Victor Wooten is an American bass player, composer, author, producer, and recipient of five Grammy Awards. At the Bratislava Jazz Days he would play with his brothers, the guitarist Regi and the drummer Roy.
Wooten has won the "Bass Player of the Year" award from Bass Player magazine three times in a row, and was the first person to win the award more than once. In 2011, he was named #10 in the "Top 10 Bassists of All Time" by Rolling Stone. In addition to a solo career and collaborations with various artists, Wooten has been the bassist for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones since the group's formation in 1988.
Victor Wooten collaborated with musicians like Branford Marsalis, Mike Stern, Bruce Hornsby, Chick Corea, Dave Matthews, Prince and Keb Mo. In 2008, Wooten joined Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller to record an album. The trio of bassists, under the name SMV, released Thunder in 2008 and began a supporting tour including our festival.
Wooten has also written a novel titled "The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music". Wooten also operates his own record label, Vix Records, on which he releases his own music.
In 2000 Wooten created a Bass/Nature camp that has since expanded into Victor Wooten's Center for Music and Nature, located in Tennessee. In September 2013 he appeared for the first time - among others like John Patitucci, Lee Sklar, Stuart Hamm and Alphonso Johnson - on a Bass Camp of the German bass manufacturer Warwick.
Born to Dorothy and Pete Wooten, Victor is the youngest of the five Wooten Brothers, the other four being Regi, Roy, Rudy and Joseph Wooten, all of whom are musicians. Regi began to teach Victor to play bass when he was two, and by the age of six, Victor was performing with his brothers in their family band, The Wooten Brothers Band.