October 21, 2003
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu
The dynamic and virtuosic Béla Fleck & the Flecktones will play their unusual mix of jazz-bluegrass-rock at UCSB Campbell Hall
Summary Facts:
- Béla Fleck & the Flecktones
- Featuring Victor Lemonte Wooten, Future Man and Jeff Coffin
- Banjo player Fleck is a seven-time Grammy Award-winner
- The group is acclaimed for its incendiary live shows
- Friday, November 21 / 8 pm
- UCSB Campbell Hall
- General: $40/$35, UCSB students: $19/$16
- Tickets/information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535
Pioneering banjo player Béla Fleck and his amazingly nimble and creative band the Flecktones will perform on Friday, November 21 at 8 pm at UCSB Campbell Hall. Fleck has been nominated for a total of 19 Grammy Awards in 11 different categories for his mind-blowing amalgam he bills “jazzgrass.” Ever-inventive and uncannily musical, Fleck does more with the banjo than any musician before him, with help from his adventurous band that includes bassist Victor Wooten, multi-reed player Jeff Coffin and Future Man, a percussionist who plays the “synth-axe drumitar.” Entertainment Weekly writes, “Heavyweight players who make an endearing fusion, the Flecktones have a fine time roaming all over the musical map...it’s hard to resist a band that draws on bluegrass, funk, world music, pop and jazz with such glee and blissful lack of pretension.”
A seven-time Grammy winner, Béla Fleck has virtually reinvented the image and the sound of the banjo in a remarkable performing and recording career. Since the formation of the Flecktones in 1989 the group has garnered major attention thanks to relentless touring and incendiary live shows that highlight the stunning interplay of true virtuoso musicians. Famed for routinely playing over 200 concert dates a year, the Flecktones performed in front of over 500,000 appreciative fans in 2001 alone.
Fleck’s numerous recordings are as diverse as the sounds he creates with his banjo. He has released two volumes of The Bluegrass Sessions with esteemed guests like Jerry Douglas and Earl Scruggs and a classical banjo CD Perpetual Motion, on which he performs works by Bach, Chopin, Scarlatti and others. Little Worlds, his most recent album with the Flecktones, is a 3-CD, 27 track world music adventure that showcases the band’s chops and suggests the great esteem with which they are held by fellow musicians. Guests on the album include new bluegrass stars Nickel Creek, jazz singer Bobby McFerrin, theremin player Pamelia Kurstin, Irish music legends The Chieftains, New York Yankees centerfielder and guitarist Bernie Williams, stellar saxophonist Branford Marsalis, Fleck’s former New Grass Revival bandmate, mandolinist/fiddler Sam Bush, and Tuvan throat singer Congar Ol Ondar.
Béla Fleck (his parents named him after Béla Bartók) is a New York City native who picked up the banjo at age 15 after being awed by the bluegrass playing of Flatt & Scruggs. He began experimenting with playing bebop on the banjo in high school. In 1982, he joined the progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival, about which the Washington Post wrote, “The quartet began as one of the world’s best progressive bluegrass bands and later developed into one of Nashville’s finest acoustic-pop acts.” At the same time he was releasing a series of solo albums for Rounder Records. In 1989, he formed the Flecktones, which made its self-titled debut recording in 1990 by playing a “blu-bop” mix of jazz and bluegrass. Quickly the Flecktones became a commercially successful, critically acclaimed and award-winning band. Béla Fleck is the only musician to be nominated for Grammys in jazz, pop, country, classical, composition, arranging, spoken word, Christian, bluegrass, and world music categories, and he has won the award in the first six of those fields, twice winning as a country artist.
“Say ’banjo’ and people think of minstrel shows, Hee Haw and Deliverance,” the Seattle Times wrote after a recent concert. “But in the hands of Béla Fleck, the high plinking resonance of the old Southern instrument is transformed into a myriad of sounds, from classical to bluegrass, all played to perfection. His technique and dexterity are amazing, and the sounds he coaxes from the strings can be funny, moving, danceable and mysterious....Fleck and his deeply-talented band played two hourlong sets...the music was engaging, challenging and delightful.”
Read about Béla Fleck & the Flecktones on their website www.flecktones.com.
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and sponsored by the South Coast Beacon and Borders Books. Tickets are $40 and $35 for the general public and $19 and $16 for UCSB students.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.