*** Béla Fleck and the Flecktones

LIVE ART

(Warner)

The past few years have found the banjo-driven Béla Fleck and the Flecktones blasting off from bluegrass, turning left toward jazz, wandering the world's rhythms, and exploring improvisation with stellar hitchhikers like Chick Corea and Bruce Hornsby. This double-disc live album includes several new tunes inspired by the band's global travels, and novel renditions of audience favorites like "Sinister Minister" and "Sunset Road."

As a band who thrive on live performance and incidentally produce high (jazz) charting albums, the Flecktones (Fleck on acoustic and electric banjos, Victor Wooten on bass, and percussionist Future Man on Synth-Axe Drumitar) are in perpetual evolution. Live Art, the definitive Flecktones show-in-a-box, captures all the changes while highlighting the constant virtuosity and sophisticated whimsy that gives this fusion band their special character.

-- Julie Melrose

(Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, with guest Paul McCandless, play the Somerville Theatre this Tuesday, October 29. Call 628-3390.)