Yo-Yo Ma, cello
Stuart Duncan, fiddle
Edgar Meyer, bass
Chris Thile, mandolin
with guest Aoife O’Donovan, vocals
For the first time in nearly a decade, the musicians of the original Goat Rodeo Sessions—Yo-Yo Ma on cello, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Edgar Meyer on bass, and Chris Thile on mandolin—share a stage in selections that combine their diverse backgrounds in classical, folk, and bluegrass music to create a sound that’s part composed, part improvised, and uniquely American. The group likens playing the challenging music to a “goat rodeo,” airplane pilots’ slang for a situation so nearly unmanageable that countless parts must come together perfectly in order to avoid disaster.
Ma, Duncan, Meyer and Thile are joined by featured vocalist Aoife O’Donovan, who also appears on the group’s 2020 recording Not Our First Goat Rodeo, the follow-up to their double-Grammy winning 2011 debut, for this special performance at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theatre.
