banjo

Renowned banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck is set to release a groundbreaking project that reimagines George Gershwin’s iconic ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ on its centennial anniversary. Pre-order at the link here. Available on February 12, precisely a hundred years after Gershwin’s historic premiere at Aeolian Hall in New York City, Fleck’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ album pushes the boundaries of the classic composition with three variations: “Rhapsody in Blue(grass),” “Rhapsody in Blue(s),” and a banjo-centric orchestration performed by…

The new features could better customize users’ explore page.Photo: UNSPLASH (AP)After bombarding people’s feeds with unwanted content, Instagram has realized its mistake. The social media platform is testing out ways for users to have more control over what pops up on their Explore page and regular feed by informing the app on what they don’t want to see.Instagram is testing two new features, as well as highlighting already existing features that can better shape one’s timeline, the company announced on Tuesday. The first…

The lockdown album has become something of a cliche, usually meaning a depressed, brooding affair. This fifth album from Australian banjo player-cum-sonic wizard Andrew Tuttle is reflective but never depressed – indeed, he describes it as “a reverse doomscroll” – and it brims with the sense of release and joy that comes from the tiniest escape from confinement.Entirely instrumental, it’s essentially a soundscape driven and shaped by Tuttle’s artful, melodic banjo, but set amid a widescreen wash of electronica, guitar,…

Jacken Elswyth is a banjo player fascinated with old mountain tunes and the power of the drone. She plays in the freewheeling Shovel Dance Collective, free-folk improvisers Sullow and runs a cassette label, Betwixt & Between, which has released spoken word meditations and psychedelic experiments among simpler traditional treatments, its releases decorated by DIY prints of medieval woodcuts.Elswyth also builds her own instruments, as presented on last year’s Banjo With the Sound of Its Own Making, which included the…