Mike Meyer

Bassist Edgar Meyer, equally at home in Nashville or Lincoln Center, likes to invite his classical friends to mix with his country friends in performances of his hybrid brand of bluegrass chamber music. In SHORT TRIP HOME, he has assembled a team long on bow arms. Featured are guitarist Mike Marshall and mandolin player Sam Bush, both of whom double on fiddle, and star violinist Joshua Bell, the name above the title, who not only fits well into the proceedings, but soars right above them when the occasion calls for it.

This collection features selections from eight of bass player Edgar Meyer's most popular albums made for Sony. It includes mostly Meyer's own compositions written for himself and friends, as well as his arrangements of folk pieces and transcriptions of classical works, and is an excellent introduction to the diversity of his interests and the range of his skills as a performer and composer.

In 1995, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O'Connor joined forces on Appalachia Waltz, the first of a series of Sony Classical albums celebrating the varied musical textures of Americana. Over the course of six years, several albums were cut, among them Short Trip Home, Liberty!, Uncommon Ritual, and Midnight on the Water, in addition to the Grammy-winning Appalachia Waltz. Each project may have had its own specific instrumental focus, although the shared theme was clearly to obfuscate the genre lines that separate classical and traditional American music on a 200-year journey from the concert halls of Britain to the Shenandoah Valley.