Culture

Telluride Bluegrass: Victor Wooten with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones

by Eileen Burns

Telluride’s 38th Bluegrass Festival will spotlight a host of hall of fame musicians over the four-day celebration, beginning on June 16th, including five-time Grammy® winner Victor Wooten, who will be performing with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.   Heralded as “the Michael Jordan of the bass, Wooten was recently named in The Top 10 Greatest Bass Players of All Time in “Rolling Stone Magazine’s”  Readers’ Poll, and has won “Bass Player Magazine’s” prestigious “Bassist of the Year,” three times now.  Wooten’s style continues to grow and transform, but he is best known for bringing the electric base to the forefront with a rhythmic freedom unlike any other bassist performing today.

ArtistWorks Academy of Bluegrass unveiled at Telluride Bluegrass

Not all of the action at the 38th annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival takes place on the Fred Shellman Main Stage. Legendary banjo innovator Tony Trischka is in town for the launch of the new ArtistWorks Academy of Bluegrass via a workshop in Elks Park, Friday, June 18, 1:30 p.m. and an appearance at  around 4:30 p.m. on the Main Stage.

For more than 35 years, Tony Trishchka's stylings have inspired a whole generation of bluegrass and acoustic musicians. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential banjo players of the latter part of the 20th century (and counting), largely in terms of his influence on succeeding generations of players such as virtuosic Bela Fleck, back in town for the Festival for the 30th year in a row, this time reunited with the original Flecktones – and his teacher. When he was just a senior in high school, Bela made trips to Bronx, New York to study with Tony, who he once described to me as his "hero."

"... the godfather of what's sometimes called new acoustic music," said The New York Times.

Yonder Mountain String Band at Telluride Bluegrass 2011

Telluride has its festivals. Nederland has Frozen Dead Guy Days. No kidding, celebrated annually from Friday – Sunday the first full weekend of March. A centerpiece of Frozen Guys Days is a screening of  the film "Grandpa's in the Tuff Shed," a magnum opus which premiered at Mountainfilm in Telluride in 1998. A centerpiece of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival is another Nederland import:  Yonder Mountain String Band.

Yonder  – banjoist Dave Johnston, mandolinist Jeff Austin, bassist Ben Kaufmann and guitarist Adam Aijala – is back again for the 38th annual event, June 16 – June 19, 2011, kicking off the long weekend with a Nightgrass set at the Telluride Conference Center in Mountain Village and appearing again on the Main Stage on Saturday.