Ashkenaz's Annual New Years Balkan Folkdance Party featuring Fanfare Zambaleta, True Life Trio and Ensemble Meraklii.
Cover $25; ticket price includes a free drink of champagne at midnight. Doors open at 7:30pm
Ashkenaz Music And Dance Community Center
1317 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley
510.525.5054 - tickets available soon at ashkenaz.com
Ring in 2020 with FANFARE ZAMBALETA! - a 10 piece Balkan brass band specializing in high spirits music of the Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Greek and Balkan Romani people. Fanfare Zambaleta means crazy street party-- with brass! Getting their start in 2012 as an offshoot of the Zambaleta Music and Dance school in SF, this band has been rocking clubs, weddings, and dance halls throughout the west coast ever since! Combining a love of the classic brass bands of the past with the modern sounds coming out of the Balkans, Fanfare Zambaleta brings an irresistible blend of old and new to get you dancing! They've learned from some of the greats including Demiran Ćerimović, Džambo Aguševi Orkestar and Nizo Alimov (of Kočani Orkestar) and are now also embarking on a new journey to write original tunes inspired by their deep love of the music. The band is directed by Gregory Masaki Jenkins (alto sax) and features Joey Friedman (alto sax), Peter Bonos, Max Miller-Loran and Andrew Snyder (trumpets), Rachel MacFarlane, Adam Waite and Claire Haas (mid horns), Evan Stuart (sousaphone) and Ivan Velev (percussion). They released their debut EP in 2014 and will head into the studio again in early 2020.
ENSEMBLE MERAKLII means “the ones who love to party!” You bring the dance, the Meraklii will bring Balkan and Romani music! Directed by master performer Rumen Sali Shopov (vocals, tupan) Ensemble Meraklii features Litka Ilieva (vocals), David Solnit (clarinet), Mike Margulis (trumpet), Hector Bezanis (gaida), Sharon Grodin (accordion), Balder ten Cate (accordion), Evan Stuart (bass)
Opening the night at 8 pm, TRUE LIFE TRIO sings riveting vocal harmonies from Eastern Europe, the Americas, and beyond, and features veteran vocalists from Bay Area supergroups Kitka and Brass Menažeri. This innovative trio explores the creative possibilities of cross-fertilization of different traditions with unlikely timbres connecting Bulgaria to the Bayou. Since its inception in 2010, True Life Trio has enchanted audiences all across the West. Their concerts take audiences on a borderless journey through the villages of Ukraine, the mountains of Bulgaria and Louisiana’s Cajun country, demonstrating the beauty, power and diversity of vocally driven folk music from Eastern Europe and North America. TLT honors these traditions while adding their own unique spin via innovative arrangements and folk-inspired compositions. The trio’s fiery and supple vocals bridge musical worlds and deliver them right to the listeners’ ears. Featuring the powerful vocal talents of three dynamic performers whose musical collaboration was forged in Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble, this Bay Area–based trio delves deep into a vast array of folk music that lends itself to three-part vocal harmony, massaging and expanding the boundaries of these traditional styles. They will be joined by violinist Joe Finn and bassist Stu Brotman.
"New Year’s Eve at Ashkenaz is traditionally a night of Balkan music and dance hosted by Edessa, in honor of the late Ashkenaz founder David Nadel and the music he first featured at his world dance club. It has been known to go into the wee hours."