Americanafest at the Schermerhorn
Coming Home to Their Roots: Renée Fleming and Béla Fleck at Schermerhorn
Though generally associated with the Nashville Symphony, Schermerhorn has hosted a wider variety of musical styles in recent years. On September 13, 2026, this respected venue stretched out once more as part of Nashville’s Americana Fest. The Fiddle and the Drum program brings together two very different musicians, taking very different journeys to cross paths in the spirit of American roots music.
For his Grammy-packed career, New York-born Béla Fleck has taken the banjo, emblematic of backwoods Bluegrass music and steered it into parts previously unknown. Blues, Jazz, Rock, and more have defined this journey. From another direction, Grammy-laden Pennsylvania-native Renée Fleming, whose recording of Samuel Barber’s Knoxville Summer of 1915 is definitive, guided her voice on a more traditional path for a classically trained singer (though forays into musical theater suggested openness to exploration). Somehow these differing musical lines, both devoted to American music, converged effortlessly in this program.
The Fiddle and the Drum is a poignant homage to old-time hymns, childhood lullabies, bluesy country songs, Appalachian folk songs, and more. My Bluegrass Heart, the flexible touring band supporting this album, contained a powerful collection of comfortable virtuosity: Michael Cleveland on fiddle, Mark Schatz on bass, Jake Stargel on guitar, Dominick Leslie on mandolin, and Jeff Partin on dobro (for the unfamilar, the dobro—named after the Dopyera Brothers—looks like a guitar with a metal belly, often played with a glass or metal slide).
The band opens, making their tuning as concert worthy as Chopin made etudes. With Fleck, the band served up a tasty charcuterie board of musical styles: microtones like Indian ragas, smooth Blues mandolin solos, lightning fast unison lead tunes like bebop openings by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. They played Irish music in the tradition of the Chieftains and Neo-Bluegrass in the style of Alison Krauss and Union Station.
When Fleming enters, ever understated, but still a diva, she’s in black, bedazzled à la Dolly Parton. She joins the group to sing “He’s Gone Away” easing into Carter Family favorite “The Storms Are on the Ocean.” Unlike many classical singers dipping their toes in the waters of popular styles, Fleming’s singing swims naturally. The little Bluegrass breaks in the voice, slides between notes, and taming of the classical vibrato smooth the transition from one art to another.
“In the Pines” had me harkening back to an episode of the Porter Waggoner Show, when Dolly sat between her parents, surrounded by a semicircle her siblings, all singing. This song has since taken on a life as varied as the careers of Fleck and Fleming, recorded by artists as varied as Loretta Lynn, Leadbelly, Dolly herself and, most recently, Alison Krauss paired with rock legend and former Led Zeppelin frontman, Robert Plant. For this evening’s performance, Sarah Jarosz, the real deal as a Bluegrass singer, stood in for Dolly, who sang on the original recording. The bluesy dobro and jazzy harmonies added subtle depth to this old favorite.
Most moving, perhaps, was the program’s namesake song, “The Fiddle and the Drum.” Written by Joni Mitchell, “Fiddle” was released in 1969 amidst the Vietnam War. It appeared on Clouds with her more famous song, “Both Sides Now.” In her gentle way, Fleming joins the increasing number of artists speaking up in these troubling times. Before singing these lines:
And so once again
Oh, America my friend
And so once again
You are fighting us all
And when we ask you why
You raise your sticks and cry and we fall.
Fleming relates the lifelong importance of this song for her, while remarking that she “didn’t realize it would still be so relevant.” But another jewel hidden in this program’s muted subtext is Fleming’s advocacy pieces written by and/or made famous by female artists like Mitchell, Dolly, Jean Ritchie, and Hazel Dickson. This formed a comforting through line.
Before the ending vocal pieces, the singers left the stage, making way for an unexpected performance of Rhapsody in Blue. Interesting that this Gershwin masterpiece—the only instrumental piece Fleck announced—was the one that needed no introduction. Fleming commented on her initial wariness about how this would work, but she and the audience agreed that it was fully successful.
After a haunting 4-voice a cappella version of Hazel Dickson’s “Pretty Bird,” came the encore. Fleming had chosen a signature closer for classical singers, Franz Schubert’s melody for “Ave Maria,” with Fleck playing J. S. Bach’s arpeggiated chords on the banjo. Fleming’s lovely control of her instrument was deeply compelling. But although the banjo and harpsichord have related sounds of plucked thin metal strings, somehow this part of the equation didn’t quite add up. This, however, is a minor point in witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime crossing of formerly divergent paths, two artists at the peak of their artistry, honoring music in the land of their birth.
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Y Kendall is a Stanford-educated musicologist, specializing in dance history who recently earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Columbia University, studying nonfiction writing with Ben Ratliff and Margo Jefferson. Kendall’s diverse works have been published in Alchemy: Journal of Translation, Columbia Journal, Mitos Magazín, The Hunger Mountain Review, and The Salt Collective, among others. Born and raised in Tennessee, Kendall now lives near Nashville, freelancing as a flutist and writer, while caregiving for relatives.
