Beautiful Limitations: Bicycles, Music, and Community-Based Touring

Thursday, September 30, 2010

07:45 PM - 08:45 PM

(Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts)

BIO

Ben Sollee is a cellist known for his percussive playing style, genre hopping songwriting, wide appeal, and political activism. His music incorporates banjo, guitar, percussion and unusual cello techniques to create a unique mix of folk, bluegrass, jazz and R&B.

Raised in Lexington, Kentucky, Sollee began playing the cello in elementary school. Besides classical music, his early musical influences included recordings his parents played of Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles, Billie Holiday and Otis Redding, and later he discovered folk music.

In 2005, Sollee joined with Abigail Washburn (banjo and vocals), Bela Fleck (banjo) and Casey Driessen (violin) to form The Sparrow Quartet. The group's debut album, Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet, was released in May 2008. That same month, Sollee came out with his first EP If You’re Gonna Lead My Country. A month later, in June 2008, he released his solo debut album Learning to Bend.

In 2007, NPR's Morning Edition named Sollee one of the "Top Ten Unknown Artists of the Year". Following the release of his album in 2008, the public radio network's All Things Considered aired a feature on Sollee, describing Learning to Bend as "an inspired collection of acoustic, folk and jazz-flavored songs, filled with hope and the earnest belief that the world is good.""

Sollee has also been featured on the PBS series On Canvas, recorded at the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia; he was 17 years old when he started a weekly run as the cellist on the house band, the Folk Boy Orchestra, of the radio program WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Sollee's song "How to See the Sun Rise" was featured in a Season 4 episode of the Showtime television series Weeds

In March 2009, he began touring with the Vienna Teng Trio, which is led by pianist/singer-songwriter Vienna Teng, and The Paper Raincoats, a band from Brooklyn, New York.

Dear Companion, out February 16th, 2010 on Sub Pop Records, is collaboration between three Kentucky musicians. The songs are written and performed by Ben Sollee and Daniel Martin Moore, and produced by and featuring Yim Yames of My Morning Jacket and Monsters of Folk. Recorded in the first half of 2009 in their home state, Dear Companion explores their ties to the place they love and aims to draw attention to the problem of mountaintop removal coal mining and its impact on the people and heritage of central Appalachia The album debuted at number 6 in the nation.