art bailey's orkestra popilar

..Art Bailey- accordion, has performed with KCB, Frank London, Del McCoury, Steve Lacy, David Krakauer, Alicia Svigals. Jim Guttmann- bassist, founding member of the Klezmer Conservatory Band. Jake Shulman-Ment- violinist, performs with Romashka. Jeremy Brown- violinist, needs to send me a bio. Brandon Seabrook-mandolinist, performs with Paul Brody, Naftule's Dream....................................................... ........................................I put this band together for a few different reasons- first, to explore the music of Joseph Moskowitz, the genius cymbolm player active in the first part of the last century. His repertoire and approach was different from many of the recordings of klezmer groups of that time. Also, I was listening to a lot of different Romanian and Hungarian gypsy string bands, like Taraf de Haidouks, and really fell for that sound. There's something about screechy, scrapy, slightly out of tune fiddling that goes right to my heart. Some of these recordings had things in common with some of the early Jewish fiddle recordings of Abe Schwartz, Leon Ahl, etc......................................................... ...............................Aside from the Jewish music I was listening to, I had been pretty deep into Cuban and Nuyorican sounds for some time. I was checking out a lot of danzon and charanga groups, such as Fajardo, Cachao, Pacheco's first group, Aragon, etc. More strings. I was hearing strings in my sleep. So, I just had to put together a band with strings. There's a certain looseness that this kind of group can achieve that can't be had with a more typical klezmer group, in regard to time, groove, and repertoire. I think of this band as a laboratory for exploring Eastern European and Jewish traditional textures, and also as a lab for working on my own composition and arranging ideas, stolen from only the finest sources.