This being myspace 'ere we go wif da personal story..I'm born in Sydney, my mother was born in Morocco and my father in Hungary although he grew up in Israel. My parents came to Australia when they were kids and both me and my brother grew up in a fairly traditional Jewish household surrounded by a lot of music and art. Three of my grandparents were from Hungary and one grandmother was from Poland although she grew up in Austria. My grandfather on my mother's side was by far the most defining influence on my youth, in a lot of ways he was the ‘black sheep’ of the family and we still don't know his entire history except that he did a lot of fighting during the war, ditched Hungary when he was 18 and after moving to France as the saying goes "became more French than the French." He played in cafe orchestras in Paris (I think) and Marseilles (definately) during the 1920s and 1930s, lived at one point next door to Maurice Ravel's grandmother and worked professionally as an engineer and occasional sculptor. He was also friends with Edith Piaf. Virtually every photo of the guy that we have is of him playing the violin and I grew up totaly entranced by him playing old Yiddish songs, Hungarian Gypsy czardases and just generally the music from the salons he had frequented in his younger years. The story goes that his brother (who along with his entire family he left behind in Hungary before the war) was a great violinist in the wings who performed Brahms violin concerto at the Budapest Opera House when he was 18 only to die tragically two days later from the avian flu that swept Europe in the early part of last century...in Australia I have my mother and my brother and there is no other family here whatsoever. What little is remaining of our family today reside in Israel, Hungary and the US...
I tell this whole family spiel for a reason cause I guess the family aspect or my 'roots' is something that's very important to me and always has been. Music, whatever style it is has gotta be an extension of who you are - period. I think you're kidding yourself if you try to be who you aren't which it sometimes feels many people fall into the trap of doing, particularly in music land. My own family's circumstances as crazy as they sound aren't any more interesting or "better" than anybody else's - they're just our particular circumstances. A lot of the music I play is influenced by my experiences as a Jewish-Australian musician living in the diaspora, by my travels, my friends and co-musicians I hang with as well as some of the amazing people from many different cultures and countries that I've met and continue to meet over the years. I've spent most of my life studying a lot of Classical music and in times past played in way too many youth orchestras for my own good - the Classical's still a pretty major influence. My former violin teacher of 12 years described my playing music outside of Classical as “turning to the dark side.†(She was joking…I think…:)
I have three Jewish-music influenced bands in the works at the moment: "The Asthmatix" is an experimental-hip hop quartet made up of violin/effects, keys/melodian/effects (Daniel Pliner) and scratching/vinyl tweaking by DJs Asparagus (Andre Mylnsky) and Mickey Morphingaz (Micha Walter). "The Ticklers" is a mish-mash of old timey Swing, French Musette and Klezmer mixed up with some original songs, kind of a twisted Larry David meets the Muppets project. That band's made up of violin/guitar/vocals, sax/clarinet/junk percussion/toys (Neill Duncan), trumpet/trombone/souspahone/tuba/flute (Sam Golding), accordion/melodian (Phillipe Witwer), electric/acoustic guitars (Nigel Date) bass/kazoo/vocals (John Maddox) and drums (the soon to be wooed Cameron Reid). Finally there's "Zohar's Nigun" which is an experimental-rock-jazz quartet made up of violin/guitar/vocals/effects, keys/effects (Daniel Pliner), electric bass/flute (Tony Buchan) and drums/percussion (Alon Ilsar).
I'm heavily heavily into the music of Django Reinhardt and I perform and record a fair bit with my friend the absolutely brilliant German based Sinti composer and guitarist Lulo Reinhardt whose ever-evolving and totally unique music includes a lot of Latin, free-form and Jazz influences. I've recently recorded with Lulo a new CD of his original Gypsy-Swing inspired originals along with the exceptional US guitarist Doug Martin and German bassist Harold Becher and this CD is due to be launched in May this year. Also play a lot along with Lulo drummer extrordinaire Uli Kramer and as of last year in Berlin cymbalist Pan Mareck, guitarist Alexey Krupsky and bassist Michel Jach. In Sydney I play a lot of Gypsy-Swing and Jazz music with long time mates guitarist Nigel Date and bassists John Maddox and Stan Valacos and also play in several fantastic bands - Nadya and her 101 Candles Orkestra, Peppermint T and On The Stoop - all of these made up of a lot of the same musical crew..seriously worth checkin out people!;)
