Grammy winner Bela Fleck plays Farthing tonight

Kara Hodge Entertainment Beat

Grammy Award winner Bela Fleck and the Flecktones perform tonight in Farthing Auditorium at 8 p.m.

Banjo player Bela Fleck is considered one of the most innovative pickers in the world and has done much to demonstrate the versatility of his instrument, which he uses to play everything from traditional bluegrass to progressive jazz.

Around age 15, Fleck became fascinated with the banjo after hearing Flatt & Scruggs' "Ballad of Jed Clampett" and Weissberg & Mandell's "Dueling Banjos," and his grandfather soon gave him one.

While attending the High School of Music and Art in New York, Fleck worked on adapting be-bop music for the banjo.

Fleck always had diverse musical interests, and his own style was influenced by Tony Trischka, Earl Scruggs, Chick Corea, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, the Allman Brothers, Aretha Franklin, the Byrds and Little Feat.

After graduation, he joined the Tasty Licks, a group from Boston. They recorded two albums and dissolved in 1979.

Afterward, Fleck joined the Kentucky band Spectrum. That year, only 5 years after he took up the instrument, he made his solo recording debut with "Crossing the Tracks," which the Readers' Poll in Frets Magazine named Best Overall Album.

In 1982, he joined New Grass Revival and stayed with them until the end of the decade. During this time, his reputation continued to grow and in 1990, Frets Magazine added his name to their Hall of Greats. In 1988, his compositions ÒDriveÓ from the album "New Grass Revival" was nominated for a Grammy.

Fleck, mandolin player Sam Bush, fiddler Mark O'Connor, bassist Edgar Meyer and dobro player Jerry Douglas teamed up in 1989 to form Strength in Numbers and record The Telluride Sessions.

Late that year, Fleck was asked by PBS television to play on the upcoming Lonesome Pine Special; in response he gathered together a veritable "dream team" of musicians to form the Flecktones.

The original members included Howard Levy, who played piano, harmonica and ocarina, among other instruments; bass guitarist Victor Lemonte Wooten, and his brother Roy "Future Man" Wooten on the drumitar, an electronic drum shaped like a guitar.

Though the special wasn't aired until 1992, the Flecktones recorded their eponymous debut album in 1990 and followed it up with "Flight of the Cosmic Hippo" (1991).

In 1993, they released their fourth album "UFO Tofu" which featured music blending different genres ranging from bluegrass to R&B to worldbeat. In 1995, they released "Tales from an Acoustic Planet," "Left of Cool" followed in 1998, and "Tales From An Acoustic Planet 2: The Bluegrass Sessions" was released a year later. "Outbound" followed in mid-2000.