Béla Fleck: My Bluegrass Heart
Grammy-winning banjo master Béla Fleck performs his bluegrass project with top musicians.
<ol><li><p style="text-align:left"><span style="text-decoration:underline"><strong>Béla Fleck <em>My Bluegrass Heart</em> featuring Michael Cleveland, Dominick Leslie, Jeff Partin, Mark Schatz, & Jake Stargel </strong></span></p></li><li><p style="text-align:left">Over the last four decades, Béla Fleck has made a point of boldly going where nobanjo player has gone before, a musical journey that has earned him 19 Grammys in nine different fields, including Country, Pop, Jazz, Instrumental, Classical andWorld Music.But his roots are in bluegrass, and that’s where he returns with hiscelebrated bluegrass project,My Bluegrass Heart.The Grammy award-winning album,My Bluegrass Heartis the third chapter of atrilogy which began with the 1988 album,Drive, and continued in 1991 withTheBluegrass Sessions.Fleck’s band spotlights a multi-generational gamut of the bestof bluegrass players, all sporting a myriad of Grammy Awards and nominations, aswell as gigantic piles of IBMA awards for their instruments:fiddler Michael Cleveland, mandolinist Dominick Leslie, Jeff Partin on dobro, bassist/multi-instrumentalist Mark Schatz, and Jake Stargel on guitar.</p></li><li> </li><li><p style="text-align:left"><span style="text-decoration:underline"><strong>Béla Fleck </strong></span></p></li><li><p style="text-align:left">Just in case you aren’t familiar with Béla Fleck, there are many who say he’s the premier banjo player in the world. Others claim that Fleck has virtually reinvented the image and the sound of the banjo through a remarkable performing andrecording career that has taken him all over the musical map and on a range of solo projects and collaborations. If you are familiar with Fleck, you know that he just loves to play the banjo, and put it into unique settings. A nineteen-time Grammy Award-winner, Fleck has the virtuosic, jazz-to-classical ingenuity of an iconic instrumentalist and composer with bluegrass roots.For over 30 years, he has led Béla Fleck and The Flecktones, the groundbreaking quartet inspired by jazz, funk, bluegrass and beyond. From writing three banjo concertos for full symphony orchestra to exploring the banjo’s African roots with the award-winning 2009 documentary <em>Throw Down Your Heart</em>, many tout that Béla Fleck is the world’s premier banjo player. As Jon Pareles wrote for The New York Times,“That’s a lot of territory for five strings.” Fleck has collaborated with Indian musical royalty Zakir Hussain and Rakesh Chaurasia with Edgar Meyer, and his latin jazz-infused BEATrio with harpist Edmar Castañeda and drummer Antonio Sánchez,and performed as a folk duo with wife Abigail Washburn, and a jazz duo with legendary pianist Chick Corea. Most recently, Fleck produced and performed with Renée Fleming on their collaborative album, <em>The Fiddle and the Drum</em>, a celebration of Appalachian folk music. The project is touring in select markets throughout 2026, supported by none other than Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart band.</p></li><li> </li><li><p style="text-align:left"><strong><span style="text-decoration:underline">Michael Cleveland</span></strong></p></li><li><p style="text-align:left">Michael Cleveland, widely regarded as the defining bluegrass fiddler of his generation, began performing professionally after high school with Dale Ann Bradleyand Rhonda Vincent before forming his own band, Flamekeeper, in 2006—now aseven-time recipient of the IBMA’s Instrumental Group of the Year award. A twelve-<span style="font-size:14px;letter-spacing:0px">time IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year and 2018 National Fiddlers Hall of Fameinductee, Cleveland has…
