Artist Gallery Photo

An Evening with The Victor Wooten Band

Thu, Nov 4 -
Sun, Nov 7, 2021




$42.50 Includes a $6.00 Handling Fee. All purchases are nonrefundable/nonexchangeable.

Tickets may be purchased on-line or by phone.
Night of show seating typically available.



KBCS,KNKX and Dimitriou's Jazz Alley present 5-time Grammy winning bassist Victor Wooten touring in support of “Music, Love & seeing everyone in Seattle!"​ Band members: Victor Wooten (Bass), Joseph Wooten (Keyboards and Vocals), Bob Francheshini (Sax) and Jessie Wooten (Drums). Set times Thursday and Sunday at 7:30pm & Friday and Saturday at 7:30p and 9:30p. Doors open at 6p Thursday, 5:30p Friday – Sunday.

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“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 Tryptonyx, 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.’”

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