Provided by Jimmy Lenner Jr.

Edgar Meyer's constant companion is older and bigger than he is, and is a problem flier, concedes the internationally acclaimed musician and composer, but Meyer wouldn't think of traveling solo to perform a concert.

His companion, an 18th-century Italian bull fiddle, gets a neighboring seat if they fly first class, two seats if they fly tourist, assuming the air carrier will let the tall, broad bass into the cabin.

"Each airline has a different policy as to which aircraft and seats are OK and which aren't," Meyer said in a phone interview from his home airport in Nashville, Tenn.

 

"Most of the airlines will let you (seat a double bass) on some of their aircraft, but I certainly would never get on a commuter plane with it."

Fortunately, he won't need one to open the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra's 2007-08 music season in The Victory on Saturday. He'll drive from his home in Nashville, bringing his bass, built in 1769 in Florence, Italy, in his car.

Transportation is just one hurdle Meyer has faced building a career as a world-renowned virtuoso over the past couple of decades.

It wasn't something Meyer considered when he first started playing the bass, at 5. His father, a bassist whose playing inspired Meyer, wanted him to play the violin but the boy insisted on taking up his father's instrument.

He didn't consider the instrument's professional challenges until much later.

"I was really quite old before I started to see the big picture, which was really kind of a blessing."

Instead of seeing the double bass for its limited solo repertoire or cumbersome travel complications, "I started with the attitude that the instrument really has a voice that should be heard," he says.

"I just looked for ways to do that, just like you would with any other instrument."

He's learned to deal with the travel hassles; he's adapted compositions for other instruments, such as J.S. Bach's cello concertos; and he's written music for the double bass, as well as for other instruments.

Much of what he has composed hasn't been to provide solo music for the double bass, however. He's done it "just to have music to play with musicians I love to work with," he says.

His success as a soloist, ensemble player and composer has made him one of the top names not only in classical music, but in contemporary bluegrass, as well.

Meyer, 46, began learning from his father, a professional bassist. He dropped a math major at Georgia Technological University to study music at Indiana University, where he became friends and colleagues with the young Bloomington violin prodigy Joshua Bell.

While at IU he also played with the Evansville Philharmonic, performing with the music school students who bus to Evansville to play with the orchestra.

Since then he's built a singular career as a classical, bluegrass and Nashville studio musician, as well as a composer.

He's played and recorded with some of the leading classical musicians of his age, including Bell, Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax. Meyer's bluegrass and "newgrass" partners have included Bela Fleck, Sam Bush and Mike Marshall.

And he's been guest bassist for an array of performers including Garth Brooks, Bruce Cockburn, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Emmylou Harris, James Taylor, Lyle Lovett, T-Bone Burnett, Reba McEntire, the Indigo Girls and the Chieftains.

Along the way he's recorded more than a dozen CDs including several Grammy winners. He's the only bassist ever to receive the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the MacArthur "genius" grant.

Saturday's opening concert will feature Meyer on two pieces — his own Concerto for Bass and on Giovanni Bottesini's Bass Concerto No. 2.

"Bottesini is my favorite of the bass players, historically, at least before the last 30 to 40 years," says Meyer. Like Meyer, Bottesini "was a traveling soloist who wrote a lot of music," he noted.

Bottesini also conducted the premiere of Verdi's "Aida," whose prelude also will be featured in Saturday's concert. Other works on the program will include Maurice Ravel's "La Valse" and the Evansville premiere of Toccata for Orchestra, a new commission from James Beckel, principal trombonist for the Indianapolis Symphony.