UMS PRESENTS CHRIS THILE & EDGAR MEYER Chris Thile, Mandolin Edgar Meyer, Bass Thursday Evening, October 16, 2014 at 8:00 pm Michigan Theater • Ann Arbor Seventh Performance of the 136th Annual Season Photo: Chris Thile & Edgar Meyer; photographer: David McClister. 7 UMS PROGRAM This evening’s program will be announced by the artists from the stage and will be performed with one intermission. Tonight’s performance is sponsored by Mainstreet Ventures. Tonight’s performance is supported by Gil Omenn and Martha Darling. Endowment support provided by the Herbert and Doris Sloan Endowment Fund. Media partnership is provided by Ann Arbor’s 107one FM and WEMU 89.1 FM. Mr. Thile and Mr. Meyer appear by arrangement with Paradigm Talent Agency, New York, NY. BASS & MANDOLIN Bass & Mandolin is the second duo violin — a challenging set, recorded over recording from double bassist Edgar a wintry week at the same barn-turned- Meyer and mandolinist Chris Thile. studio in the Berkshires where The Five years have passed since the pair Goat Rodeo Sessions was made — that released its self-titled Nonesuch debut, was met with much critical acclaim. but in the intervening years the personal London’s Independent praised this radical and musical relationship between these reimagining of Bach, with Thile in front FALL 2014 FALL two virtuosic musicians has continued to of the mic and Meyer behind the board, as mature and deepen, and they have often one that “liberates the pieces from their found themselves on stage or in the studio conservatoire corsets.” Most recently, together in various configurations. In Meyer guest-starred on A Dotted Line, the 2011, Meyer and Thile, along with violinist long-awaited reunion album from Nickel Stuart Duncan, joined cellist Yo-Yo Ma to Creek, the trio that first brought Thile into create The Goat Rodeo Sessions, an album the spotlight when he was a child. of original material that garnered the ad The process of creating the largely hoc group a “Best Folk Album” Grammy instrumental pieces that comprise The Award. Goat Rodeo Sessions and its subsequent Though 20 years apart in age, Meyer embrace by both critics and a large record- and Thile share a seemingly effortless buying public influenced Meyer’s and rapport, along with similar resumes: Thile’s own approach to their latest duo They are both players of extraordinary work when they re-entered the studio accomplishment and wide-ranging together, this time at Skywalker Sound talent, as comfortable in the symphony in Marin County. There is intensity and hall as at an outdoor bluegrass festival. eloquence to their playing throughout They are each multiple Grammy Award these new sessions, but they didn’t shy winners and individual recipients of the away from the lyricism that marked the prestigious MacArthur “genius” grant. popular Yo-Yo Ma-helmed project. On Meyer produced Thile’s mandolin album their first duo album, Meyer recalls, they CHRIS THILE & EDGAR MEYER of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo would push their melodies to the point 8 BE PRESENT of abstraction. This time, he says, “we are was the follow-up to Meyer’s classical- letting some of the melodies show.” crossover hit, Appalachia Waltz. “I can As Thile reflects, “We have grown remember learning all the songs from a lot as a collaborative entity between Uncommon Ritual in my bedroom when I our duo first recording and now, at least was maybe 16 years old, just in case Mike partially due to our work together on The couldn’t do a tour or something. I finally Goat Rodeo Sessions. As collaborators, met Edgar backstage at the Rockygrass we’ve found a warmer voice to share. festival,” he continues, speaking of the Having had the experience of writing that annual multigenerational gathering of music and getting it to a fair amount of bluegrass musicians in Lyons, Colorado, people, I think we went into this project established 42 years ago by Bill Monroe. wanting to write material that was “I immediately started blathering balanced — that would take care of our about Mozart string quartets. I wanted minds and our fingers certainly, but also someone to talk to about that kind of take care of our bodies and souls — within, music. I was just dying to talk to someone of course, the rather extreme limitation of who had acres of experience with non- the mandolin and the bass.” “But,” he adds, through-composed music about through- “Edgar plays piano, I play a little guitar, so composed music.” we threw those instruments in as sort of Talking classical music backstage at palate cleansers.” a bluegrass confab was one way to bond these ambitious player-composers, but, as “I’m happy to be part of the mix,” Meyer declares. “It affords me a lot of Meyer notes, their