Over the past 30 years, North Carolina native Phillip Rhodes has written a series of pieces fusing concert music with folk tunes from the Appalachian South. This album brings together a number of them, ranging from austere vocal settings of The Unquiet Grave, Birdie Went A-Courtin and others, sung with austere power by Phyllis Bryn-Julson accompanied by Anne Mayer, to a rollicking Bluegrass-oriented variation set called Reels and Reveries, vividly played by the Owensboro Symphony under Michael Luxner. The notes don’t say this, but other composers are attempting similar fusions, among them John Beal, Wynton Marsalis, and Peter Schickele. But unless we count Ives and Copland, Rhodes was one of the first, and his works have an unusually wide range of moods and degrees of complexity. Reels is uninhibited fun, for example, whereas Fiddle Tunes has Bartokian experiments in dissonance and rhythmic displacement. The most appealing track is the first, a lovely and haunting quartet setting of Black is the Color of My True Loves Hair, which Rhodes wrote for his sons wedding. It is soulfully played by the Veblen Quartet. This album is ideal for those who love Bluegrass and old-time music as well as classical. There are more of us than you might think.