Ben Sollee

Ben Sollee is an American cellist, singer-songwriter, and composer known for his political activism. His music incorporates banjo, guitar, and mandolin along with percussion and unusual cello techniques. His songs exhibit a mix of folk, bluegrass, jazz, and R&B elements. Sollee has also composed longer instrumental pieces for dance ensembles and for film. Sollee was raised in Lexington, Kentucky, and attended public schools where he was introduced to the cello in the fourth grade. Sollee graduated from the School for Creative and Performing Arts at Lafayette High School in 2002. He was admitted to the University of Louisville's School of Music on a full-tuition scholarship to study cello. While in college, Sollee performed and soloed in his school's classical ensembles but continued to participate in the Woodsongs programs and took part in the recording sessions of seasoned performers such as Otis Taylor and Abigail Washburn. Sollee toured off and on with Washburn as a duo from 2005 to 2008. He became a member of the Sparrow Quartet (which also included banjoist Béla Fleck and violinist Casey Driessen) when Washburn formed it in 2006, and that year the group issued an EP with five songs on the Nettwerk label. The Sparrow Quartet made a trip to perform in China in 2007 and, under auspices of the U.S. State Department, became the first American music ensemble of any kind to be permitted to enter Tibet, where it performed several shows. The group then began working on what would be its signature studio album, Abigail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet, which was released in May 2008. That same month, Sollee came out with his first EP If You're Gonna Lead My Country The group toured widely throughout the U.S. during the period of 2006–2008. On June 30, 2008, the quartet was featured in a broadcast on PBS station KPBS in San Diego. While Sollee had been touring commercially since his late teens with artists such as Otis Taylor and Abigail Washburn, during his senior year he began performing his first solo gigs in Louisville area, playing his own music. By this time he had already self-produced three CD albums, the last of which, Turn on the Moon, was released in March 2006. After graduating from the University of Louisville in May 2006 with a degree in cello performance, and while still touring with the Sparrow Quartet, Sollee began work on a new solo album, also self-produced, entitled Learning to Bend, which was released in an initial premium "collector's" version (1000 numbered copies) in November 2007. By December 28, 2007, on the strength of that record, NPR's Morning Edition had identified Sollee as one of the "Top Ten Unknown Artists of the Year." A commercial version of Learning to Bend, issued on the SonaBLAST! Records label, was released in June 2008. On July 5, 2008, NPR's All Things Considered aired a feature on Sollee, describing his record as "an inspired collection of acoustic, folk, and jazz-flavored songs, filled with hope and the earnest belief that the world is good." No Depression ranked Sollee's record among its top five for 2008. Paste Magazine's September 2008 issue listed Sollee among "The Best of What's Next; Twenty-Six Emerging Artists You Must Know." Sollee was featured on the PBS series On Canvas, broadcast by Philadelphia station WHYY on October 8, 2008, which was recorded before a performance at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. On December 20, 2008, Public Radio International's "The World" program, co-produced by the BBC World Service and WBGH Boston, declared Learning to Bend one of the nine best "Global Hits" of 2008. The top nine contained only three artists from the U.S. The 2008 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival was marked by controversy surrounding a performance by Kanye West. West's set was scheduled for 2:45 a.m. on June 8, the last night of the festival. The previous act had left the stage late and the time taken to remove its staging and install West's elaborate set, including a pyro and light show, delayed the show's start until 4:25 a.m. Audience members grew impatient and rebellious and some left before the show finally began. Spectators threw detritus onto the stage. The production and choreography of the show was compromised, West was outraged, and many in the audience became hostile. The resulting debacle resonated for days afterward, fanned by an angry Kanye West on his blog site. Sollee also had performed in the 2008 Festival, as a member of the Sparrow Quartet, and so was a witness to the Kanye West episode. The next day Sollee wrote a song about it titled "Dear Kanye," framed as an "open letter" to West, which he recorded on his laptop. It was done on a whim, he later stated, for circulation among his management team. "For better or worse, they passed it along to blogs and radio" he said, and the result was "wildfire" and unexpected and unwanted attention on the national level. The song, circulated widely, acknowledged West as a major and influential artist in the rap genre and chided him for his infantile and unbecoming behavior and commercialism. Sollee withdrew the song after one local performance. He posted a statement on his website Sollee toured throughout 2008 as part of the Sparrow Quartet and on his own. On September 27, the group performed a set at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. On February 8, 2009, the Sparrow Quartet performed its final show, before going into a hiatus, at Sollee's Alma Mater, the University of Louisville, where it played for a capacity crowd in Comstock Hall. Thereafter Sollee concentrated on his solo career. On February 24, 2009, he made his national television debut in a performance on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live program. On March 18–19, 2009 he performed for the first time as a solo artist in the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas. In March 2009, Sollee began touring with the Vienna Teng Trio, led by pianist/singer-songwriter Vienna Teng, and The Paper Raincoat, a band from Brooklyn, New York. On May 8, 2009, Sollee played to a sold-out house at the Bomhard Theater in the Kentucky Center for the Arts in Louisville. In September 2009, he performed as a solo artist in the Austin City Limits Festival, and on October 22 he made a first appearance as a solo artist on NPR's Mountain Stage in West Virginia. In November 2009, he toured with Cincinnati singer-songwriter Kim Taylor. Taylor and Sollee had done occasional shows together since 2007, but this tour found them playing both solo material and accompanying one another during each other's sets. In August 2008, Sollee's song "How to See the Sun Rise" was featured in the season 4 episode "I Am the Table" of the Showtime television series Weeds. During this period Sollee worked on a new recording project with two other Kentucky musicians, Daniel Martin Moore, from Cold Spring, and Louisville's Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Monsters of Folk. The album, titled Dear Companion, was produced by James and featured Sollee and Moore singing original songs (with James providing vocal support on some). The record explored the three artists' ties to Appalachia and drew attention to the problem of mountaintop removal coal mining and its impact on the people and heritage of the central Appalachian region. The album came out on February 16, 2010, on the Sub Pop label and debuted nationally at number 6 on iTunes. In April 2010, at the invitation of the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, Sollee made a presentation on bike touring to the first TEDx Conference sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in that country. During the spring of 2009, Sollee established a tie with Oxfam America with the intent of promoting the relief and development program of this internationally affiliated organization in conjunction with his own touring and concertizing. In June 2009 Sollee embarked on an inaugural bicycle tour from Lexington, Kentucky to Manchester, Tennessee, to perform at the Bonnaroo Festival. Hauling instruments, merchandise, and baggage on