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Fleck ready for relaxed Holiday
By EILEEN SCHULTE
Published October 14, 2005
CLEARWATER - It was late Thursday morning, and banjo picker Bela Fleck woke up in his tour bus with no idea if he was even in Florida yet.
Not that it mattered.
Fleck, 47, was just happy at the prospect of performing at the Clearwater Jazz Holiday at 9:30 tonight. He remembers how grateful he was to be invited to play years ago when he was "kind of wide-eyed."
"It's relaxed and the people are warm," Fleck said.
The free four-day event opened Thursday and continues through Sunday at Coachman Park in downtown Clearwater.
Tonight's show will be one of the last Fleck will perform as part of Trio!, with bassist Stanley Clarke and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, whose 50-show tour ends next week at Chicago Symphony Hall.
"We've been playing together since June," Fleck said. "It's a cool experience on a personal level. They're the guys that I looked up to when I was coming up."
For the first time since the Flecktones started 15 years ago, the band took a break so its members could work on their own projects.
Fleck traveled to Africa for a month to research the origins of the banjo, play some shows and shoot a documentary film.
He visited Uganda and Tanzania among other places, and loved it so much he said he wished he could have spent a month in each country.
The trip inspired a new album, which will be released by Sony in 2007 along with the film.
The Flecktones will reunite in January. The band's new album, called The Hidden Lands, recorded before the hiatus, will be released the same month.
"It's been an insane year," Fleck said from the road, which makes the promise of tonight's concert by the water all the more inviting.
* * *
- PREVIEW: The Clearwater Jazz Holiday continues through Sunday at Coachman Park, downtown Clearwater. See today's Floridian for the full weekend lineup. Today: gates open at 4 p.m.; ABCD with Billy Norris, 6 p.m.; Nestor Torres, 7:45 p.m.; Stanley Clarke, Bela Fleck and Jean-Luc Ponty, 9:30 p.m. Free admission. (727) 461-5200.
[Last modified October 14, 2005, 06:10:03]
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