After more than 50 years, it may seem impossible for an established event like the Telluride Bluegrass Festival to do things it has never done before. But this year, music fans will get to experience something new.
For the first time, will welcome an acclaimed opera singer to its stage.
On June 19, soprano Renée Fleming will join banjo player Béla Fleck for a special performance of their new album, entitled “The Fiddle and The Drum.” The album, which came out May 29, features a collection of Appalachian-rooted folk and bluegrass tunes reimagined by Fleming, Fleck and a cast of other notable musicians in the genre, including country legend Dolly Parton.
Telluride Bluegrass Festival is one of just six places the duo plans to perform “The Fiddle and The Drum” this year, and they’ll be backed by other artists on the lineup, such as Sierra Hull, as part of the My Bluegrass Heart band. The festival will also see performances from Tedeschi Trucks Band, Shakey Graves, Larkin Poe and Gregory Alan Isakov, among many others, throughout the weekend of music. ()
“The Fiddle and The Drum” show will be a culmination of a project roughly two decades in the making. Fleming and Fleck first connected in the early 2000s, after the opera singer was inspired to revisit her love of folk music by the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” They recorded a few demos with some of the best players in the business, but ultimately put the project on hold as their touring schedules became increasingly busy.
Still, the magic of the music stuck with Fleming. In 2023, she reached back out to Fleck in hopes they could further develop the concept. It is rare for classically trained opera singers to branch outside the genre, Fleming said, but it was a welcome change of pace.
“I was in the middle of singing a really challenging opera at that time (of recording the demos) and somehow it was good for my voice to get away from some of the virtuosity of the repertoire I was singing then,” Fleming said. “And now it feels great. Itap closer to where my speaking voice is and it’s a lot of fun.”
Fleming and Fleck collaborated to determine the mix of folk classics and more modern songs they wanted to record. Naturally, themes about war, loss and love emerged to link the songs together.
“Once we embraced that theme, it just turned out to be extremely relevant and that we didn’t see coming,” Fleming said.
The track list includes standards like “The Cuckoo” and “Blackest Crow” alongside newer songs like “The Scarlet Tide,” a tune written by T Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello. (Most people know it performed by Alison Krauss.)
Parton is featured on an old Appalachian song called “In the Pines” and Joni Mitchell fans will immediately recognize the title track, an anti-war anthem released in 1969 on an album by the same name. Though Mitchell originally sang a capella, Fleming is backed by musician Jerry Douglas on dobro, giving the tune a new kind of haunting and resonant aesthetic.
Fleck, who is a virtuoso known for crossing genres, embraced the album as an opportunity to create music supporting a strong vocalist. The banjo doesn’t have a sustaining acoustic quality, Fleck said, so he is often busy playing notes in a role that somewhat mimics a vocalist singing. He relished a chance to support a lead singer versus playing a leading instrumental role.
“When you get into vocal music and you have a whole team creating the musical bedrock, you have to create space, you have to come and go, and you have to learn to disappear and learn to make it meaningful,” he said.
There are still a lot of unknowns about how the live show will play out, however. When we spoke with Fleming and Fleck in mid-May, they hadn’t yet taken the stage together.
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“The idea is that I’m going to have a great band that can play this music and they can play my music, too, and we’re going to build a structure where they both happen,” Fleck said. “I imagine us rocking the house, getting the show going with this band, kicking some kind of butt and then bringing it down. Renée comes out and does stuff, then she takes a break and we do some more. We’re gonna figure it out.”
By the time they reach Colorado’s Western Slope, the group will have had two live performances to test out the format. Fleck, who has been a staple of Telluride Bluegrass Festival since 1982, didn’t seem concerned. Despite the newness of both the album and the show, Telluride is the perfect place to bring it to life, he said. It will be Fleming's first time to visit the town and the festival.
“That audience is amazing because they transform to the audience of the artist thatap performing. If the band after us is a jam band, they're going to be a jam band audience. If the band before us is a trad bluegrass band, they're going to be a bluegrass audience. When we do our thing, they're going to be our audience,” Fleck said. “They transform, they know whatap required, they are all kinds of music fans, and they’ve all heard a lot of music.”
The Telluride Bluegrass Festival takes place June 18-21 at Town Park in Telluride. Tickets cost $135 for day passes and $420 for a four-day pass. Lodging, including camping, are sold separately. For more information, visit .
