NextThreeDays: Event Display

Béla Fleck in Concert with My Bluegrass Heart
Venue: Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg
Directions: Google Map Link
Organizations: Béla Fleck
Date: Saturday, September 19, 2026
Time: 7:30 - 10:00 PM
Event Types: Music
Cost:
Ticket Prices (depending on location): • Category A $75.00 • Category B: $50.00 • Category C: $30.00

Students with ID and youth 18 and under: $10.00

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Description:
The Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech presents Béla Fleck in concert with a concert titled "My Bluegrass Heart" on Saturday, September 19, 2026.

My Bluegrass Heart brings together legendary musicians and a new generation of virtuosic players in a joyful, deeply collaborative celebration of tradition and innovation featuring Michael Cleveland, Dominick Leslie, Jeff Partin, Mark Schatz, and Jake Stargel.

Few artists have reshaped an instrument the way Béla Fleck has transformed the banjo. Over the last four decades, Fleck has made a point of boldly going where no banjo player has gone before, a musical journey that has earned him 19 Grammys in nine different fields, including country, pop, jazz, instrumental, classical, and world music. But his roots are in bluegrass, which is where he returns with "My Bluegrass Heart", the name of both his latest project and his 2022 Grammy winner for Best Bluegrass Album.

"My Bluegrass Heart" is primarily an instrumental performance showcasing the remarkable talents of Béla Fleck and an all-star ensemble of bluegrass musicians. While the performance may include occasional vocals, audiences can expect the focus to be on the incredible musicianship, featuring banjo, fiddle, mandolin, dobro, guitar, and bass.

The project brings together legendary musicians and a new generation of virtuosic players in a joyful, deeply collaborative celebration of tradition and innovation. At its core, "My Bluegrass Heart" is about connection — between past and present, friends and collaborators, and the communal experience of making music together.

The album "My Bluegrass Heart" was the third chapter of a trilogy which began with the 1988 album Drive and continued in 1991 with The Bluegrass Sessions. Fleck’s band spotlights a multigenerational gamut of the best of bluegrass players, all sporting a myriad of Grammy nominations, as well as gigantic piles of IBMA awards for their instruments:

• Fiddler Michael Cleveland
• Mandolinist Dominick Leslie
• Jeff Partin on dobro
• Bassist/multi-instrumentalist Mark Schatz
• Jake Stargel on guitar

Just in case you aren’t familiar with Bela Fleck, there are some who say he’s the world’s premier banjo player. Others claim that Béla has virtually reinvented the image and the sound of the banjo through a remarkable performing and recording career that has taken him all over the musical map and on a range of solo projects and collaborations. If you are familiar with Béla, you know that he just loves to play the banjo, and put it into unique settings.

The recipient of multiple Grammy Awards and nominations going back to 1998, Béla Flecks’ total Grammy count is 15 Grammys won with 30 nominations. He has been nominated in more categories than any instrumentalist in Grammy history.

After graduation he joined the Boston-based bluegrass band Tasty Licks and recorded two albums with the group. In 1979 Fleck made his solo recording debut with Crossing the Tracks. He then toured with the Kentucky-based band Spectrum before joining the progressive bluegrass group New Grass Revival (NGR), with which he performed and recorded throughout the 1980s. While with NGR he also produced a number of solo albums, including the highly acclaimed Drive (1988). Following the release of NGR’s final album, Friday Night in America (1989), Fleck recorded The Telluride Sessions (1989), a landmark bluegrass album, with the all-star acoustic group Strength in Numbers. By this time Fleck’s technical proficiency on the banjo and his adventurous musical experimentation had earned him an international following.

Meanwhile, in 1988, Fleck assembled the Flecktones, the group with which he would record most consistently for the next two decades. In all of its manifestations, the Flecktones blended elements of bluegrass, jazz, rock, rhythm and blues, and world music on albums. The original Flecktones reunited for the first time in almost two decades for Rocket Science (2011), a Grammy Award-winning collection that was equally playful and provocative.

Between Flecktones recordings, Fleck continued to enrich his musical palette. While collaborating with numerous musicians, such as bassist and cellist Edgar Meyer and Indian tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, he also ventured into classical music with the release of Perpetual Motion, a compilation of interpretations of works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, and others. In 2005 he made a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the banjo, sub-Saharan Africa, where he studied, recorded, and performed with an array of locally prominent traditional and popular musicians. The trip yielded the documentary Throw Down Your Heart (2008) and its companion album Throw Down Your Heart: Tales from the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 3 (2009).

He joined clawhammer banjo player Abigail Washburn on Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet (2008), a bold experiment that fused American roots music and traditional Chinese folk songs. Fleck and Washburn were later married, and the two frequently performed and recorded together.

Links:

• https://www.belafleck.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/belafleckbanjo
• https://www.twitter.com/belafleckbanjo
• http://www.instagram.com/belafleckbanjo

Tickets range from $30.00-$75.00 depending on seat location. Tickets for students with ID and youth 18 & under are $10.00.

Tickets can be purchased online at: https://tickets.artscenter.vt.edu/online/mapSelect.asp?doWork::WSmap::loadMap=Load&createBO::WSmap=1&BOparam::WSmap::loadMap::performance_ids=C8937C19-7AF8-4951-929C-B927E14E45AD or in person at the box office or by calling the box office at 540-231-5300.

The Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech is located at 330 Turner Street NW in Blacksburg, VA.

To view the event flyer, visit: https://res.cloudinary.com/du5lfb5z3/image/upload/v1787599057/1_yhxc0k.jpg.

For more information, visit: https://artscenter.vt.edu/performances/bela-fleck.html or https://www.facebook.com/artscenteratvt or https://www.instagram.com/artscenteratvt/ or call 540-231-5300.