Acclaimed Bassist Victor Wooten to Perform, Deliver Masterclass at ACM@UCO in Bricktown

Five-time Grammy winner brings his unique perspective on life and music to Oklahoma City. Victor Wooten will deliver a masterclass at noon, April 24, at the Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma (ACM@UCO) before his performance the same night at the ACM@UCO Performance Lab.

Victor is a five-time Grammy winner, as well as a founding member of
supergroup Bèla Fleck & The Flecktones. Wooten was named in 2017 by the Huffington Post as one of 50 Iconic Black Trailblazers, pictured just after President Barack Obama. Wooten has thrice been the recipient of the Bass Player of the Year award by Bass Player magazine, the first and only person to win the award more than once.

In 2010, he was ranked the number 10 best bassist of all time by Rolling Stone. Wooten’s performances are renowned for their funky improvisations and high levels of musicianship. He will by brothers Joseph and Regi Wooten on keyboards and guitars, as well as Derico Watson on drums. For the first time ever, Wooten’s performance will begin by leading the
audience to participate in a short demonstration of his educational program, usually hosted at his camp, Victor Wooten’s Center for Music and Nature, a retreat outside of Nashville, TN. Victor Wooten, born September 11, began playing bass at the age of 2. He is the
5 brothers, all of whom are musicians. By the age of 6, he was performing with his brothers in their family band.

Wooten is respected as a teacher, speaker, and lecturer about music and nature. This has led to his being invited to speak and teach at schools, universities, and spiritual centers around the world. A video of his 2016 Commencement Speech for the graduating class of the University of Vermont was widely circulated due to his unique use of the bass guitar during his speech.

Victor Wooten at ACM@UCO ACM@UCO Performance Lab 329 E Sheridan Ave Oklahoma City OK 73104

wed24apr7:00 pm10:00 pmVictor Wooten at ACM@UCO

Event Details

Jazz bass legend Victor Wooten will be making a very special appearance in OKC. Not only will he perform at the ACM@UCO Performance Lab the night of April 24, but you'll

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Event Details

Jazz bass legend Victor Wooten will be making a very special appearance in OKC. Not only will he perform at the ACM@UCO Performance Lab the night of April 24, but you’ll be able to catch a very special Victor Wooten masterclass at noon in the ACM@UCO Songwriting Room at 25 S Oklahoma Ave, Oklahoma City, OK 73104. Masterclass is free for UCO students, others are required to show their concert ticket for entry.

Get your tickets now and don’t miss out!

“I like to talk and I like to play.”

So said Victor Wooten as he began his commencement address to the Class of 2016 at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School.

This was his way of explaining why he wasn’t going to recite the speech he had written out for the occasion. Instead, for 24 minutes he shared his thoughts with them about life, about success and challenge and meaning, all while accompanying his words on the bass guitar strapped across his shoulder.

He played and spoke freely, gently and eloquently. He took his audience back to a bit of wisdom he and his brothers had received from their mother, back when they were just beginning to demonstrate the phenomenal talent that would culminate years later in worldwide recognition as the Wooten Brothers.

“What does the world need with just another good musician? We have plenty. What the world needs is good people.”

As he improvised a four-string soundtrack to frame and channel his ideas, Wooten expanded on the lessons she had imparted: “We’re already born special. … In the history of humankind, your fingerprint has never been here and will never be here again. … No one can take that away from you. Your job is to improve on that specialness and present it to the world … “

These moments, whether witnessed that night in Burlington or later on YouTube, surely changed lives. They also capture what Victor Wooten really does best. Better even than his revolutionary technique is his conceptual redefinition of the bass guitar’s role.

How can this be? What Wooten did with bass has almost no parallel in modern music. From Coleman Hawkins to and beyond John Coltrane, the great saxophonists approached their instrument more or less the same way. Same thing with Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis, Ray Brown and Esperanza Spalding: Styles progress, harmonic and melodic languages expand but essentially fundamental concepts remain the same.

Not so with Wooten. After him, every bassist in the world began to think differently, much as guitarists did after Hendrix. Young bassists now start from a different set of assumptions than their predecessors did a generation ago. Wooten’s blazing, percussive chops lit a fire for many of them, as did his explorations of melody, nuance and phrasing.

But Wooten might smile when reminded of the old parable about the wind and the sun competing to see who might force someone they had focused on to remove his coat as he went walking one day. The wind whipped the poor guy mercilessly, blowing harder and harder, but he simply wrapped himself up tighter and refused to let go.

Then the sun took over, bathed the man in warmth — and the jacket was off.

So, yes, this is what Victor Wooten’s forte and calling, whether speaking in Burlington, working with kids at his Center for Music and Nature at the 147-acre Wooten Woods retreat in Tennessee, or outlining his philosophy of music in a novel, The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth through Music, now a part of the curriculum at The Berklee College of Music, Stanford University and other prestigious institutions.

