Béla Fleck & Renée Fleming in Chautauqua

Béla Fleck is an American banjoist and composer, born in New York City in 1958, who plays bluegrass, jazz and classical music. He became known through New Grass Revival and as the leader of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones; his major recordings include Flight of the Cosmic Hippo and Perpetual Motion. Béla Fleck and the Flecktones were formed in 1988 and made an early televised appearance on the PBS series Lonesome Pine Specials before becoming a long-running touring ensemble. His duo partnership with Chick Corea later produced concert tours connected to The Enchantment and Two. For the My Bluegrass Heart tour in 2021, he led an acoustic ensemble whose players included Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas and Sierra Hull. Although he has long been based in Nashville, he has traveled well beyond the city to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado.

Renée Fleming is an American soprano, born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, in 1959, known for opera, orchestral concerts and song recitals. She is particularly associated with Mozart’s Countess Almaviva, the Marschallin in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier and the title role in Dvořák’s Rusalka. At the Metropolitan Opera, she debuted in 1991 as the Countess in Le nozze di Figaro and later became the first woman given an opening-night gala built around a single singer. After her final performances there as the Marschallin in 2017, she returned in 2022 as Clarissa Vaughan in Kevin Puts’s The Hours. Her appearances at recurring classical events have included opera productions at the Salzburg Festival and the Last Night of the Proms at Royal Albert Hall.