Béla Fleck

Born in New York in 1958, Béla Fleck established himself by the late 1970s as a banjoist exploring the margins of traditional bluegrass. After his first solo album Crossing the Tracks (1979), he passed through Boston’s progressive scene and joined the newgrass band New Grass Revival in the early 1980s, a period during which he refined a language blending bluegrass, country and jazz influences. Based in Nashville, he founded Béla Fleck and the Flecktones in 1988, a group in which the banjo engages with jazz fusion, funk and improvised music, documented notably on Flight of the Cosmic Hippo (1991). At the same time he pursued substantial solo and small‑ensemble work: from Drive (1988), focused on bluegrass, to Perpetual Motion (2001), devoted to transcriptions of classical repertoire, and Throw Down Your Heart (2009), oriented toward African traditions. Ongoing collaborations with Edgar Meyer, Zakir Hussain and banjoist‑singer Abigail Washburn — with whom he released a duo album in 2014 — have taken him to jazz, classical and folk festival stages. With Juno Concerto (2017) and Bluegrass Heart (2021), Béla Fleck continues this movement between orchestras, acoustic ensembles and amplified groups, making the banjo an instrument present in a variety of stylistic contexts.