Strength In Numbers with Mark O'Connor at Telluride Bluegrass Festival
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- / markoconnor * www.markoconnor...
The legendary band "Strength in Numbers" at the 17th Annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 1990.
Mark O'Connor - Violin
Sam Bush - Mandolin
Bela Fleck - Banjo
Jerry Douglas - Dobro
Edgar Meyer - Bass
Blue Men of the Sahara (By Bela Fleck & Edgar Meyer)
Improvised Violin Solo (By Mark O'Connor)
Produced by Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Inc./Mus!c Link Corp. 1991
"Strength in Numbers is an all-star band in which the focus is on the group rather than on individual performances. Each member is recognized as a highly influential master of his instrument. After working together in various combinations through the 1980's on each other's solo albums and on music festival stages, they decided in the summer of 1988 to unite their five creative visions. The result is a unique style of music that owes as much to classical concepts of arrangement and theme development as it does to popular concepts of virtuoso hot licks. Acoustic music's greatest musicians have gathered here for the musical event of the year." (From: Strength in Numbers - The Telluride Sessions, MCA Recording CD Liner notes.)
THE TELLURIDE FESTIVAL - "Considered one of the country's most progressive annual bluegrass festivals, the Telluride festival has grown to be a premier world event since the first one in 1974. In recent years, the festival has expanded to include musicians who play jazz, rock, country, folk, pop, world, celtic, newgrass, as well as bluegrass, sometimes blending different styles. The festival embraces the celebration of music in one of the country's most spectacular settings-San Juan Valley."
For more information on Mark O'Connor, String Camps, The O'Connor Method, ensembles, repertoire, sheet music and more, please visit www.markoconnor...
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All the best of the best fun stuff
Such an amazing super group
This group visit us from ANOTHER dimension, surely!
The supreme skill of this group is inversely proportionate to their fashion sense.
"Twas the '80s bro, give them a break lol!
I was there!
Watching Sam Bush jam out always makes me smile :)
Jaw dropping rendered speechless
I think Edgar Meyer has been jamming with Bowhead whales... Seriously, what a technical monster - what a soul!
I like to imagine this violin solo as the winning performance in a duel against the devil.
I feel very fortunate to have experienced this, very fortunate indeed.
Just got home from a meeting with the IRS. They are depressing people. Although it DOES look like I may win the argument, they are still depressing. So I fire up this thing and pull up this video... and I feel MUCH better. Thank God for folks as talented as this. Thank you Mr. O"Connor!
These guys are Titans... if this music rock the foundation of your soul, you should check your pulse, you might just have passed away.
Does music get more extraordinary than this?? :bows to the masters of sound:
it's not about fashion, be it clothing, hair or musical style. it's about loving the music, making the music, BEING the music.
g
Awesome song/musicianship! Killer Whale Bass Bowing @ 3:00! And look at that, only in America....you have 3 people that didn't like it!
Saw this show! was freakin AWESOME!!!! Would love to see more of this amazing conglomeration of the "best of the best"!
Thanks for posting!
best music video on the internet!
Mark, I did not know until just now that we Telluride Festivarians had come "that close" to having Strength in Numbers performing on stage again when Mumford & Sons had to cancel at the last minute 3 years ago. Wow! We've driven from Texas to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival every year for the past 19 years, and every year, I beg Craig Ferguson to schedule a reunion of Strength in Numbers onstage. I hope you'll give it some consideration again in the future, before we're all too old to keep going. No, it doesn't need to be an "exact replication" of this set. I know the entire Strength in Numbers cd from beginning to end "by heart," and I have a VHS video copy of the Telluride video that includes this set from that year (1991), and I wouldn't expect any of you to "duplicate" your performances "exactly" 25 years later. Besides, we all know that together, you're all capable of blowing everyone's collective minds away with something new and extraordinary. I sincerely hope that you'll all decide to play for us in Telluride again sometime soon. We will always love you guys!
Mark O'Connor goes at light-speed!
Update on the proposed (last-minute) Strength In Numbers replacement show for Mumford & Sons at the Telluride Music Festival this Thursday. I said I was available for this which was a minor miracle that I wasn't booked already that weekend - I had a family and friends picnic out in the Redwoods of California we were going out for. But there was this intensity with the old members within 24 hours that I didn't really expect. One concerned this piece and my solo at the end of it (Blue Men of the Sahara - linked here). One of the members told me that this specific performance was perhaps the best violin solo he had ever witnessed. I never heard that from him before. He was upset that I had mentioned that somebody else could take this solo slot on this show if they wanted to save the tune and save the moment - I was sort of kidding. My flippant reaction to one of the best and most intense solos I have ever done on stage was not taken that well. I didn't make it a habit of telling the other guys about how I really felt about my own solo on this tune, because it obviously would be bragging... Then one of the members asked me this weekend when this reunion offer was coming down, if I remembered what had just happened right before I went up on stage 25 years ago for that performance at Telluride? I asked what? "That _____ just told you she wanted a divorce from you!" I answered no way! He said yes... and you went on stage with so much intensity and played the _____ out of your instrument and destroyed your bow, breaking more bow hairs than anybody had ever seen during this solo. I was amazed that I had blocked that memory out. I also think I may have been morphing that emotion into another place as well... that has been the lingering memory of it for me.
