MIKE MARSHALL - GER MANDOLIN
Mike Marshall is one of the world’s most accomplished and versatile string instrumentalists in American today. A master on mandolin, guitar, mandocello and violin, he has created some of the most adventurous instrumental music for over 35 years. His concert tours that have taken him around the globe.

Whether playing bluegrass with Edgar Meyer, Bela Fleck or Chris Thile, Brazilian choro music with Hamilton de Holanda or Baroque classical with German mandolinist Caterina Lichenberg, Mike is able to swing gracefully between all of these musical styles with a unique blend of virtuosity, depth and musical integrity that is rare in the cross cultural musical world of today.

His most recent CD is called ‘Big Trio’ with two of the young lions of instrumental music in American, Alex Hargreaves (violin) and Paul Kowert (bass).

“All three players in this group are virtuosos… showing no limitations. This is high caliber music from musicians at their peak.”
-Mandolin Magazine.

To be release in early 2010 is a project with German classical mandolin virtuoso Caterina Lichtenberg. She is the Professor of mandolin at the Music Conservatory in Cologne, Germany. The two have been touring throughout Europe and the U.S since 2008.

A look at Mike’s calendar and you will find him on concert tours with everyone from the Swedish group Vasen, the Grammy winning jazz ensemble The Turtle Island String Quartet or with his progressive bluegrass group Psychograss with Darol Anger, Tony Trischka, Todd Phillips and Davig Grier.

Mike grew up in Central Florida, where he cut his teeth on traditional American music. His interest in many musicals styles however eventually led him to the San Francisco Bay Area to join the original David Grisman Quintet in 1978 at age 19. This band toured and recorded with the legendary jazz violinist Stephan Grappelli, Mark O’Connor and guitarist Tony Rice. They performed on the Johnny Carson Show that same year and toured Europe and Japan and helped set a new standard for American stringband music.

Since then, Mike has continued pushing the boundaries of acoustic music and can be heard on hundreds of recordings as a composer, featured artist, sideman and producer.

During the 1980s, Mike recorded for the Windham Hill label with his group The Montreux Band and also formed the classical ensemble, The Modern Mandolin Quartet. This group redefined the mandolin family in a classical music setting with many newly created works for this format and recorded 4 CDs during it’s tenure.

In 1995, Mike began his love affair with the music of Brazil. After a visit there, he embarked on an in-depth study of the roots of Brazilian popular music, Choro. This obsession has led to recordings and concerts with some of Brazil’s finest musicians, including Hamilton de Holanda, Danilo Brito, Jovino Santos Neto and Hermeto Pascoal. His group Choro Famoso has helped spearhead a wave in the U.S. for this infectious style. In 1999 Mike also created his own label, Adventure Music which has released over 30 CDs to date of the music of Brazil.

Mike’s association with bassist Edgar Meyer led to 2 CDs for the Sony Classical label. One with long time friend Bela Fleck the other with violinist Joshua Bell and mandolinist Sam Bush, Each were nominated for GRAMMY awards and in 1999 the group played on the Grammy award TV show.

Mike has always had an interest in helping young artists and has over 2 dozen CD productions to his credit including The Hot Buttered Rum Band, Cadillac Sky, Laurie Lewis, Alison Brown, Tony Furtado and George Brooks.

As he does so engagingly in his music, Mike also applies his artistic aesthetic to his principal hobby: cooking. Already known as one of the best chefs amongst his musical pals, he has been trading guitar lessons for cooking lessons with Michael Peternell: head chef at Berkeley’s famed Chez Panise Restaurant. He’s also been spotted there slicing carrots and peeling onions ‘back stage’!

As a teacher, Mike founded a one week mandolin camp for in 2002 with his old pal David Grisman. The Mandolin Symposium takes place the last week of June at U.C. Santa Cruz with over 150 mandolinists and 10 of the greatest players/teachers in the world.

