Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile - The Goat Rodeo Sessions (2011) [Official Digital Download 24/88]

"The Goat Rodeo Sessions" is a groundbreaking project that brings together four string virtuosos: acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, fiddler Stuart Duncan, bassist Edgar Meyer and mandolin-player Chris Thile. Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile have collaborated in the past, producing the gold-selling album Songs of Joy and Peace. Each artist is a prominent figure in his own musical realm. They have come together as a unified quartet for this classical-bluegrass masterpiece. The music, which includes two tracks with vocalist Aoife O’Donovan, feels both new and familiar it’s composed and improvised, uptown and down home, funky and pastoral and above all, uniquely American. The album topped the Billboard Bluegrass charts and won two GRAMMY Awards.

The last time cellist Yo-Yo Ma teamed with bassist Edgar Meyer and mandolin player Chris Thile (of Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers fame) for a classical/bluegrass hybrid, the result was the gold-selling Songs of Joy & Peace. Here, Ma, Meyer, and Thile are joined by fiddler Stuart Duncan in a different kind of string quartet. The slang phrase "goat rodeo," according the Urban Dictionary, "is about the most polite term used by aviation people (and others in higher risk situations) to describe a scenario that requires about 100 things to go right at once if you intend to walk away from it." That may be overstating the case for a group of musicians, most of whom have worked together and succeeded before, but it also carries a rural connotation that is appropriate for music that is, for the most part, closer to bluegrass than classical. The tunes were written by Duncan, Meyer, and Thile, and Ma's role is largely supportive. After the fast pieces Attaboy and Quarter Chicken Dark, Helping Hand is the first slower number, with Thile switching to guitar and Duncan taking over the mandolin for a musical conversation between the two instruments. Where's My Bow? is a violin/cello/bass trio with Thile sitting out, and it is one of the few tracks that leans more toward the classical side, boasting a big, dramatic finish. The more exotic Here and Heaven finds both Thile and Meyer at times playing the Renaissance instrument the gamba, as Duncan picks up a fretless banjo, all of them backing a vocal duet between Thile and Aoife O'Donovan of Crooked Still. Meyer moves to piano for the slow, thoughtful Franz and the Eagle, another piece that has more of a classical bent. The rest of the album is in a progressive bluegrass mode, Less Is Moi mixing several short themes and allowing room for improvisation, and 13:8 taken quickly, with Duncan and Thile interacting briskly. It doesn't really seem as if 100 things had to go right for The Goat Rodeo Sessions to work; it only required four or five talented musicians to play and sing in sympathetic unity, and that they did, making this a satisfying experience for more adventurous classical and bluegrass fans.

Tracklist:

01 - Attaboy
02 - Quarter Chicken Dark
03 - Helping Hand
04 - Where's My Bow
05 - Here and Heaven (feat. Aoife O'Donovan)
06 - Franz And The Eagle
07 - Less is Moi
08 - Hill Justice
09 - No One But You (feat. Aoife O'Donovan)
10 - 13 08
11 - Goat Rodeo

Produced by Steven Epstein. Engineered by Richard King (ass. Brian Losch).
Recorded on June 12-15 and August 8-12, 2011 at The Barn, Lenox, Massachusetts.

Musicians:
Yo-Yo Ma – cello
Stuart Duncan – fiddle, banjo, mandolin
Edgar Meyer – bass, piano, gamba
Chris Thile – mandolin, guitar, fiddle, gamba, vocals on tracks 5, 9
Aoife O'Donovan – vocals on tracks 5, 9


Thanks to the Original customer!