billboard
By Gary Graff
August 23, 2018
Rinde Eckert has a long and distinguished career on the stage and in the studio, which has included a slew of awards, including a Grammy, and collaborations with the Kronos quartet, Brian Eno and opera soprano Renee Fleming. Now Eckert is stepping out on his own with his first ever truly solo album, The Natural World, whose "Time Is Our Own" premieres exclusively below.
"I just never felt like I was ready to do it -- and then I was," Eckert tells Billboard. His longtime collaborator and The Natural World producer Lee Townsend had been pushing him in this direction for a while, Eckert says, and winning the inaugural Doris Duke Artist Award, which included "a lot of money" earmarked for "audience development" helped provide an impetus for the project.