The Bluegrass Sessions: Tales From the ... - Fleck, Bela (CD 1999)

Bela Fleck and his banjo allow anyone to embrace this sound and style of music through graceful and skillful interpretation. Bela's translation of standard bluegrass style is filled with a world full of influence. Featuring instrumentation of banjo, mandolin, dobro, fiddle, stand-up bass, and the guitar, this album cooks up a spicy stew of style. He who has been known to transpose classical music to the banjo, Bela Fleck has shattered personal stereotypes of bluegrass through his powerful playing and playful power. His finger pickings have a subtle tendency of eluding the typical notions of the genre, yet embracing the roots of bluegrass and expressing his personal love and devotion to the style. But to label this album as bluegrass is misleading, for there are tangents and traces of many other styles of music.

From jazz, folk, rock, classical, and beyond, the many moods expressed throughout this album evade an accurate transposition into words.

This recording ought to serve as fuel for those who are traveling along the highway. It sparks and ignites an energy of optimism and excitement and is an enhancement to any sun drenched day drive. The music pumps along with a beating pulse that can truly enhance any moment, creating a pre-conceived nostalgia for anyone in search of such.

What appears on the outside as a humble and simple style of music, bluegrass is not for the infantile musicians. All of the players on this record prove to the disbeliever that it takes buckets of chops to be able to keep up with the quickness of Bela's individual interpretation. The purity of the acoustic aspects of this album leave no room for tricks to deceive the listener. Such technique brings us back to the days of recording sessions when one could not hide behind technology or a producer's insight. Describing this album must not be limited to the generalized idea of this particular genre, for there are such multiple sound stylings which cannot possibly be considered bluegrass. Tinged with jazz, classical, rock, world, and pop, Bela's style of playing embraces such a broad pool of influence that one description can only limit the power of his playing.