Ravinia 2022, Issue 1

ALAN MESSER (FLECK); GREG VOROBIOV (DOUGLAS) PAVILION 6:30 PM FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2022 BLUEGRASS HAPPENING featuring: BÉLA FLECK & MY BLUEGRASS HEART SAM BUSH THE JERRY DOUGLAS BAND BÉLA FLECK Born and raised in New York City, Béla Fleck—despite his professional reputation today as the premier banjo player in the world—began his musical life playing the guitar. It wasn’t until his grandfather bought him a banjo in 1973 that it became a full-time passion. After high school, Fleck joined up with Tasty Licks and recorded two albums with the band before turning to his first solo banjo album, 1979’s Crossing the Tracks , where he first met future musical partners Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas. While working on his sec- ond solo album, Natural Bridge (1982), Fleck was invited by Bush to join New Grass Re- vival, which, over the course of five albums through 1989, charted new territory in pro- gressive bluegrass. Fleck continued creating solo work during that decade, including the classic album Drive (1988), and he also estab- lished the supergroup Strength in Numbers, which recorded The Telluride Sessions in 1989. Around this same time Fleck was also assem- bling a jazz-inflected band for a PBS special; happenstance brought him together with Howard Levy and Victor and Roy “Future Man” Wooten, and the Flecktones were born. The group earned Grammy nominations for both their 1990 eponymous debut and 1991’s Flight of the Cosmic Hippo . Levy departed the Flecktones in 1993, and the band continued as a trio until saxophonist Jeff Coffin joined in 1998, kicking off another highly successful period, including five Grammy wins. Fleck won several more Grammy Awards with side projects during that time, including the classi- cal crossover album Perpetual Motion (2001) with bassist Edgar Meyer and violinist Joshua Bell, among other guests, featuring unique arrangements of standard classical reper- toire. While touring Perpetual Motion , Fleck and Meyer collaborated on a disc of original classical duos ( Music for Two , 2004) as well as a double concerto with orchestra, which they premiered in 2003. Fleck’s latest record- ing, My Bluegrass Heart , sees him reteaming with much of the same personnel and spirit of Drive and 1999’s Bluegrass Sessions ; this past winter it won the Best Bluegrass Album Grammy that eluded its forebears. Béla Fleck first played at Ravinia in 1998 and is making his first return since 2002, he fourth season at the festival. SAM BUSH On a Bowling Green, KY, cattle farm, Sam Bush grew up with a love of music encour- aged by his parents’ record collection and, particularly, his fiddler father’s local jam ses- sions. As a teen, Bush was a three-time junior champion of the National Oldtime Fiddler’s Contest. He recorded an instrumental album, Poor Richard’s Almanac (1969), while a senior in high school, and in the spring of 1970 he attended the Fiddlers Convention in Union Grove, NC. There he heard the New Deal String Band, taking notice of their rock-in- spired brand of progressive bluegrass. Later that year he decamped to Louisville to join the Bluegrass Alliance as guitarist and then mandolinist; the group would become New Grass Revival in 1971. Leaning into rock influ- ences themselves, the band caught the ear of Leon Russell, who invited New Grass to join his massive 1973 tour, and in 1975 they initiat- ed the cultural connection between bluegrass and Telluride, CO. At Bush’s invitation, ban- joist B é la Fleck and guitarist Pat Flynn joined the group in 1981, and with a conscious turn toward country influences, New Grass had a new record contract that took them to new commercial heights. During the ascent, Bush recorded his debut solo album, Late as Usual , in 1985, and then in 1989 he joined up with Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Mark O’Connor, and Edgar Meyer in the supergroup Strength in Numbers. That same year, New Grass elected to disband. Bush spent the next five years as a member of Emmylou Harris’s Nash Ram- blers, and after stints on tour with Lyle Lovett and Fleck in 1995, he committed himself to solo work. The further additions of Glamour & Grits (1996), Howlin’ at the Moon (1998), Ice Caps: Peaks of Telluride (2000), King of My World (2004), Laps in Seven (2006), and Circles Around Me (2009) to his discography led to Bush receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Associa- tion in 2009. But he didn’t stop there: 2016 saw the release of Storyman , which featured Harris and Alison Krauss as guest vocalists. Sam Bush first played Ravinia solo in 2007, having appeared with Lyle Lovett in 1997. He previously returned in 2008 with A Prairie Home Companion . JERRY DOUGLAS A 14-time Grammy winner with more than twice as many nominations, Jerry Douglas has earned comparisons to Jimi Hendrix for his work on the resonator guitar: elevating, transforming, and reinventing the way the instrument is played and heard in the way the electric guitar was forever changed. Par- ticularly known for his mastery of the Dobro resonator guitar, Douglas began learning the instrument in his native Ohio before entering his teens, and by his early 20s he had not only toured extensively but established himself as a top recording session musician, incorporat- ing elements of country, bluegrass, rock, jazz, blues, and Celtic music across with distinc- tive musical vision. Following early work as a member of groundbreaking ensembles like The Country Gentlemen, J.D. Crowe & the New South, and Boone Creek, Douglas began releasing solo recordings, from Fluxology (1979) to What If (2017) on Rounder Records, with several al- bums across the MCA, Sugar Hill, and Koch labels in between. Meanwhile, he contributed to the 1994 Grammy-winning album The Great Dobro Sessions , became a member of Alison Krauss & Union Station in 1998, and appeared on the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? , which won the Album of the Year Grammy in 2001. Douglas has appeared on more than 1,500 albums to date, contributing to discs by the likes of Garth Brooks, George Jones, Paul Simon, Little Big Town, James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, Earl Scruggs, Ray Charles, Dierks Bentley, and Tommy Emmanuel. A three-time CMA Musician of the Year award recipient, Douglas has also been honored with a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (2004) and as artist-in-residence of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum (2008). Between 1995 and 2013 he was the co-music director of the acclaimed BBC Scotland series Trans- atlantic Sessions , and he is the bandleader of the Grammy-winning bluegrass band The Earls of Leicester and The Jerry Douglas Band. Jerry Douglas previously played at Ravinia alongside Krauss (2005, 2014) and Costello (2009), and tonight he makes his second appearance with his own band after last summer’s performance of the Grammy-nominated Leftover Feelings with John Hiatt. RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 37