Béla Fleck Brings The Africa Project To The Jorgensen, 2/25

Béla Fleck, the world's premier banjo player and 2010 Grammy-winner for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and Best Contemporary World Music Album for Throw Down Your Heart, brings The Africa Project to Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, February 25, at
8 pm. Fleck collaborates with amazing African musicians including Bassekou Kouyate, who leads the seven-piece Malian band Ngoni Ba, Tanzanian singer and guitarist John Kitime, and fellow Tanzanian Anania Ngoliga, a blind thumb-piano player whom Fleck describes as a "kindred spirit." Together they evoke naked humanity - tears, laughter, passion and the unalloyed bliss of making music.

In a program that transcends the barriers of language and culture, Fleck creates some of the most exciting, beautiful and memorable music of his career. In so doing, he reveals many subtle facets of African music, from the fully modern to the deeply traditional. His "reverence for his fellow players allows for the honey of the African sounds to seem that much sweeter," says Popmatters.com.

In 2005 Fleck went to sub-Saharan Africa from the U.S. with an urge to bridge the continents' musical divide. He traced the banjo's origins there, explaining that the akonting of Gambia, a gourd wrapped in animal skin with three twangy strings that conjures up worlds of joyous sound, could very well be the instrument's prototype. "Huge numbers of slaves came west from this area," he explains. "We were told that the musicians were allowed to play these instruments on the slave ships, and that many lives were saved due to it."

Fleck's own astonishing finger-work weaves through layers of percussion, flutes, and vocal harmonies, as past and present coalesce in sonic unity. The banjo sheds its image as the quintessential American instrument to reveal a deep African heritage and the collective wail of the European slave trade.

In a stellar review of Béla Fleck's latest work in the Los Angeles Times, Tina Daunt reflects that "The bond between a musician and his instrument is a mystical one. Without him the instrument is mute; without the instrument, the musician's soul is voiceless." Béla Fleck has found the voice of a continent - and his own.

Enjoy this groundbreaking performance with the whole family at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, located at 2132 Hillside Rd. on the UConn campus in Storrs - just 30 minutes from Hartford! Tickets are $27 and $30. For tickets and information, call 860.486.4226, or order online at jorgensen.uconn.edu. Convenient free parking is available across the street in the North Garage.