He became a member of the Sparrow Quartet (which also included banjoist Béla Fleck and violinist Casey Driessen) when Washburn formed it in 2006, and that year the group issued an EP with five songs on the Nettwerk label.

[5] While Sollee had been touring commercially since his late teens with artists such as Otis Taylor and Abigail Washburn, during his senior year he began performing his first solo gigs in Louisville area, playing his own music.

After graduating from the University of Louisville in May 2006 with a degree in cello performance, and while still touring with the Sparrow Quartet, Sollee began work on a new solo album, also self-produced, entitled Learning to Bend, which was released in an initial premium "collector's" version (1000 numbered copies) in November 2007.

On July 5, 2008, NPR's All Things Considered aired a feature on Sollee, describing his record as "an inspired collection of acoustic, folk, and jazz-flavored songs, filled with hope and the earnest belief that the world is good.

On February 8, 2009, the Sparrow Quartet performed its final show, before going into a hiatus, at Sollee's Alma Mater, the University of Louisville, where it played for a capacity crowd in Comstock Hall.

[18] During this period Sollee worked on a new recording project with two other Kentucky musicians, Daniel Martin Moore, from Cold Spring, and Louisville's Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Monsters of Folk.

The record explored the three artists' ties to Appalachia and drew attention to the problem of mountaintop removal coal mining and its impact on the people and heritage of the central Appalachian region.

[21] During the spring of 2009, Sollee established a tie with Oxfam America with the intent of promoting the relief and development program of this internationally affiliated organization in conjunction with his own touring and concertizing.

Hauling instruments, merchandise, and baggage on their bikes or on trailers pulled behind, he and his percussionist, videographer, and tour manager traveled the 330 mile distance over a period of eight days, stopping to perform before small audiences in the communities along the way.

They subsequently returned to Kentucky by train and finished the bike tour via performances at Berea, Richmond, and, finally, Frankfort, where on October 8 they sold out the Grand Theatre.

Sollee, responding to widespread speculation that the bicycle tours were driven by the motive of being "green," explained during his appearances and in the media that his purpose was to slow down the travel in order to better connect with the communities he was visiting and the people he performed for.

Glide Magazine noted Sollee's goal to "gain a deeper connection to his fans... slow things down, meet new people and take in the local scenery and culture that most travelers bypass completely.

It contained a dramatic but dissonant opening fanfare "inspired by a field recording from Basque Country, Spain",[30] arranged for woodwinds and percussion and performed by Jacob Duncan and Jordon Ellis.

[34] In early December 2011, Sollee spent a four-night residency at The Grocery on Home, an art house in Atlanta, Georgia, where he performed with his percussionist, Jordon Ellis, and his former colleague from the Sparrow Quartet, violinist Casey Driessen.

Supporting musicians included Carl Broemel (guitars), Jeremy Kittel (violin, viola), Alana Rockland (bass), and Jordon Ellis (percussion).

Stephen Thompson at NPR said of Half-Made Man that it "positively soars, with cellos used to feed the drama and fuel Sollee's ruminations in the pursuit of meaning in modern life.

The film's title was based on Sollee's frequent reference to his cello as just "a wooden box with strings" and focussed on his attempts to inspire young people's interest in music through his workshops in both public and private schools.

The New York Times' review by Stephen Holden praised Sollee's work, summing up that, "Joy peeked through the music like rays of sunshine in the Kentucky woods.

"[46] Sollee performed Simon's "Wartime Prayers" at the tribute and The New York Times writer Jon Pareles described it as "a solo for voice and cello that captured its hope and mourning".

[47] On April 28 Sollee was invited to be the keynote speaker for the earth-day celebration put on by the Bluegrass Youth Sustainability Council held at Transylvania University in Lexington.

[48] In January, Sollee was invited to compose an original score for Naomi Iizuka's At the Vanishing Point, a play about Butchertown, one of Louisville's oldest neighborhoods located east of downtown.

The play was written by Jeff Augustin, Diana Grisanti, Cory Hinkle, and Charise Castro Smith and was performed by the Actors Theatre Apprentice Company.

Annette Skaggs, a writer from arts-louisville.com gave a positive review of the play saying "The collaboration that the Acting Apprentice Company had with Ben Sollee was certainly evident in capturing the spirit of the deep-rooted musical heritage of Kentucky.

[61] In 2016, Sollee was asked to provide sounds/music for an interactive water monitoring system that doubles as an art installation by Kiersten Nash and a soundscape at Jacobson Park in Lexington.

[63] In March 2016 in collaboration with Stage One Family Theatre in Louisville, Sollee was asked to participate in the creation and technological infused performance of Crockett Johnson's 1955 classic book Harold and the Purple Crayon.

"[67] During the spring of 2013, Sollee produced and performed a film score for the Maidentrip, an 82-minute documentary by filmmaker Jillian Schlesinger about Laura Dekker the youngest person at 14, to successfully sail around the world solo.

In describing his music, Sollee told Jim Fusilli of The Wall Street Journal that, "Phrasing-wise, [it's a] free story-telling style of singing where its about moving the story line along.

Sollee worked intensively during 2010 with D. L. Jones (Detroit) and DJ 2nd Nature (Atlanta), as he was ramping to do his Inclusions album, and told Wall Street Journal music critic Jim Fusilli that he had learned much about the DJ techniques using existing materials and layering sound to create something new, but that he realized that it was hard to make a performance out of such a procedure, that "as a classical musician, I'm trained to make things from scratch...

He frequently plays benefit concerts for the organizations Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Oxfam America, and has made several tours of Kentucky on his bicycle, stopping in smaller towns between his headlining performances.

Of specific note is the tour in the summer of 2009 which was put on in conjunction with Oxfam America, in which he traveled 330 miles to the Bonnaroo festival with his supplies and cello strapped to his bicycle.