Ben Sollee may be a classically trained cellist, but you won’t find him in an orchestra pit anytime soon. Instead, if you’ve seen him around town lately, he was probably accompanied by local hip-hop artist Stuart Askew doing modern, spoken-word improv based on themes from old rural work songs. “Through composition and performance, I want to force the classical realm to have to start embracing elements outside of it,” the 23-year-old says, “like I’ve had to, except I was a folk musician forced to embrace the classical.”
The Lexington native began playing in fourth grade, and has a career as impressive as some twice his age. In high school he played on nationally broadcast Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour, which exposed him to the roots/Americana music community. Sollee also toured Europe and America playing electric cello with innovative blues man Otis Taylor. In 2006 he received a degree in cello performance from the University of Louisville, where had a hard time reconciling his own experiences with the strict classical training in the university’s program. “I learned from my travels that there’s not just one standard,” he says. “So when I would come home and hear teachers say, ‘This is the way,’ it was really hard to accept that. I don’t think there is ‘a way.’”
Sollee credits his open style for giving him opportunities to play with some current folk and bluegrass greats. While still a student at U of L, he helped banjo player Abigail Washburn record an album, Song of the Traveling Daughter, produced by Bela Fleck, currently one of the world’s pre-eminent banjo players. With the addition of fiddler Casey Driessen, their relationship led to the formation of the Sparrow Quartet, who will put out an album next year. The group has traveled twice to China; the second time, in 2006, they performed as the first U.S.cultural mission to Tibet.
“In between all that,” Sollee says, “I’m writing music to use the cello outside of the classical context that I’ve studied. I’m trying to reconcile it with the folk and bluegrass world I grew up in.” His upcoming album, Learning to Bend, is a clear attempt at that reconciliation and a lesson in adaptation. Sollee’s floating soft soprano is at times enchanting and haunting, while his fully scored cello playing lends a sense of tightness to the album. Musically sound, it’s technically his second album, but Sollee views it as his first. “I recorded this new album as a nice introductory, like a prologue,” he explains. “But things are going to change.”
Learning to B/files/storyimages/will be released in Louisvillein November, with a release party scheduled at 21C Museum Hotel on Nov. 16 and 17.
