Bela Fleck Announces New Album With The Colorado Symphony & Brooklyn Rider

Banjo master Béla Fleck has detailed, Juno Concerto, a new album he recorded with the Colorado Symphony, conducted by Jose Luiz Gomez. The collaborative album also features string quartet Brooklyn Rider and is due out on Rounder Records on March 3.

Recorded in March of last year, the Fleck-composed the concerto for banjo and orchestra Juno Concerto and named it after his son Juno was recenrtly born to Fleck and his wife Abigail Washburn. Fleck shared the following regarding the album:

Every note of the concerto is colored by the experience of being a new father, and how that has changed what is important to me as a person, as well as what I wish to express through music … For Juno Concerto, I wanted to take what I had learned from writing and performing my first concerto and apply it here. The Impostor was written in 2011 and now that I’ve had the chance to play it over 50 times, I’ve had the chance to observe what I like and what I think could be different. This time I wanted to improve my writing for the orchestra, to create more and better slow music, and for the solo parts to focus on flow and things that come naturally to the banjo, rather than attempting to do the nearly impossible, constantly.

The Juno Concerto comes with companion pieces “Griff,” featuring Fleck and Brooklyn Rider. It also comes with the first-ever recording of the second movement of 1984’s “Quintet for Banjo and Strings,” which was co-written with Bela’s friend, mentor and regular collaborator Edgar Meyer and marks both Fleck’s first attempt at writing classical music.

Here’s the “Audition Reel” video shared by Bela promoting the new album:

Juno Concert Tracklist

1. Juno Concerto: Movement I (Bela Fleck, Colorado Symphony)
2. Juno Concerto: Movement II (Bela Fleck, Colorado Symphony)
3. Juno Concerto: Movement III (Bela Fleck, Colorado Symphony)
4. Griff (Bela Fleck, Brooklyn Rider)
5. Quintet For Banjo And Strings: Movement II (Bela Fleck, Brooklyn Rider)