Bela Fleck with UGA Symphony Orchestra

Béla Fleck and the Flecktones are legendary performers with a serious worldwide following. Next week he will perform with our own UGA Symphony Orchestra in what I can only term as an extraordinary concert:

Béla Fleck, the world's premier banjo player, for his second Hodgson Hall appearance this season when he returns to perform his new Concerto for Banjo and Orchestra with the UGA Symphony Orchestra on March 26 at 8 p.m. with Mark Cedel conducting. The program also will include Debussy's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" and Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.

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Fleck premiered his Concerto for Banjo and Orchestra with the Nashville Symphony in September 2011. The composer dedicated the concerto to the late Earl Scruggs and has described the piece as "a liberating experience for my efforts as a composer and hopefully for the banjo as well."

 

Since the 2011 premiere, Fleck has performed his new concerto with symphony orchestras around the country, but the Athens concert will be the first time Fleck has performed the piece with a university orchestra.

Nancy Riley, a graduate teaching assistant in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, will give a pre-concert lecture at 7:15 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public.

With tickets at $25 (students' discouted), this will sell out in no time. In the greater context of dwindling audiences for classical music, this is the kind of innovative programming - without offering the 'pops' repertoire that is so common - we should and can applaud. Plus, it will be a wonderful opportunity for our student musicians.