Bio:
Multi-instrumentalist Stuart Duncan has built upon his bluegrass roots to become an artist that defies categorization and surpasses the limits of any specific genre. The consummate sideman, Stuart has lent his particular taste and tone to countless artists and projects. Whether trading dizzying instrumental licks with the likes of Bela Fleck and Jerry Douglas, or adding complimentary fills for vocalists Alan Jackson and Barbara Streisand, Stuart has found a professional “home” both in the studio and on tour. From Robert Plant to Panic at the Disco, Stuart’s playing and influence can be heard among many of today’s top hit-makers.
The most recent evidence of Stuart’s cross-genre expansion is “The Goat Rodeo Sessions,” his collaboration with Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer and Yo Yo Ma. During the creative course of this recording, Stuart has opened his mind not only musically, but to a broader concept of composition as well. Each piece emerging with it’s own voice and life. Sony music will release the CD in October, partnered with promotional performances and a possible concert series.
When not active in the studio or on tour with others, Stuart can be seen and heard with The Nashville Bluegrass Band, where he’s been a contributing member since 1985. The band has won two Grammies, multiple IBMA & SPBMA awards, and has toured globally from here at home to the Middle East and China. Together, they continue to be an outstanding representation of classic bluegrass music in America – as relevant today as when they started.
What seems clear, is that whether it’s bluegrass, country, jazz, classical or a wonderful hybrid of them all, Stuart is just beginning to realize his musical potential. He’s looking forward to many new musical adventures and opportunities.
Elvis Costello has this to say…
“When I first played with Stuart, I was struck as anyone would be, by the beauty of his tone and his judgment about when to sometimes seek the essential middle distance in the ensemble with a well-chosen connecting line or timbre.
In time, at speed and in the heat of the spotlight, playing with The Sugarcanes, I was constantly startled by his access to the fire and fine danger of the music in hand, often delivering the most remarkable contributions off the back of some utterly self-depreciating quip.
He will sometimes arrive at the studio with a bag of splinters and wires from which he is going to reassemble some rare, lost stringed instrument, which speaks of his curiosity and care for both the art and the craft of music. He is one of the finest musicians I have ever had the good fortune to sing alongside.”
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).