MORE FROM HUFFPOST
MORE FROM HUFFPOST
Bela Fleck
At age 7, she was introduced to the mandolin by her dad, but the fiddle was "what I thought I wanted to play," she said. That changed in 1999 when the Christmas gift from Hull's grandmother, great aunt and great uncle was too big for her tiny hands to hold.
A few years ago, Ben, our son with severe autism, got a chance to meet one of his favorite musicians -- or more accurately, meet the man responsible for creating some of his favorite music. We now know there's a big difference, and this "meeting" helped us understand our big guy a little better.
WHAT'S HAPPENING
WHAT'S HAPPENING
Mr. Fleck's banjo with its bluegrass inflections, and Mr. Corea's piano with his classical flourishes and Latin-inspired rhythmic approach, come from two vastly different musical worlds, but these two wizards made these variants work for the most part, to a surprising degree.
Nashville singer-songwriter Sierra Hull, one of the opening performers at the 43rd RockyGrass Festival this weekend, has impressed audiences with her mandolin playing since performing for her third-grade class in Byrdstown, Tennessee.
I was an early user of Pandora and have found lots of new musicians that I wouldn't have heard since the demise of record stores with listening stations. But Spotify, and probably the coming Apple streaming service, takes free listening to a whole new level.
If you are already a fan of MerleFest, then you can skip to No. 1. For the uninitiated, however, MerleFest is the younger, Eastern cousin of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. I discovered this gem of Americana festivals more than a decade ago after I moved to North Carolina from spending nearly a decade out West attending Telluride.
"Once we caught on to the sounds we were making, from there on we were rolling. Pretty much everything you hear with the exception of a fiddle here or there and a couple of background voices was what we produced on the floor."
