The FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre presents Dancers of Damelahamid: Spirit and Tradition in St. Catharines Monday, April 22.
Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn, “the king and queen of the banjo” (Paste Magazine), have a musical partnership like no other. Béla Fleck is a fifteen-time Grammy Award winner who has taken the instrument across multiple genres, and Abigail Washburn is a singer-songwriter and clawhammer banjo player who re-radicalized it by combining it with Far East culture and sounds.
On stage, Fleck & Washburn will perform pieces from their Grammy-winning self-titled debut as well as their new record, Echo in the Valley (Rounder, 2017). With one eye on using the banjo to showcase America’s rich heritage and the other pulling the noble instrument from its most familiar arena into new and unique realms, Béla & Abigail meet in the mean, head-on, to present music that feels wildly innovative and familiar at the same time.
