Banjo, harp and drums are not exactly your typical jazz trio. But Béla Fleck , Edmar Castañeda and Antonio Sánchez make that combination come alive in a project they call the BEATrio. Sánchez jokes that it might be "the world's most unlikely band."

Their story traces back to 2019, when Fleck and Castañeda shared a duo set at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, captured on video by Jazz Night in America . When Sánchez later invited Fleck to record for a studio project, Castañeda joined the session, and the three quickly discovered how naturally their sounds fit together despite coming from very different musical traditions.

Fleck is a banjo virtuoso who has redrawn the instrument's boundaries across genres. Castañeda has transformed the Colombian harp into an instrument capable of

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