Béla Fleck, world-renowned banjo player, Grammy winner and composer, is using Sibelius software to create his Concerto For Banjo, a work commissioned by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra (also a 2011 Grammy winner!). The piece will premiere this September in Nashville with acclaimed conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, and will later be featured with several major orchestras as Béla performs the Concerto on tour.
Some of the most useful features of Sibelius during the process have been the high-quality instrument samples, multiple version comparison and banjo tablature. Béla and the NSO had the first read-through of the piece in April, with another rehearsal scheduled for June. Béla’s copyist and music preparer for the project is Bruce Dailey (Wynonna Judd’s keyboardist and orchestral arranger). Being able to hand-off the project files to one another mid-stream during the creative process has been vital, considering the multiple times the Concerto is being formatted and printed. Sibelius’s ability to record and compare versions within a score, as well as compare different scores has been a tremendous help!
Béla has been working on the piece since Fall 2010, and says: “Sibelius is my new best friend!”
Wheat Williams
“And over here’s Béla, he’s the big Flecktone. He wants to take the banjo to galaxies unknown…”
The Béla Fleck and the Flecktones Rap, as performed by Victor Wooten when Béla Fleck and the Flecktones first played the Arsenio Hall show on television in the USA in the early 1990s.
Seems like Béla has conquered the world since then.