Victor Wooten
Great Performers Series Artist
Performance:
Saturday, April 5, 2008: 8:00 p.m.
FREE Workshop:
Saturday, April 5, 2008: 1:00 p.m.
Rockwell Hall, Room 204
Victor Wooten redefines the word musician. Regaled as the most influential bassist since Jaco Pastorius, Victor is known for his solo recordings and tours, and as a member of the Grammy-winning supergroup, Béla Fleck & The Flecktones. He is an innovator on the bass guitar, as well as a talented composer, arranger, producer, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. But those gifts only begin to tell the tale of this Tennessee titan.
Victor is the loving husband and devoted father of four; the youngest sibling of the amazing Wooten brothers (Regi, Roy, Rudy and Joseph), and the bassist in their famed family band; the student in the martial art of Wing Chun and the nature survival skill of Tracking; the teacher of dozens of bass players at his acclaimed annual Bass & Nature camp; and the master magician.
Victor Lemonte Wooten got to music early, growing up in a military family in which his older brothers all played and sang. By the time he was 3, Victor was being taught bass by his oldest brother Regi, and at age 5 he was performing professionally with the Wooten Brothers Band. He recalls, “My parents and brothers were the foundation. They prepared me for anything by teaching me to keep my mind open and learn to adapt.” Working their way east from Sacramento, the band played countless clubs and eventually opened concerts for Curtis Mayfield and War.
Victor was influenced by bass mentors, Stanley Clarke, Larry Graham and Bootsy Collins, while learning about the music business at a wildly accelerated pace. By the early ’80s, with the family settled in Newport News, Virginia, the brothers became mainstays at Busch Gardens theme park in nearby Williamsburg, making numerous connections with musicians in Nashville and New York.
In 1988 Victor moved to Nashville, where he worked with singer Jonell Mosser and met New Grass Revival banjo ace Béla Fleck. A year later, Fleck enlisted Vic, his brother Roy (a.k.a. Future Man) and harmonica-playing keyboardist Howard Levy to perform with him, and the Flecktones were born. After three highly successful albums, Levy departed in 1993, and the band’s new trio format enabled Victor to develop and display a staggering array of fingerboard skills that turned him into a bass hero of Pastorian-proportions and helped earn the band a Grammy.
With the Flecktones in full flight, Victor set his sights on a solo career, first forming Bass Extremes with fellow low-end lord Steve Bailey (leading to an instructional book/CD and two CDs, to date), and finally releasing his critically-acclaimed solo debut, A Show of Hands, in 1996. Soon after, Vic took his solo show on the road with drummer J.D. Blair. Momentum and accolades built with successive tours and the release of What Did He Say? in 1997, the Grammy-nominated Yin-Yang in 1999 and the double CD, Live In America in 2001.
Wooten won two Nashville Music Awards for Bassist Of The Year and is the only three-time
winner of Bass Player magazine’s Bass Player Of The Year. With the honors came sideman c
alls, leading to recordings and performances with artists like Branford Marsalis, Mike
Stern, Bruce Hornsby, Chick Corea, Dave Matthews, Prince, Gov’t Mule, Susan Tedeschi,
Vital Tech Tones (with Scott Henderson and Steve Smith), the Jaco Pastorius Word Of
Mouth Big Band, and the soundtrack of the Disney film Country Bears.
After a four-year hiatus form solo recordings, Wooten released Soul Circus on the Vanguard label in 2005. The
recording included a small army of guest players: the Wooten Brothers, Bootsy Collins, Arrested Development rapper/vocalist
Speech, Howard Levy, Dennis Chambers, Saundra Williams, J.D. Blair, Derico Watson, Fleckstone
Jeff Coffin and a who's-who of bassists, including Steve Bailey, Oteil Burbridge, Will Lee,
Rhonda Smith, Christian McBride, T.M. Stevens, Bill Dickens and Gary Grainger.
Wooten joins the Heads Up label in the spring of 2008 with the April 1 release of Palmsytery, a twelve-track
set the embraces a range of styles - jazz, funk, pop, soul, gospel, world music and more - and boasts a diverse
guest list that includes Mike Stern, Richard Bona, Keb' Mo' and several others. The result
is an amalgam of voices, styles and grooves, but one that never fails to hold together at its
rock-solid core.
Simultaneous with the release of Palmystery, Berkley Trade Paperback (The Penguin Group USA) will release Wooten's
debut novel, The Music Lesson, the story of a struggling young musician who is unexpectedly visited by a
mysterious, seemingly mystic music teacher who guides him through a spiritual journey of higher education in
both music and life.
Whether his medium is music or the written word, Wooten sees the creative process in the context
of the eternal question about whether a tree falling in a forest really makes a sound if there's
no one there to hear it. "A song is just an idea until someone brings it into the world," he says.
"That's the great mystery of music or any creative endeavor. The power is in the palm of your hand. You
just have to release it to the world."
Tickets on sale now. For more information about Victor Wooten, check out
his website at www.victorwooten.com
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LISTEN to a clip.
(MP3, 518KB)
Cost:
$28
Seniors: $25
Buffalo State faculty/staff: $25
Student Rush: $15 (cash only), available one hour prior to show only with valid student ID.
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