Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck shines in Dublin

On Sat Feb 3, banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck and his Flecktones played Dublin’s iconic Vicar Street venue. From the off, the musicianship and Fleck’s thoughtful choreography held the audience in awe. Starting with mandolin and building instrument by instrument, a racing ‘Blue Mountain’ started the evening. Fleck soon introduced himself and the band who were there to play songs primarily from My Bluegrass Heart, Fleck’s most recent bluegrass album; his Flecktones, all experts at their instruments, are made up of Grammy-winning fiddle-player Michael Cleveland, mandolin-player Sierra Hull, guitarist Bryan Sutton, multi-instrumentalist Justin Moses and ‘twice named IBMA’s Bass Player of the Year’ Mark Schatz. Introductions done, Fleck declared an inclination to slow things down. With huge grins, The Flecktones crashed strings first into another wild and unwieldy bluegrass number (‘Hug Point’). There’s a warm connection, dare I say nerdy bliss, to the group’s dynamic. The Vicar Street venue, too, is just small enough that one can feel an intimate part of this dynamic. Perhaps more importantly, it’s small enough that any audience member can see at least some of the finger-flying virtuosity on display.

Béla Fleck at Paris' Sons d'Hiver Festival on Jan 30 © Margaux Rodrigues

But the slower moments did come. A moving rendition of ‘Amazing Grace' into 'Big Country’ was dedicated to Fleck’s father-in-law, Don Washburn, who had died just the night before. Fleck and Hull, too, performed a pared-down rendition of ‘Psalm 136’, a collaboration between Fleck and Chris Thile. Making heavy, quick use of harmonics, the two instruments rippled through the jaunty, glittering, Africa-tinged tune. Fleck’s in-depth exploration of his instrument and the sounds of the world is no gimmick, but a lasting, ever-captivating impulse that seeps into all his work, whatever the genre it’s going under. A highlight track of the evening saw Fleck twisting his tuning pegs, finding and mimicking the half-notes of a sitar. Mesmeric. Each song, whether Cleveland and Moses were duetting on double fiddles, Moses and Hull were floating dobro after mandolin, Schatz was giving it schtick with a reverberating, deep bass solo or Fleck and Moses were duelling banjos remarkably (‘Boulderdash’), was brilliantly constructed, avoiding the over-indulgence of talented musicians while highlighting their skill and the difference of sounds where it worked best. It’s no surprise that Fleck won (in absentia) two Grammy awards the following night (for his latest collaboration, As We Speak, with Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer, featuring Rakesh Chaurasia). And between numbers, Fleck and his group provided some great, unrehearsed chatter. After some confusion among the band and a brief silence, Sutton checked in with the crowd, reassuring us in case “our show gets too slick for y’all.” It’s uplifting to know these people are human, after all.

Hull and Moses sang a handful of numbers between tunes, but the extraordinary musicianship on show and Fleck’s expert choreography didn’t demand songs. The bluegrass, tinged as it was with other genres and explorations – from jazz to African n’goni – was diverting and expansive enough in itself. And has spurred much relistening to Fleck's back catalogue.

+ Béla Fleck & The Flecktones are still on tour around Europe, before dates in North America. For more information and tickets, visit belafleck.com/tour