Saturday, May 17, 2008
Tony Trischka & Béla Fleck
Meymandi Concert Hall, Progress Energy Center
for the Performing Arts, downtown Raleigh

Inspired by Tony Trischka's latest release on Rounder Records, titled Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular (2006), PineCone pairs Trischka with his friend and former banjo student Béla Fleck for a rare performance of twin-banjo bluegrass. While twin-fiddles are common in bluegrass, and the occasional twin mandolin sessions have emerged, double banjo projects are still a rarity. Trischka and Fleck's innate gifts as musicians and arrangers, coupled with their supreme knowledge of banjo history and technique, ensure that the performances are both provocative and tasteful. The set will include banjo duets as well as double banjo features with a stellar band-Michael Davies on guitar and vocals, Brittany Haas on fiddle and Skip Ward on bass.

Tony Trischka has helped to reinvent the banjo, in terms of widened technical vocabulary, compositional range, and variety of contexts. To date he has recorded twelve solo albums, featuring such folks as David Grisman, Pete Seeger, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, William S. Burroughs, Charles Osgood, Alison Krauss, the Violent Femmes and members of REM.

Tony's musical travels have taken him from Broadway to Croatia to New Zealand, performing with bluegrass bands, avant garde jazz groups, symphony orchestras and percussion ensembles. His radio appearances have included A Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, Fresh Air and Weekend Edition. He's performed with John Denver on the CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Foxfire, also starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, and was profiled, along with Bela Fleck, on CBS Sunday Morning.

Tony is in demand as a teacher as well, with countless instruction books and videos to his credit. He's also served as a columnist for numerous acoustic music publications, and has written liner notes for Bela Fleck, Allison Krauss, and many others.

Just in case you aren't familiar with Béla Fleck, he is regarded by many as the premiere banjo player in the world. Others claim that Béla has revolutionized 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 recipients of multiple Grammy Awards going back to 1998 (eight won, and 20 nominations), Béla Fleck & the Flecktones picked up the Best Contemporary Jazz Performance, Instrumental Grammy in 2000 for "Outbound", a typically wide-ranging project, with guest artists that include guitarist Adrian Belew and singers Jon Anderson and Shawn Colvin, built around Fleck's concept of "the banjo being weird."

Tickets are $35-$25 for members, $40-$30 for the public, and are available through PineCone’s in-house Ticket Hotline at (919) 664-8302, and through TicketMaster at (919) 834-4000 (PineCone members must use password to receive discount) or online at www.ticketmaster.com. For directions and more information, please call (919) 990-1902.