Asheville Amplified
Music weaves its way through the hills of Asheville. A fiddle tune unfurls on a busy street corner, jazz floats out the windows of a wine bar, and rock clubs shake with raucous energy. Down the street, the Asheville Symphony spins its own magic in a quiet concert hall.
Rarely have those disparate sounds come together in the past. But the city’s classical musicians collaborated with local bands for a recently released album, the Asheville Symphony Sessions.
Each of the album’s eight tracks resounds with the diversity of Asheville’s musical spheres. The orchestra’s string and woodwind sections surge through rock, folk, country, R&B, and jazz music written by local artists and scored by notable arrangers.
Created at downtown Asheville’s Echo Mountain Recording Studios, the album features well-known musicians including Steep Canyon Rangers, Rising Appalachia, Shannon Whitworth, Matt Townsend, Lovett, Doc Aquatic, and Electric Owls. Between nine and 24 members of the Asheville Symphony added depth to each track, and some 150 people worked on the album in total.
Though nationally known Echo Mountain usually reverberates with indie rock and roots music, the classical performers fit seamlessly into the recording sessions, according to Asheville Symphony Orchestra executive director David Whitehill.
“To get out of the concert hall and into a nontraditional space was pretty exhilarating,” Whitehill says. The experience also gave rock, country, and jazz artists the opportunity to be backed by an orchestra.
Echo Mountain manager Jessica Tomasin served as a driving force behind the project. Her longtime friendships with music industry professionals made a significant impact on the project. She brought in world-class arrangers including Michael Bearden, who works with Lady Gaga and Neil Young and was the musical director for Michael Jackson’s This Is It tour, as well as Van Dyke Parks, who arranged the score for the animated Disney film The Jungle Book and composed Smile with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys.
The album comes at a high point in Asheville’s music scene as more nationally recognized artists move to Western North Carolina. Internationally renowned jazz and R&B vocalist Lizz Wright collaborated with Free Planet Radio, an Asheville-based multi-instrumental world music trio, for a track on the album called “Circle Round The Flame.” A Georgia native, Wright moved to the area from Brooklyn eight years ago, in part to find respite from city life and also to take inspiration from the region’s musical traditions.
“The very feel of the music here really does look like the land, with the mountains and incredible broad rivers and creeks,” says Wright. “I love this mirror between the people and the land, and how they captured that with this project.”
Whitehill says he felt especially fortunate to work with such high-caliber musicians for the album. “It was so special to work with Lizz Wright,” he says. “She was on the cover of DownBeat Magazine in January and she’s all over the world. For her to take time out of her schedule to collaborate with Free Planet Radio and craft this new work is just incredibly meaningful.”
Wright describes this album as a creative release for a growing community of music professionals in the region, and also as a reflection of Asheville’s evolving place in Southern Appalachian culture.
Whitehill agrees, adding that Asheville is emerging as a musical hub of the Southeast. He describes the project as a “thank you card” to the musicians and audiences who support the city’s musical efforts, saying, “We really wanted do something special for this community that would stand the test of time.”
The Asheville Symphony Sessions is available on iTunes, Amazon.com, by calling the symphony office (828.254.7046), and at select local shops.