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Edgar Meyer set as guest soloist for MSO opener / Midland Daily News

Edgar Meyer, guest soloist for the Midland Symphony Orchestra's season-opening concert Saturday, says that not working across musical genres would be "odd." A 2002 MacArthur Fellow and winner of several Grammy Awards, Meyer will solo with the MSO on his own Double Bass Concerto No. 1 and Bottesini's Concerto No. 2 for Double Bass at the concert, which begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Midland Center for the Arts auditorium. Asked about collaborating across several different styles of music, including not only classical but also bluegrass and jazz, Meyer said, "It strikes me that the alternative is odd, i.e. to only study music within a narrow bandwidth. Seems a little like deciding to study classical music, but only classical music between 1850 and 1880."

Meyer's collaborations include "The Goat Rodeo Sessions," a 2011 album with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, mandolin player Chris Thile (soon to take up his duties as the new host of the radio show "A Prairie Home Companion") and bluegrass musician Stuart Duncan. That album won two Grammy Awards, including Best Folk Album. "If one thinks of music as a language, the stylistic spectrum is much closer to a range of dialects than a collection of distinct tongues," Meyer said. "Learning about a range of music affords the opportunity to compare similarities and differences, which is a gateway to exploring exactly how music works."

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