The Melody Of Rhythm

We Say...

Review by John Schaefer

This meeting of the virtuoso banjo player, the leading tabla player from the Indian classical tradition and the award-winning composer/bassist is not as strange as it may at first seem — which is definitely a good thing, as this sort of musical mixing-and-matching can often create a mess. Not here, though. Bela Fleck, whose career has seen him bringing the banjo out of the bluegrass closet and onto the arena rock stage, has also released two albums of classical music — the second with Edgar Meyer. Meyer, a MacArthur Fellowship winner (the so-called Genius Award), is best known for his Americana-infused chamber music recordings with Yo Yo Ma and Mark O’Connor, but he began in the American string band world. And Zakir Hussain, inheriting the mantle of World’s Most Popular Tabla Player from his dad, the great Alla Rakha, has also written and played orchestral and film music. Rather than a world music fusion, this album offers a distinctly American — at times almost rootsy — form of chamber and orchestral music.

The ties that bind these musicians so effectively here are, first, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which offers a huge and varied canvas for the three soloists; and second, a shared love of improvisation — "Out of the Blue" refers quite clearly to Miles Davis’s "Kind Of Blue," and is a good-natured highlight.

The centerpiece is the title track, "The Melody of Rhythm," a triple concerto for banjo, tabla, bass and orchestra. The choice of solo instruments couldn’t be more bizarre, but this concerto actually follows a fairly standard format: a wild virtuosic ride through a fast first movement; a lyrical and restrained second movement, with some lovely chorale work from the orchestral horns; and a rousing finale complete with a three-part cadenza that shows how easily and imperceptibly these musicians can move, from composed to improvised music.