Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile - The Goat Rodeo Sessions (2011) HDtracks

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma was already a dominant yet typically smiling figure on the classical music scene when he branched into other musical directions: Brazilian, tango, bluegrass-Celtic fusion, the multicultural Silk Road Project, and much more. For his latest album, Goat Rodeo Sessions, he recorded for the first time with fiddler Stuart Duncan (Nashville Bluegrass Band) while again playing with double bassist Edgar Meyer and mandolinist Chris Thile (Punch Brothers, ex-Nickel Creek). The “goat rodeo” portion of the album’s title is taken from slang for a setting in which multiple conflicting elements all must be choreographed and aligned to avoid a chaotic result. In the context of this quartet (joined by progressive bluegrass vocalist Aoife O’Donovan on two numbers), it represents each instrumentalist's stylistically different disciplines coming together in a spirited, generous, and open-eared setting, resulting in a fluid new style of Americana.