Uncommon Ritual | |
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Studio album by Edgar Meyer, Béla Fleck, Mike Marshall | |
Released | 1997 |
Recorded | November 1996, February 1997 |
Genre | Classical |
Length | 77:31 |
Label | Sony Classical |
Producer | Edgar Meyer and Béla Fleck, with association with Mike Marshall |
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
The Strad | (measured favorable) [1] |
Allmusic | [2] |
Uncommon Ritual is the second album released by Sony Classical of string trios, following Appalachia Waltz, with unusual instrumentation and influences from bluegrass and folk music to create an Americana-style of traditional classical music. Uncommon Ritual adds jazz, blues, and elements from world music to the mix. Regarding the genre-defying nature of the music, New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff wrote, "Despite its inclusion of Bach and Pablo de Sarasate's "Zigeunerweisen", Uncommon Ritual is not a classical album. But neither does it belong to bluegrass, traditional Irish music, jazz or any of the other traditions it lightly borrows from. It's sort of a chamberized health shake of music that's acceptable to a National Public Radio listenership: it comes with an unmistakable patina of culture, the pieces are brief and funny and the sound of the music is comfortably familiar." [3] The trio includes double-bassist and composer Edgar Meyer, banjoist and composer Béla Fleck, and mandolin player Mike Marshall. The album is noted for the variety of instruments used, and the performers' ability to change instruments fluently within songs. The pairing of these three musicians was new for the recording of this album; however, Meyer and Fleck's musical relationship dates back to the mid '80s. [4]
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones is an American band that combines jazz and bluegrass music. The band's name is a play on 1960s rock band Dick Dale and the Del-Tones.
Béla Anton Leoš Fleck is an American banjo player. An acclaimed virtuoso, he is an innovative and technically proficient pioneer and ambassador of the banjo, bringing the instrument from its bluegrass roots to jazz, classical, rock and various world music genres. He is best known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Fleck has won 14 Grammy Awards and been nominated 33 times.
Edgar Meyer is an American bassist and composer. His styles include classical, bluegrass, newgrass, and jazz. He has won five Grammy Awards and been nominated seven times.
Charles Samuel Bush is an American mandolinist who is considered an originator of progressive bluegrass music. In 2020, he was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame as a member of New Grass Revival.
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Christopher Scott Thile is an American mandolinist, singer, songwriter, composer, and radio personality, best known for his work in the progressive acoustic trio Nickel Creek and the acoustic folk and progressive bluegrass quintet Punch Brothers. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow. In October 2016, he became the host of the radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion, which in December 2017 was renamed Live from Here.
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Music for Two is an album of duets by Edgar Meyer and Béla Fleck created and recorded while touring to support Perpetual Motion and released by Sony Classical in 2004. Most of the pieces are original compositions by Meyer and Fleck, working alone and together. They also perform four of their arrangements of music by J. S. Bach, an arrangement of a sonata by Henry Eccles, and piece by Miles Davis.
Strength In Numbers was a bluegrass supergroup formed in the late 1980s. The group featured Béla Fleck (banjo), Mark O'Connor, Sam Bush (mandolin), Jerry Douglas (dobro) and Edgar Meyer (bass). They released their only album, Telluride Sessions, in 1989. The group, minus Fleck, played on "Nothing but a Child" from Steve Earle's 1988 album, Copperhead Road under the name "Telluride".
Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20, is a musical composition for violin and orchestra written in 1878 by the Spanish composer Pablo de Sarasate. It was premiered the same year in Leipzig, Germany. It is based on themes of the Roma people, and in the last section the rhythms of the csárdás; this section uses a theme previously used in Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13, composed in 1847.
Jingle All the Way is a Christmas album and the thirteenth album overall by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Released in 2008 under Rounder, it marks the band's first record since their departure from Columbia. Jingle All the Way reached #1 on the Top Contemporary Jazz chart, the group's first album to do so since 1991. It also won the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Album.
Double Time is an album by American banjoist Béla Fleck, released in 1984.
Tales From The Acoustic Planet is an album by American banjoist Béla Fleck. It is a jazzy album with roots in bluegrass, where Fleck is joined by bluegrass stars, as well as his jazz friends and Flecktones members. This is also his first solo album since 1988's Places.
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