April 13 Concert Set by Bela Fleck and the Fleckstones

BUFFALO, N.Y. - The Grammy Award-winning musical group, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones will perform at 8 p.m. April 13 in the Mainstage Theatre of the Center for the Arts on the North Campus.

The concert will be sponsored by the undergraduate Student Association.

With his group the Flecktones, pioneering banjo player Béla Fleck has honed a startlingly original and genre-bending mix of bluegrass, jazz, and pop influences into a sound that has garnered acclaim, awards, and audiences.

Since the group's formation in 1989, the Flecktones' relentless touring has garnered major attention, highlighting the interplay of true virtuoso musicians: Fleck, bassist Victor Wooten, percussionist Future Man and saxophonist Jeff Coffin. Famed for routinely playing over 200 concert dates a year, the Flecktones reach more than 500,000 audience members annually.

The Flecktones made their self-titled debut recording in 1990, at the time dubbed a "blu-bop" mix of jazz and bluegrass, and soon became a commercially successful, critically acclaimed and award-winning band, their six album releases in the 90's documenting their musical evolution.

Often considered the premiere banjo player in the world, Fleck has virtually reinvented the image and the sound of the banjo in a remarkable performing and recording career that has taken him all over the musical map, both with the Flecktones and on a range of solo projects and collaborations. With the Flecktones, he won his fifth Grammy in 2000 (Best Contemporary Jazz Album) for Outbound, a typically wide-ranging project built around Fleck's concept of "the banjo being weird." In 2001 Fleck released his first album of classical compositions, Perpetual Motion, for the Sony Classical label. He later won two Grammy awards for this recording.

Tickets for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones are $27.50 advance / $30 day of for the general public, and $24.50 advance / $27 day of for UB students. Tickets are available at the Center Box Office (Mon.-Fri. noon-6pm) and all Ticketmaster locations including Kaufmann's. To charge tickets call 852-5000, in Canada 1-416-870-8000. For more information call 645-ARTS. For Group Sales, call Karen at 645-6771. The Center for the Arts is a Ticketfast location.