The Vancouver Island Music Festival Community respectfully acknowledges the Indigenous people on whose traditional territory our festival celebrates music, friendship and builds community and, we acknowledge the descendants of the Puntledge, E’iksan and K’omoks peoples whose historical relationships with this land continues today.
Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain & Edgar Meyer featuring Rakesh Chaurasia
Playing Friday night in the Concert Bowl
The first time banjo legend Béla Fleck, tabla master Zakir Hussain, and double bass virtuoso Edgar Meyer got together to make an album, it was to write, not to play.
When Fleck and Meyer were looking for a third partner for a triple concerto they had been commissioned to write to mark the opening of Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center, they thought of Hussain, who was quite interested in orchestral writing. “We thought we could learn a whole lot from this guy!” says Béla. The result was The Melody of Rhythm (2009), recorded with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin.
Daniel Lanois
Daniel will be performing Sunday Evening.
Daniel Lanois is a name that deserves to be mentioned alongside the finest sonic experimenters of the 20th century – and the 21st century too. Yes, he’s been willing to step back into the background as others take the limelight, but that shouldn’t diminish his contribution, which ripples throughout practically every style and sound of the modern era. Whatever you’re listening to – whether it be acoustic or electronic, roots or futurist, underground or pop – if you listen closely you’ll hear traces of the sonic signatures of Daniel Lanois. And what’s more he’s still experimenting as eagerly as he ever has. At a point when most musicians with anything resembling his level of success would be resting on their laurels and playing on old successes, he still has more hunger for the new than people a third his age, and as a result is creating music as beautiful and new as ever before.
Lucinda Williams
Lucinda will be performing Saturday Evening.
“I wanna feel that moment / When the song can find me I wanna feel that moment / When the song can save me” from “Where the Song Will Find Me”
Lucinda Williams’ music has gotten her through her darkest days. It’s been that way since growing up amid family chaos in the Deep South, as she recounts in her candid new memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I told You. Over the past two years, it’s been the force driving her recovery from a debilitating stroke she suffered on November 17, 2020, at age 67.
Her masterful, multi-Grammy-winning songwriting has never deserted her. To wit, her stunning, sixteenth studio album, Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart, brims over with some of the best work of her career. And though Williams can no longer play her beloved guitar – a constant companion since age 12 – her distinctive vocals sound better than ever.
Stephanie Chou
“One of New York’s most socially relevant and ambitious jazz talents…”
Stephanie Chou is an American composer, saxophonist, and singer based in New York City. She blends Chinese musical influences with Western jazz and pop to create a unique and vibrant musical world. Chou has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, B.B. King’s, Joe’s Pub, Miller Theater, and at music festivals in New Orleans, Chicago, Vermont (Discover Jazz), Pennsylvania (Musikfest) and NY (Lake George Jazz Festival). She also tours with her band in Europe and China, where her music creates immediate cross-cultural connections and continues to expand her fanbase.
She was mentored by legendary songwriter/musician Allen Toussaint, who encouraged her to develop her own artistic voice. She later founded the Stephanie Chou Ensemble, a chamber quintet that combines saxophone and vocals in English and Mandarin with Chinese violin (erhu), viola, and a jazz rhythm section.