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THE MARTIN LUBENOV ORKESTAR
At the age of only 27 years, Martin Lubenov is already among the top Balkan-accordionists. Comparable to his famous colleague Peter Ralchev, Martin Lubenov very early found his own style. With breathtaking virtuosity and playful elegance he combines Balkan Roma music with shades of swing, modern jazz, tango nuevo, salsa and musette and, doing so, pays honour to it like Astor Piazzolla did to tango and Richard Galliano did to musette. In Vienna, his adopted hometown, he follows up this approach with his unorthodox Balkan quartet Orfej. With ideas for composition and arrangement prepared for a long time past, he returned to Sofia last autumn in order to form his “crack group”. The Martin Lubenov Orkestar is recruited from the most famous Roma musicians in Bulgaria whose reputation partly well exceeds the Roma scene. Mainly thanks to bands from the north of Spain / the south of France like the Gypsy Kings the Roma songs’ unmistakable soul became world-famous. In the case of the Martin Lubenov Orkestar it never topples over to kitsch and complaisance – using weird arrangements full of experimental jazzlines, powerful brass sounds, marrying salsa to Balkan brass in an unpretentious way, with Lubenov’s frisky tango and gypsy-swing quotations as well as Nikolai Antov’s and Nenad Vasilic’s brilliant guitar- and bass-backings and soli. By incorporating all these means M. Lubenov creates a subtly light-footed and nevertheless melancholic, definitely very southern music, which can liberate the listeners from their fear of contact concerning the “strange Balkans”. Thanks to his knowledge across styles and continents, Martin Lubenov has succeeded in something impossible with his Orkestar: a completely new hybrid, which carries away intellectuals, jazz fans, world-music-afficionados as well as popfreaks. Martin Lubenov is responsible for all lyrics, compositions and arrangements. Martin Lubenov is born in Sofia in 1976. The most iridescent traditions of the Balkans meet in his unconventional play: Macedonian-Bulgarian folk music and music of the Roma living in the southern part of the Balkans, constantly developing, bursting with vivacity. Add to this musical base jazz, tango nuevo, Parisian musette, Serbian, Roumanian, Greek and Turkish music, breathtaking virtuosity and unusual arrangements: That’s Martin Lubenov. Martin studied classical music and jazz in Sofia and Vienna. His roots in the vibrating ground of balkan wedding music kept him from becoming an “academic” musician. And fortunately his musical education helped him quite soon to outgrow popular music, to which a lot of Roma musicians on the Balkans are confined.
Five years ago Martin Lubenov moved to Vienna in order to study and soon became
a link between the music of Yugoslav and Macedonian communities and the Central-European
folk and world music scene. Fast his talent got around and numerous musicians
and bands invited him to collaborate, like for example the Sandy Lopicic
crkestar. In addition to this, he has been instrumentalist and arranger for the
Jony Iliev Band in Bulgaria. The
musicians The extraordinary clarinettist Zhivko Stoyanov is descended from an old Bulgarian music dynasty. His grandfather is no less a man than Nacheto, a clarinettist with cult status in Bulgaria. Through his mother he has strong connections to the Macedonian-Albanian clarinet tradition. Zhivko Stoyanov enriches the Orkestar also by playing the Tupan (big cylindrical drum) and the Duduk (particularly soft shawm instrument). He as well descendant from a famous dynasty, Ventsislav Radev also plays the Tupan but also Darbuka and Drums. Ventsislav's pulse is on the odd beat of the south-Balkan and oriental Roma percussion styles. Beyond this the university graduate is one of the best jazz drummers in Bulgaria, whereas his brother Asen Radev is among the most important trumpeters and saxophone players in the country both in the vibrating Roma tradition and in experimental jazz. With Nikolai Antov, the Orkestar again has taken aboard a star of the Bulgarian scene. No musician there, be it from the field of jazz, folk, classic or pop, who has not referred yet to his skills on the acoustic or electronic guitar. Concert trips led him already to important European jazz festivals. Being the only non-Roma and non-Bulgarian in the Orkestar, Nenad Vasilic from Nis, Serbia, provides a meditative bass-play, which is in particular trained on the great of modern jazz. Under the influence of Paris-based Bojan Zulfikarpasic and Keith Jarrett with his "Balkan Band" he invented in Graz a both innovating and clever chamber-jazz with Balkan background. Nenad is also member of Dobrek Bistro and Martin Lubenov’s Orfej. Irregular member of the Martin Lubenov Orkestar is also Misho Yosifov’s Brasstrio. Very popular in Bulgaria, they combine Roma brass tradition with jazz and salsa. Misho Yosifov studied at the Berkelee College of Music in Boston. Tour line-up: 2
July 2007, Monday - Salamis Antique Theatre - 21.00 |