And of course he continues to inspire through his work. On his latest album, TRYPNOTYX, scheduled for release in September on his own Vix Records imprint, he recruits world—renowned musicians Dennis Chambers on drums, saxophonist Bob Franceschini, singer Varijashree Venugopal and comedian/voicetrumentalist Michael Winslow, who gained fame in the Police Academy movies.

Not surprisingly, themes from his life thread through TRYPNOTYX, tying virtuoso performance and life experience together. Winslow’s voice and sound effects à la conjure James Brown and pop throughout the sizzling “Funky D Mix” and recall the night that a kindergarten-aged Wooten saw the Godfather of Soul on stage for the first time. And in “Cupid,” through bucolic textures, a sylvan flute, and spoken exchanges involving Wooten and his children, the horrors of war give way to the promise of redemption through love and music.

“Music is a great way — and a safe way — to teach just about any life principle,” Wooten insists, one afternoon at a table outside of a Nashville cafe. “To be in a band, you have to listen to each other. Bands are at their best when every instrument is different, not the same. Everyone takes turn talking. Everyone speaks their voice. A lot of times musicians might ask, ‘What would you like me to play?’ I say, ‘Listen to the music. The music will tell you exactly what it needs.’”

Listening was always essential to Wooten. As the youngest of five brilliantly talented brothers, he listened to the music they loved and to the instruction his brothers offered as he began exploring the bass. He didn’t know it at the time but this sibling input helped free him from preconceptions.

“I learned to speak music the same way we learned to speak English,” he says. “No one sits you down and says, ‘Here’s the role of your voice. Learn these words. Go and practice.’ No, you just talk, and your parents allow you to talk even though you might speak ‘incorrectly.’ You do that for years before you learn about grammar. I learned music the exact same way.”

With liberated imagination, Wooten saw no reason why he couldn’t apply what his brothers were doing on other instruments to his bass. “I saw my brothers’ instruments on my instrument,” he says. “For example, I started learning Roy’s drum licks and solos on the bass. I heard bass lines in his drumming. Later, when I learned what we now call slapping — we called it thumping then because that’s what [Sly Stone’s bassist] Larry Graham called it — that gave me the power but not the speed to play a Billy Cobham drum fill. So my brother Regi showed me how to use my thump to pick up and down. That opened a portal in my brain. Then when you add multiple plucks and left-hand hammers, all of a sudden you’re using ten fingers, man!”

Victor was just two years old when he played his first gigs with the Wooten Brothers Band — Regi on guitar, Roy a.k.a. “Futureman” on drums, Rudy on sax and Joseph on keyboards. They opened West Coast shows for Curtis Mayfield, War and other headliners, nearly scored a major label deal until someone there was room for only one five-brother act. The other act just happened to be The Jackson 5. But that didn’t stop the five Wootens from pushing against convention.

Settling eventually in Nashville, where connected with the like-minded banjoist and composer Béla Fleck, Wooten has earned five Grammy Awards, been honored three times by Bass Player magazine as Player of the Year and is included in the Rolling Stone selection for “Top 10 Bassists of All Time.”

What really matters, though, is the example Wooten sets in his dedication to music as a means to enhance the human condition even for those who may never master an instrument. “Music shouldn’t be just about music,” he emphasizes. “Music should be about something greater. If all you do is music, what is your music about? You’ve got to have a life. You’ve got to have experiences. You’ve got to fall in and out of love. Getting away from your instrument and out into the world, you can see how the little bird gets up and sings — not to get paid but just because the sun is rising. You go outside to get more inside who you really are.”

At this point, a young student comes up to our table, apologizes for interrupting, takes a second to thank Wooten for all that he has done to move so many through his music. Wooten smiles gratefully. They speak for a few moments. Then the student moves on, like those graduates in Vermont, a little wiser and warmer than before.

“That,” Wooten concludes, “is what it’s all about.”

Time

(Wednesday) 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Location

ACM@UCO Performance Lab

329 E Sheridan Ave Oklahoma City OK 73104

Wooten delivers his masterclass at noon April 24 in the songwriting room on the ground floor at ACM@UCO (25 S. Oklahoma Ave Oklahoma City, OK 73104). Entry to the masterclass will be given to all those who have a ticket to the concert that but is free to all UCO students, faculty, and staff that can present valid UCO ID.

The concert will be hosted the same day, at , at the ACM@UCO Performance Lab (329 East Sheridan Ave, Oklahoma City, OK 73104).
Upstage Promotions is an Oklahoma City company, presenting the best concerts and events since 2017.

Media contact for this event is Tyler Garcia, promoter and talent buyer at Upstage Promotions. Get tickets now!