It's after eight. The lights went off about twenty minutes ago, and for the first time, banjoist Bela Fleck approaches the microphone set up at the front of the stage. He and his Flecktones--bassist Victor Lamonte Wooten and Synth Axe Drumitarist Roy Wooten (also known as Future Man)--have just ripped through an amazing rendition of "Vix-9," the first song on the Flecktone's new album, Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Fleck obviously likes playing in front of people more than he likes speaking in front of people. He waits for a second and leans down nervously.

"Hi," he says. "Glad you could come."

Seeing the Flecktones in concert is an exhilirating experience. The trio has been together for five years; for four of those years Howard Levy joined the band on assorted keyboards and harmonicas.

Onstage, as they proved in their Sanders Theatre show November 22, the Flecktones are an amazingly dynamic and electrifying group: each musician has intense, complete control and amazing technical mastery of his instrument.

Despite their different musical backgrounds (Bela was trained and played for years on the bluegrass circuit; Victor got his musical training from his eclectically talented family), Bela and Victor continually find new ways to complement each other. They weave patterns, they build harmonies, they layer melodies, they solo, they return and play together, they stop and start and pop and jump and reach and it all works. Future Man is a subtle and exciting SynthAxe player (the SynthAxe Drumitar is an instrument that Future Man invented: it looks like a guitar, is played with one's fingers, and sounds like drums), and lays down serious rhythms to round it all out.

At the Sanders show, Phish bassist Mike Gordon sat in the front row. Gordon is not so emotive. Still, after a scorching banjo solo by Bela that bled into a ten-minute solo by Victor (who was just named Bass Player Magazine's bassist of the year) involving, in turn, a four-string bass, a five-string bass, a six-string bass, and two four-string basses played simultaneously, Gordon was standing up grinning broadly and applauding with the rest of the audience.

After the show, the band stayed around and talked with the audience for over an hour. It seemed almost surreal, after such an intense experience, to see the three of them hanging out with the crowd. Fifteen Minutes, however, was lucky enough to get Bela by himself, one-on-one, for about an hour before his soundcheck.

Fifteen Minutes: Have you been conscious of trying to move away from a bluegrass audience?

Bela Fleck: Well, when this band started I tried really hard to stay away from the bluegrass thing because a lot of people didn't know what [The Flecktones] were and so they would say, "Oh it's bluegrass" and it's certainly not bluegrass. But as time has gone by I've felt a lot more comfortable integrating the bluegrass side of my music back in and so now we're doing more things that have that feel. There's a couple of hundred thousand people in the United States that know me from the bluegrass world. Then I come along with this record [Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest] and it's number one on the jazz charts and they still put it in the bluegrass bins....

I maintain my love for bluegrass and acoustic music in general. I hope the great things about bluegrass that I love and have internalized are coming out in this music too, as well as the energy. And the things I love about jazz are coming out. Bluegrass is very harmonically simple, and the progressions are very limited, but they're wonderful. There's a rootsiness in those progressions. So anyway, I like it all, and I respect all those forms very much.

FM: On your new album, there seems to be a lot more focus on electronic sound, and I guess that's partially because of the departure of Howard Levy...

BF: Well, part of our acoustic sound left the band, so instead of being 1/2 acoustic and 1/2 electric now we're 2/3 electric, but to me the thing about the band that has always been one of the coolest things is the mixing of the electronic and the electric and the acoustic together and making it feel like its supposed to be that way. It's a hard thing to do, a lot of people try it and it sounds wierd.

FM: Have you been experimenting more with triggering sounds from your banjo?

BF: Now I'm starting....we try to blend all that stuff together. Now I have an electric banjo with a synth attachment, so I'm able to trigger synth sounds, so that's been a lot of fun too. We try really hard to make it organic, to make pleasing sounds, they have to be interesting sounds, they have to justify themselves. I play around with that live, because it's a lot of fun. People really get off on seeing me play banjo and hearing vibes come out. They like that, and it's fun. There's nothing wrong with good clean fun, you know, so long as no-one's getting hurt, but musically, I love that acoustic thing. I also love playing with these guys, they have an incredible feel, and they're very inventive, so again it's a natural thing for us to play together, it's not like pushing some impossible thing. Our musical relationship has really grown deeper and deeper as we have played together longer, and the trio has really brought us together.