The double bass is six feet tall, heavy, and historically built to hide at the back of the orchestra. Edgar Meyer, born in 1960, dragged it to the front of the stage in both tuxedo-clad concert halls and dusty progressive bluegrass festivals. This episode explores how mastering the strict rules of one discipline became the key to breaking boundaries in another, starting with his first teacher, his father Edgar Meyer Sr., who directed the string orchestra program for the Oak Ridge, Tennessee public schools, and continuing through classical study with Stuart Sankey at Indiana University and a Bachelor of Music in 1984.

Instead of disappearing into a symphony section, Meyer joined the Telluride Bluegrass Festival house band alongside Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, and Bryan Sutton, bringing classical bowing into high-speed breakdowns without sounding sterile. The hosts unpack his collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma on Appalachian Journey and the 2011 Goat Rodeo Sessions with Stuart Duncan and Chris Thile, the 2020 follow-up Not Our First Goat Rodeo, the Grammy-winning duo album Bass and Mandolin, and his work with Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Zakir Hussain, and Christian McBride.

• How the bass shifts from bowed harmonic floor in Mozart to plucked kick drum in bluegrass
• What goat rodeo means and how classical counterpoint gets hot-wired with a bluegrass engine
• Writing microtiming and swing into sheet music so an 80-piece orchestra can sound spontaneous
• Orchestral debuts in 2017 with the Nashville Symphony, Aspen, and Joshua Bell at St. Martin in the Fields
• Teaching at Curtis and Vanderbilt, including student Paul Kowert, now bassist for Punch Brothers