Ravinia 2023 Issue 6

ALAN MESSER (FLECK) PAVILION 7:00 PM SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2023 BÉLA FLECK –Intermission– SHAKTI † SUBHI † † Ravinia debut 6:00 PM, CAROUSEL STAGE SUBHI Originally from New Delhi, Subhi was sur- rounded by music growing up, from the Punjabi folk music sung during family cel- ebrations to the Indian classical music her grandmother listened to. At the age of 8, Subhi started receiving formal training in Hindustani classical music, and throughout her childhood she listened to her grandfather recite Urdu poetry; from writing down the poems that touched her heart, she began to write her own songs in middle school. She moved to New York during high school, and after college she interned for the Broadway musical Monsoon Wedding and began enter- tainment reporting for South Asian outlets— feeding a drive to create music. Subhi packed her bags for the Hindi-cinema capital, Mumbai, where she composed music for award-winning director Nila Madhab Panda and also worked on projects with leading Indian digital platforms, including The Viral Fever and Y-Films—her original composition Lovely is the title track of the 2021 Netflix series Zindagi In Shorts . Now shuttling between Mumbai and Chicago, Subhi was featured on ABC’s Emmy-winning Asian Influences and has performed at SXSW, The Kennedy Center, and TEDx, Google, and Facebook events. She is a recipient of 2019 and 2020 Individual Artist Program grants from the City, and her debut pop-jazz album Shaitaan Dil was co-presented by the Jazz Institute of Chicago. Subhi is part of A.R. Rahman’s Nexa Music Lab mentorship program, and she recently opened for Ali Sethi (Pasoori Fame) at Chicago’s House of Blues. Subhi is making her Ravinia debut. SHAKTI An unprecedented, transcontinental collab- oration, Shakti united Eastern and Western musicians, and in the process forged the template for what is now called global music. From the West came virtuoso British guitarist John McLaughlin, who rewired jazz via his work with Miles Davis and the Tony Williams Lifetime. From the East came visionary tabla player Zakir Hussain, who had accompanied legendary Hindustani musicians from ado- lescence. A music shop owner in New York City’s Greenwich Village connected the two in 1969, sowing the seeds of what was to be- come Shakti. In 1973, McLaughlin stunned the music industry by walking away from the Olympian popularity and acclaim of his pioneering jazz/rock ensemble Mahavishnu Orchestra. Something else was calling out to him—a music that reflected his evolving spiritual practice while feeding his insatiable hunger to converse, communicate, and ex- plore. With Hussain, violinist Shankar, and ghatam player T.H. “Vikku” Vinayakram, McLaughlin founded Shakti. Together they honed an ecstatic new fusion, blazing un- charted pathways and demonstrating the po- tential of such global composites to genera- tions of musicians around the world. No time was wasted—on the campus of (now Stony Brook) Southampton College on Long Island, the group recorded their eponymous debut album live in the summer of 1975, releasing it early the following year. Meanwhile, Shakti decamped to a London recording studio to produce their second 1976 album, A Hand- ful of Beauty , exploring more lyrical corners of their East-West fusion. After touring, the quartet returned to the studio the following year with their minds toward more succinct syntheses, resulting in the memorable Natu- ral Elements . Now McLaughlin and Hussain are resuming their journey—joined by per- cussionist V. Selvaganesh (T.H. Vinayakram’s son), vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, and vio- linist Ganesh Rajagopalan—with an album of new compositions, This Moment , released in June, and a world tour marking Shakti’s 50th anniversary. Today’s Shakti honors the legacy of the original band by acknowledging their tradition while continuing to push beyond existing boundaries into new musical land- scapes. Shakti is making its Ravinia debut. John McLaughlin previously appeared at the festival in 1972 with Mahavishnu Orchestra. 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 album, My Bluegrass Heart , saw him reteaming with much of the same personnel and spirit of Drive and 1999’s Bluegrass Sessions ; in 2022 it won the Best Bluegrass Album Grammy that eluded its forebears. He recently collaborated on the album As We Speak with Meyer and Shakti’s Zakir Hussain. Béla Fleck first played at Ravinia in 1998 and is making his fifth ap- pearance at the festival. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 28 – SEPTEMBER 10, 2023 32