He was upset that I would dismiss this performance of mine... I responded no, no way I am not dismissing it! I recognize how I played. I know. the relentless intensity of the improvisation and constructing building blocks of musical phrase ideas..., I was so inside the groove. My old colleague told me that they were pushing me and supporting me rhythmically to be able to play that solo like that...I told my colleague that with out their accompaniment on that section I could not have done it - period. It would have been half what that is. During all of this back and forth... there was so much emotion and misunderstanding with everyone involved including the Telluride presenter. How much importance the people placed on key moments, key pieces...evidently like this moment, that it was such a dramatic undertaking to realize that we could actually re construct the whole 1989 album by this Thursday. I thought that the short prep time could be an asset I thought, because we didn't have time to over-think it. But others wanted to think it through 100%. I said, let's not try to recreate all of this exactly... lets look for new moments to find new excitement - 25 years have gone by since playing together. Some people wanted it duplicated - with at the most, six hours of rehearsal time together, and probably more like four hours with all of the getting to know each other and joking around that would invariably happen up there in the mountains. And I thought that it would be good to jam on stage more and have fun, get some feeling for playing together - it wasn't just about covering the notes, but the emotion, finding the emotional connections again, and have a couple young guests to cover the guitar tune and mando tune I wrote and used to play. Those two pieces were highlights off the album and I don't play those instruments anymore...the young guests of Bryan Sutton and Chris Thile would contribute to new spirit! And then the show was pulled as there was no consensus to how to approach it. It was a headlining position there, in front of 10,000 sold out show.. and they pulled it because we all were still sorting our memories of being in our 20s and doing all of this together. Wow... hurt feelings - upset people. We are all in a worse situation than we were before this came down this weekend. Devastating. Be careful of good news sometimes. It can be too much to deal with. 100k out the window and into Steve Martin and Edie Brickell's pockets within hours! Ha! What a whirlwind.
Strength In Numbers with Mark O'Connor at Telluride Bluegrass Festival
I would have quit my job to go see you guys play together again! It could still happen someday...
+Mark O'Connor If there is ever a time when yall have free schedules you guys should try and get together and make another album, new music , that you can play regardless of instrument limitations. I'm sure it would be interesting to see where each of you have gone , the turns your compositional styles have taken. If you held the same format ( each musician creating a tune with each musician ) you could come up with 10 amazing new pieces. I think I speak for a lot of us when I say the compositions and performances created by Strength In Numbers were truly special and definitely stands the test of time.
Mark burns through a few bow hairs on this one! (see 9:36) Awesome.
You've got the title right. You can still get their only recording, "Telluride Sessions" at amazon and I occasionally see it in used cd stores. Only saw these guys once; wish I'd known it was a limited time offer.
I was at this concert-as I have to many Telluride Bluegrass Music Fests. from 1975-2008. This was around the period when there were a lot of complaints that not only were the fests. getting more and more away from playing traditional bluegrass, but getting very expensive plus added restrictions to attendees. I personally liked the musical variety but stopped going for a number of years. I did however return for the 35th Annual in 2008 and enjoyed it.
First song is The Lochs Of Dread, the second is Blue Men Of The Sahara..
And if that dont do it hes a damn fine guitar and Mandolin player too!
Their music is a mix ...a little Irish...a little gypsy....and a little other worldly.
So great to see this video. Telluride is the ultimate venue. Strength was a fascination for all of us fans, being so innovative. I recently remastered a recording from 1989 (ua-cam.com/video/SDltA2nM0Y8/v-deo.html ) from the Birchmere that's practically studio quality and didn't come from the soundboard. That's the kind of place the Birchmere was. Cheers!
Edgar Meyer is sometimes like Jimi Hendrix on the double bass.
I especially love it when Mark O'Conner becomes ONE with the violin! Whenever I get bumed out, as I did with this week's election results, I just look this up on UA-cam and get inspired again! Wow! Can't wait to go back to Telluride again! I wish Mark would come back and play with the rest of the guys again, though. I know he has a violin camp that same weekend though.
@thedict8or He, it was 1991. But still...you're right! Hah!
EXTRAORDINARY is simply too weak/meek a word to describe this performance!
Sam Bush: displaced metalhead.
All they needed was a didgeridoo
Not a guitar in sight