By K.D. Norris
ken@wktv.org
They say that folk music is at it best where its played by family about real people. If that is true — and the musical proof of such things is in the listening — than Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn’s late-2018 recording of two songs for a video by renowned dance company Pilobolus may well be the art of folk music at its perfection.
The musical evidence will likely be heard Saturday, Feb. 9, as the husband and wife duo, both accomplished and innovative banjo artists, return to St. Cecilia Music Center’s Royce Auditorium for an Acoustic Café Folk Series concert.
Tickets are still available.
In fall 2017, Fleck and Washburn released their second full-length studio album together, “Echo In The Valley”, an 11-track LP includes the two banjo players playing folk and bluegrass music. In October of last year, the duo released a new single that married two songs from that album, which also is the soundtrack for the Pilobolus music video.
The new single and video pairs “Come All You Coal Miners” — written by Sarah Ogan Gunning, an Appalachian ballad singer, activist and wife of a coal miner — with Fleck and Washburn’s own “Take Me to Harlan.”
Fleck and Washburn, who have been called “the king and queen of the banjo”, return to St. Cecilia after a sold-out concert midwinter in 2018.
“Béla and Abigail are two of the most delightful and gracious musicians we’ve hosted in concert,” Cathy Holbrook, executive director of St. Cecilia, said in supplied material. “Their warmth and love of music reflects in their amazing show.”
Fleck is a 15-time Grammy Award winner who has taken the instrument across multiple genres, and, according to supplied material, Washburn is a singer-songwriter and clawhammer banjo player who re-radicalized it by combining it with Far East culture and sounds. “Echo in the Valley” is the follow up to Fleck and Washburn’s self-titled debut that earned the 2016 Grammy for Best Folk Album.
“The mission of ‘Echo in the Valley’ was to take our double banjo combination of three finger and clawhammer styles to the next level and find things to do together that we had not done before,” Fleck said in supplied material. “We’re expressing different emotions through past techniques and going to deeper places.”
Acoustic Café Folk Series remaining concerts
The Acoustic Café Series, in partnership with the syndicated radio show of the same name, features five remaining folk concerts this season. Following Fleck and Washburn are: The War and Treaty, on Sunday, on Feb. 24; The Milk Carton Kids, on Thursday, Feb. 28; Asleep at the Wheel, on Thursday, April 11; and guitar master Leo Kottke on Thursday, April 18.
Tickets for Fleck and Washburn
Fleck and Washburn concert tickets are $45 and $50 and can be purchased by calling St. Cecilia Music Center at 616-459-2224 or visiting the box office at 24 Ransom Ave. NE. Tickets can also be purchased online at www.scmc-online.org. A post-concert party with complimentary wine and scmc-online.org beer bar is offered to all ticket-holders. All ticket prices include service fees and no additional fees are charged.
