The duo’s sold-out show Friday night as part of the Acoustic Café Folk Series was filled with virtuosic musicianship and charming banter. Review, photos.
Acoustic Glory: It was a night of banjo — and folk — heaven with Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn. (Photo/Anna Sink)
After a lengthy, mind-bending, genre-spanning Bela Fleck solo on Friday night – one that featured everything from a tantalizing take on Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” to a sublimely labyrinthian interpretation of Flatt & Scruggs’ “The Ballad of Jed Clampett (Beverly Hillbillies Theme)” – Abigail Washburn quipped, “He doesn’t suck.”
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Mind-Bending: Bela Fleck had many of those moments on banjo at St. Cecilia. (Photo/Anna Sink)
No, indeed, and neither does Washburn, whose striking vocals, musicianship, jocular tales, on-stage demeanor and spry bluegrass clogging kept the sold-out audience at St. Cecilia Music Center’s Royce Auditorium fully and delightfully engaged all evening as part of the Acoustic Café Folk Series concert.
Her tongue-in-check understatement aside, this monumentally talented married couple and champions of the banjo also find ways to broaden the definition of folk music, incorporating elements of jazz (no surprise, with Fleck in the picture), world music, bluegrass and prog-rock into their acoustic galaxy.
They expertly fashioned that approach for their latest album, “Echo in the Valley,” and unfurled songs from that recording brilliantly Friday with help from an arsenal of banjos on stage at St. Cecilia. (They also cleverly got the audience to “echo” the title of the album whenever it was mentioned.)
More than anything, these folk proponents exude graciousness, charm and virtuosic splendor while building new audiences for one of the country’s oldest musical art forms. Fleck is even hosting his first-ever Blue Ridge Banjo Camp in North Carolina this August.
And just like the title of the song, “Take Me to Harlan,” suggests, they take those audiences on a musical trip to extraordinary places they won’t soon forget.
PHOTO GALLERY: Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn at St. Cecilia Music Center
Photos by Anna Sink
