The gala events surrounding the inauguration of our new president are about to get underway, and I’ve just learned that banjoist Bela Fleck and fiddler/violinist Mark O’Connor will take part.

Bela and O’Connor have accepted an invitation to perform with Wynton Marsalis and The Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra in Washington D.C. on 19th January as part of the celebrations surrounding Obama’s inauguration.

The two hour concert, Let Freedom Swing! A Celebration of America, will take place at 7pm the evening of January 19, 2009, in the Eisenhower Theater of the Kennedy Center. Tickets to the event are available by invitation only, but the Kennedy Center website says the event will be televised live. I could find no information concerning broadcast stations though.

The program will be Jazz music and not bluegrass, but Fleck and O’Connor have never let genre define them.

The program will look back on the life of one of the greatest of all Americans, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and forward to a new era under a new President. An all-star cast will illustrate that American democracy and America’s music ‚Äì jazz ‚Äì share the same tenets and embody the same potential for change, hope and renewal, which Dr. King himself called America’s "triumphant music."