Lawrence.com

Monday night, Lawrence's Liberty Hall was host to an audience in everything from neckties to tie-dyes as the eclectic duo of Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer came to play a swirling array of virtuoso music that incorporated everything from Americana, jazz, celtic and eastern modalities, to piano concertos transcribed for banjo and upright bass.

Longtime collaborators Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer have brought their eclectic collaboration full circle with Meyer's production of banjo virtuoso Fleck's first classical recording, "Perpetual Motion." The pair's friendship and collaboration began when in 1982, Fleck was in Aspen, Colorado performing with New Grass Revival, and Meyer, a classically trained double bass player was studying for the summer there.

Fleck went in search of Meyer after watching him win the fiddle competition on the bass at the Pitkin County Fair. He found him busking on the sidewalk in front of the Haagen Dazs parlor. The two were both members of the groundbreaking, progressive bluegrass ensemble Strength In Numbers from '86 till '92 and have been frequent collaborators ever since.

Performing a lengthy, two-set concert, the pair played a relaxed, jazzy composition to open before heading straight into a pair of Scarrlati piano concertos followed but an arpeggiated jazz piece titled "Solar."

After an untitled ballad, the pair performed Meyer's imaginatively titled 1985 composition "Duet," a journey that covers ground from Aaron Copeland's back yard, to Appalachia, to Charlie Parker's 52nd street, to the Indian sub-continent. After a slinky, bluesy bass solo Meyer shifted to the piano to accompany Fleck's recitations of first a Tchaikowski piece that demonstrated the narrow gap between classical and folk music, and a more baroque composition by Pagganini. The set ended with the light-hearted "Pile Up."

The second set began with Fleck on a chrome National Steel guitar displaying some fingerstyle prowess. Highlights of the second set included three variations on Bach's "Two Part Inventions #6," an untitled number where Fleck first displays annoyance with, than plays along to a ringing cell phone it turned out he was manipulating all along, and a four movement sonata composed by Henry Eccles.