David Greenwald for THE OREGONIAN
Béla Fleck’s made a career out of bringing the banjo where it wasn’t expected. The musician, informed by the three-finger bluegrass tradition of Earl Scruggs and others, has walked ably between jazz, classical and world music both alongside greats such as Chick Corea and Edgar Meyer and his own group, the Flecktones, whose 20-plus-year career has been on hiatus since 2012.
Fleck’s latest conquest is the symphony orchestra. After testing his classical chops with “Perpetual Motion,” an album that relied on the compositions of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and others, his first such foray as a composer is banjo concerto “The Imposter,” a work he’ll bring to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on Saturday, Sept. 13, with the Oregon Symphony. We talked about the piece’s Oregon origins, the Flecktones’ likely return and why the banjo’s status is changing.
I hear you’re out at Cannon Beach this week.
Béla Fleck: I am, yeah. I’ve been coming out here for quite a while, in fact. My wife’s family has a place out here — kind of a hideaway for us, we try to get here every summer for some part of it. And actually I did some of the first writing for the banjo concerto here, I came out here myself for two weeks and had my first intensive writing experience here.
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Bela Fleck on TKA