connection goes even 2014 FALL options. Chris is comfortable with all further: “Chris and I share one particular kinds of improvising, with lots of different thing, which is that both of our fathers musical feelings and rhythmic feelings. were bass players. They were pretty He has a great groove, but he can free monumental influences on us. And we are up and play classical things with a little both realizing our fathers’ dreams.” Meyer less rigidity. Working with Chris, I can do and Thile began performing together anything I want. I can be the string section in concert more than a decade ago and or the rhythm section, and Chris can hold now, Thile says, “There’s the dichotomy it together. I can just be a bass player or I of having a mentor-apprentice kind of can play the melody. Chris figured out at relationship but also collaborating as a very young age how to make the other ostensible equals. Some of the electricity person feel comfortable, musically and comes from that; there is a little more otherwise, and how to create a situation weight to the moment for the two of us as where they can do their best. There are a result. I’m never not conscious of Edgar’s not many people with whom I have so status in my musical education, but at the much common ground. We can get to the same time I am very passionate about bottom of things very quickly.” music and how I think it should go, and Before the teenage Thile had even Edgar is every bit as passionate. I’m never met Meyer, he was strategizing on how to more engaged and present than when I’m work with him: “One of the most important working with Edgar.” records of my entire life is and will always be Edgar’s Uncommon Ritual with Program note by Michael Hill. [banjoist] Béla Fleck and [mandolinist] Mike Marshall,” Thile says, referring to an acclaimed 1997 string-trio disc that 9 UMS ARTISTS n a review of his quintet Punch Punch Brothers tour, Mr. Thile, always Brothers’ latest Nonesuch recording, up for another challenge, immediately I Who’s Feeling Young Now?, London’s embarked on a series of duo dates with Independent called CHRIS THILE fellow virtuoso and jazz pianist Brad “the most remarkable mandolinist in Mehldau. Said the Washington Post, the world.” The MacArthur Foundation “Their complex work translated to echoed that assessment when it named plain-faced beauty: simple, direct, and Mr. Thile one of its 23 MacArthur Fellows exquisite.” In between his Punch Brothers for 2012 — a recipient of its prestigious shows, Mr. Thile also found time to “Genius” grant. In honoring Mr. Thile, the present his Mandolin Concerto: Ad astra MacArthur Foundation noted that his per alas porci with several chamber “lyrical fusion of traditional bluegrass orchestras around the US, including a date with elements from a range of other at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium. musical traditions is giving rise to a new A child prodigy, Mr. Thile first genre of contemporary music.” rose to fame as a member of Grammy Prior to recording Punch Brothers' Award-winning trio Nickel Creek, with acclaimed new disc, Mr. Thile completed whom he released three albums and an album of tradition upending sold two million records. As a soloist interpretations of bluegrass classics with he has released five albums, as well as guitarist Michael Daves, Sleep With One performing and recording extensively as Eye Open, which garnered a 2011 Grammy a duo with Edgar Meyer and with fellow Award nomination for “Best Bluegrass eminent mandolinist Mike Marshall. FALL 2014 FALL Album.” He also recorded The Goat Rodeo Other stellar musicians with whom he Sessions with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist has collaborated include Béla Fleck and Stuart Duncan, and Mr. Thile’s mentor Hilary Hahn. Nonesuch Records released and frequent collaborator Edgar Meyer, his most recent solo recording, Bach: which won the 2012 Grammy Award for Partitas and Sonatas, Vol.1, produced by “Best Folk Album.” After a lengthy 2012 Edgar Meyer, in August 2013. Scan for an artist playlist! Chris Thile tells us what he’s been listening to lately. Download a free QR code reader app on your smart phone, point your camera at the code, and scan to see multimedia content; or visit www.umslobby.org to find these stories. CHRIS THILE & EDGAR MEYER 10 BE PRESENT n demand as both a performer and Music Festival, the Alabama Symphony, a composer, EDGAR MEYER has the Detroit Symphony Orchestra I formed a role in the music world unlike under Leonard Slatkin, the Los Angeles any other. Hailed by The New Yorker as Chamber Orchestra, Edo de Waart and “…the most remarkable virtuoso in the the Minnesota Orchestra, the Emerson relatively unchronicled history of his String Quartet, and the St.