Béla Fleck

Banjo master Béla Fleck plays traditional and progressive bluegrass, jazz, classical, and world music. He served in the progressive bluegrass outfit New Grass Revival before forming Béla Fleck & the Flecktones, an innovative, hybrid fusion outfit who wed jazz, funk, country, bluegrass, and jam band improv. Throughout the '90s and into the 21st century, the Flecktones released 1992's UFO Tofu, 2000's Outbound, and 2006's The Hidden Land. Fleck simultaneously released boundary-pushing solo albums including Tales from the Acoustic Planet (1995) and Baroque Perpetual Motion (2001). He also recorded with Toumani Diabaté and Baaba Maal in Africa. The star-studded My Bluegrass Heart appeared in 2022, followed by the improv-based As We Speak in 2023. In 2024, Fleck issued Rhapsody in Blue, playing the famous composition in several different settings including solo banjo. He also released Remembrance, which documented his final 2019 duo tour with pianist Chick Corea.