There will be a whole lotta meeting going on at Campbell Hall on Wednesday, November 15, with the fortuitous collaboration of banjo wiz Béla Fleck, double bassist Edgar Meyer, tabla master Zakir Hussain, and bansuri player Rakesh Chaurasia. Stylistically, the musical menu will veer from bluegrass to classical music from points West and East, with jazz elements and attitudes naturally tossed into the mix.
After Fleck and Meyer connected with Hussain for an orchestral project released on 2009’s aptly titled The Melody of Rhythm, the musicians produced a fascinating and freely eclectic yet focused album this year, As We Speak. Featured tracks on the album include the extended “The B Side” and “Conundrum” and the “single” “Owl’s Misfortune,” a more compact mission statement of the interwoven idioms and cultures at the party.
News of a border-crossing project involving these parties comes as no surprise, in general public terms and also for avid concertgoers in Santa Barbara. We have caught sight and sound of Fleck many times, starting with his fusion band the Flecktones; with his banjoist wife, Abigail Washburn; and interactions with fellow “New Nashville” cat Meyer. Meyer himself is also a familiar face on local stages and, perhaps most memorably, for his enchanting “chamber music in historic places” solo concert in the innovative Romero Canyon home of architect Barton Myers.
Hussain’s list of local shows includes playing with sitar master Ravi Shankar at the Arlington Theatre and in jazzman Charles Lloyd’s Sangam trio (with drummer Eric Harland in the band). That Lobero Theatre concert was recorded (by Sound Design’s Dom Camardella) for a popular ECM album.
In a way, the freshest component of this meeting of masters is the appearance of renowned Rakesh Chaurasia on the bansuri (the Indian bamboo flute). While the other musicians have appeared in Santa Barbara on many occasions and contexts over the years, Chaurasia represents the vast population of revered musicians from non-Western traditions who haven’t received the attention or public visibility they deserve.
Of the new globally inclined quartet, Fleck has noted that “everybody has to stretch in the direction of the other people. To me, a collaboration where nobody changes is not a collaboration; it’s a mashup…. I like a collaboration where I have to learn a bunch of things from the other people. And in this case, I’m learning like crazy.”
Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Zakir Hussain, and Rakesh Chaurasia perform at UCSB Campbell Hall on November 15 at 8 p.m. See artsandlectures.ucsb.edu for tickets and more information.