In support of their new album Rocket Science,
groundbreaking banjoist/composer/bandleader
Béla Fleck has reconvened the original Béla
Fleck & The Flecktones, the extraordinary initial
line-up of his incredible combo. Rocket Science
marks the first recording by the first fab four
Flecktones in almost two decades, with
pianist/harmonica player Howard Levy back in
the fold alongside Fleck, bassist Victor Wooten,
and percussionist/ Drumitarist Roy “Futureman” Wooten. Far from being a wistful trip back in time, the album sees the Grammy Award-winning quartet creating some of the most forward thinking music of their long, storied career. While all manners of genres come into play – from classical and jazz to 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, as ever, utterly indescribable. Simply put, it is The Flecktones, the music made only when these four individuals come together.
“All the different things I do come together to make a new ‘hybrid’,” Béla Fleck says. "Everybody else in the group is doing the same things, collaborating with different people, and pursuing 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 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. Three breakthrough albums and a whole lot of live dates followed before Levy decided to move on in late 1992.
Be among the first in Charlotte to experience a performance in the sparkling new KNIGHT THEATER. The theater joins the Mint Museum, Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, and the Afro-American Cultural Center in a new cultural district on South Tryon Street that will add a whole new dimension to the Uptown art scene.