NEWS:
Welcome to my webpage. 2015 has been an eventful year of music in my life. This Spring, I travelled to the Balkans and explored Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania. I got to study the music I'm passionate about with masters over there and came back with lots of homework to do. The group of San Francisco area musicians who went on this trip to Turkey organized into a 13 piece band called Istanbul Connection. We have played shows at the Red Poppy and Great American Music Hall in SF, as well as the farewell show at the Elbo Room before the historic venue closed. We also performed several times in Istanbul, Turkey, and have been invited to Burning Man this year at the Reverbia camp between Sept 2 and 5th. If you are at the burn, come say hello and get your flamenco/Balkan/funky groove goin'. A week after returning to the US, my manouche (gypsy swing) group toured from SF to Seattle, and recorded a 5 song disc with Adam Lansky in Portland. The all-acoustic EP features three original tunes of mine and two classics, with Jordan Keach on bass and Conrad Seto on rhythm guitar. The music is upbeat and dance-friendly, and focuses on the aesthetic of the French gypsy swing tradition of Django Reinhardt. The whole EP is downloadable for $4 if you click the album cover on the left. Finally, my 5 piece electric Balkan folk-jazz ensemble, Gonzo Lautari, released our debut 6-song EP this February, and played our debut show at Union Station in Los Angeles for Malabamba, a monthly music and dance event series that the Balkan community hosts. The group represents a coming-together of some of the hottest players on the west coast folk-jazz scene. Featuring members of LA's Fishtank Ensemble, SF's La Peche, San Diego's Therianthrope and more, Gonzo Lautari's cast of characters employ a solid grounding in Eastern European folk dance music with jazz improvisation, funky grooves and a sharp, classical harmonic sensibility that is at once fresh and strangely familiar. The music is fast and furious with a direct intensity that commands attention. To hear Gonzo Lautari, click the album cover on the left or check out the video below. |