Groundbreaking, Grammy-winning quartet Béla Fleck & The Flecktones, celebrating their 30th anniversary with a North American tour, will perform at the University of Alabama at Birmingham on Friday, Nov. 22.
The 8 p.m. performance is presented by UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $65, $55 and $45, with $10 student tickets. For tickets, call the ASC Box Office at 205-975-2787 or visit AlysStephens.org.
UAB Visual and Performing Arts members may receive $10 off two single tickets. UAB faculty and staff may receive $15 off two single tickets. A limited number of student, member, and faculty/staff tickets are available.
Banjoist Fleck, harmonica and keyboardist Howard Levy, bassist Victor Wooten and percussionist and “drumitarist” Roy “Future Man” Wooten have created some of the most forward-thinking music during their long, storied career. Fleck first united the Flecktones in 1988, ostensibly for a single performance on PBS’ “Lonesome Pine Special.” From the start, there was a special kinship between the four musicians, a bond forged in a mutual passion for creativity and artistic advancement. Throughout the years the musicians have collaborated with different people and pursued a wide variety of ideas, “so when we come together and put all of our separate soups into one big stockpot it turns into a very diverse concoction,” Fleck said.
While all manner of genres come into play — from classical, jazz and bluegrass and African music to electric blues and Eastern European folk dances — the result is an impossible-to-pigeonhole sound all their own, a meeting of musical minds that remains utterly indescribable, according to the band’s artist statement. Simply put, it is The Flecktones: music made only when these four individuals come together.
The recipient of multiple Grammy Awards and nominations going back to 1998, Fleck’s total Grammy count is 15 Grammys won, with 30 nominations. He has been nominated in more categories than any instrumentalist in Grammy history.