BEATrio – Béla Fleck, Edmar Castañeda, Antonio Sánchez

Duration: 90 min

Béla Fleck, banjo; Edmar Castañeda, harp; Antonio Sánchez, drums

Over the course of his eclectic career stretching across four decades – and bagging multiple Grammy Awards along the way (to date, he has won 19 of them) – banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck has taken his five-stringed instrument to places where the sound of the banjo had rarely been heard before: Africa, India, and China. Fleck’s musical acumen is as vast as the prairies evoked by the sound of his instrument. He has indefatigably created circumstances that challenge the banjo stereotypes while effortlessly bending genres, moving from bluegrass, fusion, folk, country, classical music and jazz to world music. 

Whether in a contemporary jazz band The Flecktones, in a duo with Chick Corea (during the pandemic, Béla Fleck and the legendary pianist recorded the album Remembrance, considered to be Corea’s final recording before his passing in 2021), in intimate sets with his wife Abigail Washburn, in hybrid concerts with symphony orchestras, or with the funky Bootsy Collins and The Blind Boys of Alabama. While winning Grammys in various categories, Béla’s true heart lies in bluegrass, as evidenced by his 2021 album My Bluegrass Heart. In 2024, on the centennial of the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, he placed the banjo at the centre of his interpretation of Gershwin's enduring masterpiece, accompanied by a symphony orchestra, while previously also recording his own version of Rhapsody in Blue(grass).

He has been expanding the possibilities of his instrument his entire life, and doing so with the passion of a civil rights activist. "When you look at the banjo, it’s like … it’s the history of the world! I mean, it’s slavery, it’s the birth of the blues, the birth of American music. It’s a continuation of African music, a melting pot, a meeting ground. … [Some people] are associating it with the stereotypical images that were portrayed because they didn’t see images of Black people playing the banjo or even remember that Louis Armstrong had a banjo in his first Hot Five band. That was the instrument that was around from the start of jazz. Not guitar, not even piano; the banjo was there,« reflected Fleck in the Downbeat magazine, with his image gracing the cover.

Fleck is touring Ljubljana with an all-star trio and an instrumentation – banjo, harp, and drums – that might seem unusual on paper, but in truth yields a magical, seductive, and energetic blend of melody, harmony, and rhythm. Formed in autumn 2024, the band features Antonio Sánchez, a four-time Grammy Award winner and one of the globe’s most sought-after drummers whose impressive credentials include 18 years and 9 albums as a member of the celebrated Pat Metheny Group. Sánchez rose to worldwide fame in 2014 when he scored Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman; the original soundtrack was nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, and a Grammy. The trio is complemented by the Colombian musician Edmar Castañeda, a preeminent jazz harp virtuoso. Masterfully blending styles and genres, Castañeda has cemented the harp’s place in jazz through a wealth of collaborations with music titans such as Wynton Marsalis, John Scofield, Hiromi, and Paco de Lucía.