INTERVIEW: Zakir Hussain teams up with Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer for Town Hall concert
Photo: From left, Edgar Meyer, Béla Fleck and Zakir Hussain will play New York City’s Town Hall. Photo courtesy of Alan Messer / Provided by artist’s PR team with permission.
Zakir Hussain, an expert player of the Indian traditional instrument known as the tabla, will join forces with his frequent collaborators, banjoist Béla Fleck and double bassist Edgar Meyer, for a special concert Thursday, Nov. 15 at New York City’s Town Hall. The evening promises to be a unique musical amalgamation of different styles and sounds.
If that wasn’t enough of a draw, Indian flutist Rakesh Chaurasia will also take the stage with the trio.
“First of all, these guys are masters, and to play with them is really a special privilege and honor,” Hussain said in a recent phone interview. “That learning process of learning music starts from your first day of learning until you die, and so it’s never a good idea to consider yourself a master. If you consider yourself the best there is and you’ve done the best you can, you might as well hang up your boots and retire. And for people like Béla and Edgar, even though they’re at the pinnacle of their career and adored and revered and honored by millions of fans all around the world, they [want] to learn more, find out more about what other ways they can express themselves, what other musical language they can speak their music in.”
Hussain is considered a national treasure in his native India. He is a common presence on the world music scene, having brought the tabla, a percussion instrument featuring two drums, to audiences far and wide. He’s a humble man who could namedrop for many hours. Here’s a brief list of his collaborators over the years: George Harrison, John McLaughlin, Yo-Yo Ma, Van Morrison and Rennie Harris, among many others.
His collaboration with Fleck and Meyer seems to be near the top of his résumé accomplishments.
“It’s just something very special,” he said. “We are going to be playing in New York I think for the first time ever. We’ve never played there before. I’m really looking forward to it. The music is all new and fresh. We love each other so much. We’ve hung out with each other. Our families know each other. We’ve socialized together. We’ve lived together, and that adds another level of comfort when you are sitting on stage and working together. So I’m really thrilled to be playing with these gentlemen and especially happy that Rakesh, the Indian flutist, is going to join us and play with us. He’s really a monster player and probably the best north Indian classical flutist at the moment. It’s just amazing to have him there.”
The trio started playing with one another several years ago. In 2004, the Nashville Symphony Orchestra tasked Fleck and Meyer to develop a double concerto. It went over so well that they were asked back, and this time they brought Hussain for a triple concerto. Their efforts led to the recording of an album: The Melody of Rhythm; Triple Concerto & Music for Trio, recorded with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2009.
“The strangest thing was that when we first got together to collaborate, we weren’t playing music together,” Hussain remembered. “We were just writing music together. It was rare that we would sit with an instrument and jam. We were just too busy around a piano or just my tabla, and what happened was the Nashville Symphony Orchestra opened up a new concert hall. And for the inauguration, they commissioned Béla and Edgar to do a new piece, and Béla and Edgar told them that they’d like to bring me in as the third component for the piece. And Nashville agreed, and so that’s how it happened.”
He added: “So the first year that we got together, the music we made was the symphonic piece that we put together, which was known as The Melody of Rhythm, a triple concerto. And then once we played that, we wanted to make a CD. That’s only 30 minutes long. What do we do for the rest of time? So we wrote six or seven new pieces together along with that and made our CD, which was called Melody of Rhythm. That’s how it all began.”
Of course having a tabla, banjo and double bass together on stage sounds like an impossible musical task, but the three musicians found commonalities, especially when considering the melodies and rhythms of each instrument. Still, Hussain said those early days had a few “curiosity eyebrow raises.”
“Here’s a banjo, which sounds like a melodic instrument, but it’s also very rhythmic,” he said. “Then you have the bass, which is also a rhythmic instrument as well. … And then me, tabla, again a rhythmic instrument, and then when we started to look into it a little deeper, it turns out that we all had kind of a similar salient features. And that is we could all be rhythm players, and we could all support each other harmonically and melodically as well because tabla is also a melodic instrument apart from being a rhythm instrument. So an artist has to be soloist, backup, harmonizer — all at the same time — and it really was a very special experience.”
Going back to his central thesis that a master should not call himself a master, that a professional musician should always be open to learning, Hussain kept taking mental notes on the lessons he was picking up from his friends.
“And one of the best things I learned from playing with Edgar and Béla together was how the trio sat together, very close together and played more acoustically,” he said. “So the dynamic subtleties were really pronounced, and it was a very special sonic experience. You might call it a romance of the year.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Zakir Hussain, Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer will play Thursday, Nov. 15 at Town Hall in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
