Word: banjo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that time, the Harvard-Yale game, only 20 years old, was the big event in an athletic season that dominated University and Cambridge attention. Football topped the four-column Crimson pages every day, along with SPORTS-related items like the formation of a "Varsity Banjo Club." Even happenings at varsity practices made the front page...
Fleck explores seemingly diverse musical traditions and integrates their various elements into a revolutionary style of music that moves comfortably from the elegant melodies of a string quartet to the rolling bluegrass lines of the banjo. Highlighting the album is a trio of distinguished musicians--Bruce Hornsby, Chick Corea, and Branford Marsalis--who add their respective talents to already enlightened compositions...
...Great Circle Route," featuring Hornsby on piano, is among the best on the album. The song begins with Hornsby passionately stamping out a piano riff reminiscent of a Chopin piano sonata, then smoothly incorporates a complex jazz rhythm, further layering melodic fiddle and dobro movements over Fleck's subtle banjo punctuations. The climax of the song occurs as Hornsby and Fleck swap licks and playfully try to out-do each other...
Another musical collaboration on the album, "Backwoods Galaxy," the eighth track, pairs Fleck's banjo with Chick Corea's piano and Branford Marsalis' tenor saxophone. The three musicians establish the song's complicated tone by first hammering out a funky, amorphous wall of sound. The banjo then sets up a background for the improvised doodlings of Marsalis' smooth horn and Corea's tight piano solos...
...track, "Arkansas Traveler," poignantly illustrates Fleck's impressive ability to integrate disparate musical instruments and styles. The song begins with Fleck picking a simple folk melody alone. After several bars, percussion and bass lines emerge, sounding like the rhythm section of an Oscar Peterson album. The interplay between the banjo's folk melody and the jazz rhythms established by the drums and acoustic bass is astoundingly coherent. The phrasing is completely jazz, but the sound remains folk...