Matt Flinner has made a career out of playing acoustic music in new ways. Starting out as a banjo prodigy who was playing bluegrass festivals before he entered his teens, Flinner later took up the mandolin, won the National Banjo Competition in Winfield, KS in 1990, and won the mandolin award there the following year.

He moved to Nashville in 1999 and is now widely considered one of the hottest and most creative mandolin players on the acoustic scene. His two solo albums for Compass Records, The View from Here and Latitude, both featured bluegrass stalwarts Todd Phillips, David Grier, Stuart Duncan, Jerry Douglas and Darol Anger, and received high critical acclaim. Flinner actively tours with Phillips and Grier (in Phillips, Grier and Flinner) and the Modern Mandolin Quartet, as well as with his own Matt Flinner Acoustic Trio and Matt Flinner Quartet, which released its Walking on the Moon CD on Compass in 2002.

He tours actively with the Matt Flinner Trio, as a member of the 'new acoustic' trio Phillips, Grier & Flinner, as a member of Darrell Scott's band, and with guitarist Frank Vignola (David Grisman Quintet). Flinner also special guests on banjo with Leftover Salmon and in the fall of 2008 was a featured soloist with Trey Anastasio and Carlo Aonzo during Orchestra Nashville's performance of "Concertino" (Don Hart). He most recently appeared on comedian Steve Martin's new recording The Crow and the Vignola Collectives' March 09 release, Gypsy Grass .

“Flinner provides the next logical evolutionary step to David Grisman's unique dawg style, and does it with a nod to the past and a vision of the future." ~Bluegrass Now Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.