscription includes the Tuesday, Nov. 11 performance by Chilean ensemble Inti-Illimani; the Tuesday, Feb. 3 concert by Ghana drumming master Obo Addy; and the Tuesday, March 23 engagement with Meridian Arts Ensemble, a New York brass quintet.
All performances start at 8 p.m. The $64 subscription represents a $15 savings compared to the total cost of the individual concerts. For tickets, call the box office at 610-330-5009 from noon-2 p.m., 4-5 p.m., and one hour before performances.
A five-time Grammy winner, Fleck made his Lehigh Valley premiere at Lafayette in March 1996 with his Flecktones band as part of that year’s Roethke Humanities Festival on “High Art and Pop Culture.” Fleck also performed the acoustic program he developed with Meyer and Mike Marshall, “Uncommon Ritual,” at the Williams Center in October 1997.
Meyer has performed at the Williams Center several times, first with Emerson String Quartet, once in a recital with pianist Amy Dorfman, and twice with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
He has established himself as both an innovative composer and unique and masterful instrumentalist. As a classical bassist, Meyer released an album of Bachâs Unaccompanied Suites for Cello and recorded a concerto album with St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Fruitful collaborations are the cornerstone his work, including a quartet comprised of violinist Joshua Bell and legendary bluegrass musicians Sam Bush and Mike Marshall. Their album, Short Trip Home, was nominated for a Grammy award as Best Classical Crossover and the group was subsequently invited to perform live at the 42nd annual Grammy Awards.
Shortly before this collaboration, Meyer was involved in Uncommon Ritual, an inventive trio project with Fleck on banjo and Marshall on mandolin, performing original compositions marrying bluegrass, classical, and other traditional styles. He has collaborated with cellist Yo-Yo Ma on the albums Appalachia Waltz and Appalachian Journey, the latter of which earned a Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album.
Winner of numerous competitions, Meyer became the only bassist to receive the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1994, and in 2000, he became the only bassist to win the Avery Fisher Prize. A frequent guest at music festivals, he has appeared as performer and composer at Aspen, Tanglewood, Caramoor, Chamber Music Northwest, and Marlboro. At the Sante Fe Chamber Music Festival, he was a regular guest from 1985-93 and composed six works for the festival. In 1994, Meyer joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and continues to perform regularly with the ensemble.
Considered by many to be the premiere banjo player in the world, Fleck is the only musician nominated for Grammys in the jazz, bluegrass, pop, country, spoken word, Christian, composition, and world music categories. In 1982, he joined the progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival, where he made a name for himself in the country-bluegrass world. At the same time he was releasing a series of solo albums for Rounder Records.
Fleck formed the award-winning Flecktones band in 1989, which made a self-titled debut recording in 1990 that reached the Top 20 on the Billboard jazz charts. Fleck and his commercially successful, critically acclaimed group have expanded the parameters of the banjo by combining traditional bluegrass with jazz and classical music. The eclectic musician has also collaborated with renowned artists such as slide-player V.M. Bhatt, Chinese erhu player Jie-Bing Chen, former Cream drummer Ginger Baker, bassist Charlie Haden, guitarist Adrian Belew, and former Yes vocalist Jon Anderson.
“The more diverse the audience there is, the better,â Fleck said in an interview with Down Beat magazine. âIf youâve got people who would normally be jazz fans sitting in the same room with people who love bluegrass, some funk fans who love Victor, some Deadheads, it turns into this roomful of happy people who are all real different.”
The nationally recognized Performance Series attracts more than 10,000 people each season. It has been cited for performing excellence by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, Chamber Music America, Lila Wallace Readerâs Digest Fund, Pennsylvania Arts and Humanities Councils, and Association of Performing Arts Presenters.
The Fleck and Meyer concert is supported by special grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and an ArtsConnect grant from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.
The 2003-04 Performance Series at Lafayette is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by the F.M. Kirby Foundation; by provisions of the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, and New England Foundation for the Arts.