Béla Fleck and the Flecktones is an American band that combines jazz and bluegrass music.
Béla Anton Leoš Fleck is an American banjo player. An acclaimed virtuoso, he is an innovative and technically proficient pioneer and ambassador of the banjo, playing music from bluegrass, jazz, classical, rock and various world music genres. He is best known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Fleck has won 15 Grammy Awards and been nominated 33 times.
Victor Lemonte Wooten is an American bassist, songwriter, and record producer. He has been the bassist for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones since the group's formation in 1988 and a member of the band SMV with two other bassists, Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller. From 2017 to 2019 he recorded as the bassist for the metal band Nitro.
John McLaughlin, also known as Mahavishnu, is an English guitarist, bandleader, and composer. A pioneer of jazz fusion, his music combines elements of jazz with rock, world music, Indian classical music, Western classical music, flamenco, and blues. After contributing to several key British groups of the early 1960s, McLaughlin made Extrapolation, his first album as a bandleader, in 1969. He then moved to the U.S., where he played with drummer Tony Williams's group Lifetime and then with Miles Davis on his electric jazz fusion albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, and On the Corner. His 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Indian influences.
Giuseppe Henry "Pino" Palladino is a Welsh musician, songwriter, and record producer. A prolific session bassist, he has played bass for acts such as The Who, the John Mayer Trio, Nine Inch Nails, Gary Numan, Jeff Beck and D'Angelo.
Anthony Frederick Levin is an American musician and composer, specializing in electric bass guitars, Chapman Stick and upright bass. He also sings and plays synthesizer. Levin is best known for his work with King Crimson (1981–2021) and Peter Gabriel. He is also a member of Liquid Tension Experiment, Bruford Levin Upper Extremities (1998–2000) and HoBoLeMa (2008–2010). He has led his own band, Stick Men, since 2010.
Rachel Carmel Hakim, better known as Rachel Z, is a jazz and rock pianist and keyboardist. She has recorded 10 solo albums as a jazz musician. Her musical style, especially her improvisation, has been described as adjacent to Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner.
Edgar Gómez is a Puerto Rican jazz double bassist, known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio from 1966 to 1977.
Scott Henderson is an American jazz fusion and blues guitarist best known for his work with the band Tribal Tech.
Alex Skolnick is an American musician. He is best known as the lead guitarist and one of the songwriters of the thrash metal band Testament and has played with several other bands, including The Alex Skolnick Trio, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Savatage and the heavy metal supergroup Metal Allegiance.
Oteil Burbridge is an American multi-instrumentalist, specializing on the bass guitar, trained in playing jazz and classical music from an early age. He has achieved fame primarily on bass guitar during the resurgence of the Allman Brothers Band from 1997 through 2014, and as a founding member of the band Dead & Company. Burbridge was also a founding member of The Aquarium Rescue Unit and Tedeschi Trucks Band, with whom his brother Kofi Burbridge was the keyboardist and flautist. He has worked with other musicians including Bruce Hampton, Trey Anastasio, Page McConnell, Bill Kreutzmann and Derek Trucks.
Outbound is the eighth album by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, released in 2000. It is the band's first album on the Sony/Columbia label. The album won Best Contemporary Jazz Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards.
Little Worlds is the tenth album by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, released in 2003. The album was released as a 3-disc set. Ten tracks from the set were also released on a single disc called Ten from Little Worlds.
Erkan Oğur is a Turkish musician. A pioneer of fretless guitars, he invented the first fretless classical guitar in 1976. A composer, he has influenced many musicians with his compositions combining the sounds of Turkish folk music and classical music with the ancient traditional music. He has played many concerts all over the world. He is regarded as a master of the kopuz and bağlama lutes.
Steven Bookvich known as Muruga Booker is an American drummer, composer, inventor, artist, recording artist, and an autonomous Eastern Orthodox priest.
The Hidden Land is the eighth studio album and twelfth album overall released by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, released in 2006. It was recorded before the band's year-long hiatus during 2005 and released afterward. The Hidden Land won the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album.
Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers were an American rock band formed in Western Massachusetts in 2003. The band features lead singer and founding member Stephen Kellogg piano and bass player Kit Karlson, drummer Brian "Boots" Factor, and electric guitar/pedal steel player Sam Getz. Chip Johnson joined Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers on bass in 2011.
Blue Fringe was an American Jewish rock band from New York City. Formed in 2001 by lead singer Dov Rosenblatt, the band's debut album, My Awakening (2003), sold more than 14,000 copies, an uncommon feat in the limited Jewish market, and became a runaway hit. Since then, the band has released two more albums, 70 Faces (2005) and The Whole World Lit Up (2007), and has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Africa, and Israel. They were credited, along with Moshav and Soulfarm, with advancing Jewish rock in the early 2000s.
Rocket Science is a studio album by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, released in 2011. It reached number 1 on the Billboard Jazz chart and number 36 on the Top Independent Albums chart. The song "Life in Eleven" won Best Instrumental Composition at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards.
Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny is a studio album by Vietnamese jazz trumpeter Cuong Vu and American jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, with additional musicians Stomu Takeishi on fretless five-string bass guitar, and Ted Poor on drums. The album was released on May 6, 2016 via Nonesuch label.
