Bela Fleck and the Flecktones in Anchorage

Fleck was on my radar enough to know that I should go hear him, but I don't know that I'd heard him before. We were up so high that the seat belt sign was on through the whole concert, but not high enough to be able to use our electronic equipment during the flight. So I took my pictures before, during intermission, and at the encore. I figured that didn't really count as the concert. We were so high up, and it was so dark, it didn't really matter.




In fact, these two shots during the encore give you a much better sense of the music. It was definitely the kind of music I like - sort of a combination of electronic, jazz, with banjo. The guitarist and (Fleck on) the banjo pushed those instruments about as far out of their normal ranges as Hendrix pushed on the Star Spangled Banner. Not the same way he did, but that far. Often it was like a where's waldo, and every once in a while there'd a shadow of be something I thought I recognized - Norwegian Wood, Amazing Grace (well that was more than a shadow), Come Together, Chopsticks, etc. But mostly it was combinations of sounds and silences that one doesn't normally hear put together.


And in his final banjo solo, Fleck had the spirits of all the great pickers of stringed instruments of the US hill country, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia helping him.



I obeyed the written instructions on the program and didn't record. But you really can't report on these guys without some sound, so I found this video on Youtube. It isn't our concert. All four performers we saw are in it, though we didn't see this number.






And when the concert was over almost three hours later at 10:30pm, we spilled out into a balmy evening.