Season Schedule

About the Featured Artists

Just in case you aren’t familiar with Béla Fleck, there are many who say he’s the premiere banjo player in the world. Others claim that Fleck has virtually reinvented the image and the sound of the banjo through a remarkable performing and recording career that has taken him all over the musical map and on a range of solo projects and collaborations. If you are familiar with Fleck, you know that he just loves to play the banjo, and put it into unique settings.

A nineteen-time Grammy Award-winner, Fleck has the virtuosic, jazz-to-classical ingenuity of an iconic instrumentalist and composer with bluegrass roots. For over 30 years, he has led Béla Fleck and The Flecktones, the groundbreaking quartet inspired by jazz, funk, bluegrass and beyond. From writing three banjo concertos for full symphony orchestra to exploring the banjo’s African roots with the award-winning 2009 documentary Throw Down Your Heart, many tout that Béla Fleck is the world’s premier banjo player. As Jon Pareles wrote for The New York Times, “That’s a lot of territory for five strings.”

Collaborators include Abigail Washburn, the Brooklyn Rider String Quartet, Chris Thile, The Blind Boys of Alabama, McCoy Tyner, Zakir Hussain, Edgar Meyer, and Rakesh Chaurasia (their latest album As We Speak won two Grammys in 2024).   Fleck’s album Rhapsody in Blue was released February 12, 2024 on the centennial of the work’s premiere in New York City, and he debuted it at Carnegie Hall with an orchestra in May. His Grammy-winning project My Bluegrass Heart, is named in honor of his friend and hero Chick Corea (My Spanish Heart).  Béla and Chick have toured as a duo and released three acclaimed albums, including their latest and final duo project, Remembrance (2024), which earned a GRAMMY for Best Jazz Instrumental Album.

Born on the Isle of Bute, Scotland Paul Rissmann is an award-winning composer, presenter and music educationalist. He studied composition and classical saxophone at the Royal Academy of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He currently holds the positions of Animateur with the London Symphony Orchestra and Children’s Composer in Residence for Music in the Round.

Frequently commissioned to transform children’s literature into symphonic scores, Paul won a British Composer’s Award in 2012 and was nominated for an Ivor Novello Composer Award in 2020. ABC (Australia) recorded his musical adventure Stan and Mabel, and his setting of Kobi Yamada’s New York Times bestseller What Do You With An Idea? was recently released online. In July 2023, the London Symphony Orchestra released an album of his concert suites inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Paul’s music has been performed by orchestras all over the world, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse.

Paul is passionate about music education. He is equally comfortable making music in a primary school or explaining the intricacies of Stravinsky’s motor rhythms to an audience of adults. His work in this field has received awards from both the Royal Philharmonic Society and the Royal Television Society. Paul appeared as creative director in a Channel 4 (UK) documentary Addicts’ Symphony, which explored how music can be therapeutic in overcoming addiction.

Paul creates and performs bespoke orchestral events for people of all ages which range from full-scale orchestral concerts for young listeners to a critically acclaimed series of music discovery concerts for adults called Naked Classics. He has presented Classics Unwrapped for BBC Radio Scotland, Inside Music for BBC Radio 3 and dissected the world of opera for Glyndebourne in Behind the Curtain.

Paul has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra with Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia, Andris Nelsons and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and toured India with Nicola Benedetti and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Paul’s music is available to listen to on all streaming platforms.

www.paulrissmann.com