Welcome home. Have a listen.
I'm a music artist based in Chicago, IL with two working live music acts and a handful of freelance musician/director/producer credits from around the midwest and parts of the east coast. As a solo acoustic artist, I write and perform humanistic music with the goal of creating something familar yet still akin to my personal outlook and livelihood. People have said my finger-style guitar work creates sounds that are echoes of Brasilian jazz, americana folk music, and the technique of jazz guitarist Joe Pass.
Black Umbrella Brigade is our most recent live music operation consisting of a fluctuating 6-8 piece ensemble of both rock, jazz, and classical musicians collaborating their sounds into what I like to call 'art-rock'. Our music is one half 'Chris Zonada on steroids' and the other half can be identified as 'perverted, alcoholic, and intelligent'.
As a freelance instrumentalist and music director, you can catch me doing some work with Straw Dog Theatre Company and their late-night production The Gameshow Show...and Stuff playing hyped up pop tunes amidst a sea of drunken audience members who come up to the stage and try their luck at, well...not embarassing themselves too much. I have also done work with with the award winning Vitalist Theatre Company , Barn Theatre , and Kalamazoo Civic Theatre .
Thank you for stopping by this page, and be sure to check for upcoming shows around Chicagoland!
-CZ
"Chris Zonada's songs are structured around hum-able melodies, classically-influenced yet poppy guitar licks and thoughtful lyrics, plus some fun tunes, like "Pear-Shaped Man... he sculpts his solo songs into new-ish works of art, with added layers complementing what is already "underneath" -John Sloop Biederman www.dailylimerick.net and the Flabby Hoffman Show Caravan
"he has a wonderful voice and great lyrics" - Michael Teach, Chicago Acoustic Underground
