“First family of banjo” Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn to perform Oct. 6
Performing Arts Series: Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn
Date: Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: Goshen College Music Center’s Sauder Concert Hall
Cost: $44, $39 or $25 Buy tickets
Web site: http://belafleck.com, http://www.abigailwashburn.com
The “first family of banjo,” Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn will present a diverse and wide-ranging set during Goshen College’s Performing Arts Series on Tuesday, Oct. 6, at 7:30 p.m. in the Goshen College Music Center’s Sauder Concert Hall.
The Grammy Award-winning husband-and-wife duo are both accomplished banjo players and are credited with reinventing the image and sound of the banjo. Despite their individual success, they have played as a duo since they met.
With 13 Grammy awards and nominations in more categories than any other musician, Fleck is a creative powerhouse in genres such as bluegrass, pop, rock, jazz and world beat. In 2001, he made his classical debut with “Perpetual Motion.” On commission with the Nashville Symphony, Fleck wrote his first stand-alone banjo concerto, “The Impostor,” in 2011 on the Deutche Gramaphone label.
Washburn, a lawyer-turned-folk musician, has toured the world with her Chinese language skills and passion for making connections to culture, people and music.
“The first time I listened to a CD of her music, I started driving so fast that I got pulled over for speeding and was made to walk the line by the men in blue,” said Fleck of his wife.
From November to December 2011, Washburn completed a month-long tour of China’s Silk Road, which led to her being named a Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) fellow and giving a talk at the 2012 TED Convention in Long Beach, California about building U.S.-China relations through music.
Simply titled “Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn,” their 2014 album, composed of Appalachian murder ballads, gospel, blues and chamber music, has been unofficially dubbed the first family of the banjo and can often be spotted playing and singing to their young son, Juno.
Today, Fleck rarely performs solo concerts. Instead, he bounces between a variety of touring opportunities such as performing his concerto with symphonies, concerts with the Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, shows with African artists such as Oumou Sangare and Toumani Diabate, with the Flecktones, and in a jazz collaboration with the Marcus Roberts Trio.