At the intersection of bluegrass and classical music sits the school of virtuosity while professors Meyer/Marshall/Meyer are hard at work and play. 

The lesson plan for Jan. 27 found the trio opening the second of two 50-minute sets inside Columbus, Ohio’s Lincoln Theatre by pairing the majesty of Bach with the rootin’-tootin’, yee-hawin’ of Sam Bush’s “Foster’s Reel.” It was in this way center-stage bassist Edgar Meyer, flanked by mandolinist Mike Marshall on his left and Meyer’s son, George Meyer (viola and violin/fiddle) to the right, melded distant centuries and disparate styles into a glorious, in-the-moment performance that kicked off a short, six-show run outside the trio’s usual home on the summer-festival circuit. 

Casual in sneakers and with his button-down shirt untucked, the bluegrass-presenting Marshall stood in visual contrast to the men he called “The Meyer Family Singers” as they made instrumental music on a stage left empty save for monitors, mics and music stands. The audience, which ventured out on a bone-chilling night with the city under a snow emergency, was pin-drop quiet as the group took them on a sonic trip from Brazil to Bulgaria to Germany and back to the United States. The concertgoers combusted spontaneously—albeit politely as if to avoid drowning out the music—in response to particularly inspired passages, which occurred with uncommon frequency. 

Polymaths in the extreme, who count Bush, Joshua Bell, Béla Fleck, Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile and others among their aural accomplices, the trio was both accessible and esoteric. 

They pulled in different directions—yet remained unified—on the opening “Golden Eagle Hornpipe.” That unity caused the following “Green Slime” to strut, rather than ooze, from the stage to listeners’ ears and set the tone for the evening. 

Alternately bowing and plucking his bass fiddle, Edgar Mayer was, like a bassist called Phil Lesh, essential to both rhythm and melody on numbers as diametrically opposed as Bill Monroe’s “Tennessee Blues,” and Marshall’s wildly subversive untitled number—one of many no-name tunes in the set—that wobbled forth in 13/8 time. 

There was a touch of bossa nova on “B.T.,” a wink at Fleck on “Child’s Play,” which sounds conspicuously like “Stomping Grounds,” and a nod to Jerry Douglas and the river that flows through Ohio’s capital city with “Big Sciota,” the encore that earned the evening’s second standing ovation. 

There could’ve been many more. But the audience seemed keen to stay out of the way of the men leading this master class in musicianship.