If you hear mandolin on NPR’s ‘Car Talk’ radio show opening music, that’s Mike along with Earl Scruggs, David Grisman and Tony Rice. In addition Mike composed and recorded the theme music for the San Francisco based radio program ‘Forum’ heard daily on KQED radio.


NOAH BENDIX-BALGLEY
Noah Bendix-Balgley has thrilled and moved audiences around the world with his violin performances. Laureate of the 2009 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, he also won 3rd prize and a special prize for creativity at the 2008 Long-Thibaud International Competition in Paris. He was awarded 1st Prize and a special prize for best Bach interpretation at the 14th International Violin Competition “Andrea Postacchini” in Fermo, Italy. Noah has appeared as a soloist with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris), the Orchestre National de Belgique (Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels), the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie (Belgium), the Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana (Italy), the Orchester Jakobsplatz Munich, and the Asheville Symphony (USA). He performed the premiere of a rediscovered Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra by Carl Stamitz at the German Viola Congress in Muenster, Germany. He has performed in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Iceland, China, Switzerland, Great Britain, Canada and the United States.

Noah is a passionate and experienced chamber musician. In 2008, he was invited  to participate in Chamber Music Connects the World, a program of the Kronberg Academy. In Kronberg, he worked and performed with Gidon Kremer, Yuri Bashmet, Gary Hoffman and Lynn Harrell. Noah is the first violinist of the Athlos String Quartet, which won a special prize at the 2009 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Competition in Berlin and is supported by the Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Foundation. Noah has performed chamber music with artists such as Ana Chumachenco, Wen-Sinn Yang, Hariolf Schlichtig, Ingolf Turban and Estzer Haffner.

Noah earned his postgraduate Meisterklasse diploma for violin in 2008 from Hochschule für Musik und Theater Munich, where he studied with Professor Christoph Poppen. In 2006, he received a Bachelor of Music degree with highest distinction from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he was a student of Professor Mauricio Fuks and also a Wells Scholar. He has performed in solo masterclasses for Gidon Kremer, Ida Haendel, Zakhar Bron, Joseph Silverstein, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Gyorgy Pauk, and Pamela Frank. He attended the Perlman Chamber Music Workshop, the Verbier Academy, the Sarasota Music Festival, the New York String Orchestra Seminar, and London Masterclasses. He has been coached by Itzhak Perlman, Janos Starker, Donald Weilerstein, and Jaime Laredo.

Born in Asheville, North Carolina in 1984, Noah began playing violin at age 4. At age 9, he played for Lord Yehudi Menuhin in Switzerland. From 1995 to 1997, Noah studied violin with Anne Crowden while attending The Crowden School in Berkeley, California. There he performed the premiere of Recitative and Freilekhs, a piece for violin and chamber orchestra written for him by Arkadi Serper. Noah was also featured as a soloist on the 1997 Crowden School tour of England and Scotland.

In his spare time, Noah plays klezmer music and composes. He has played with world-renowned klezmer groups such as Brave Old World, and has taught klezmer violin at workshops in Europe and in the United States.


DAVID BUCHBINDER'S ODESSA/HAVANA
A new recording is in the works as you read this. Over the course of the next several months, Odessa/Havana will be returning to the recording studio to create the follow-up to their self-titled, award-winning debut. The album will be produced by Roberto Occhipinti and recorded and mixed by John "Beetle" Bailey at his studio The Drive Shed. A continuation of the musical exploration witnessed on their groundbreaking first album, the new CD (tentatively titled "Grenada") will featured an expanded orchestration, a slightly modified line-up and - for the first time ever - vocals. We are very excited about the new material and urge you to stay tuned for more developments as they happen. The album will be released this fall on John Zorn’s Tzadik label.

Award-winning trumpeter and composer David Buchbinder teams up with JUNO-winning pianist and composer Hilario Durán and a crew of Canada’s top jazz and world musicians to present this exciting Jewish-Cuban fusion. Working with award-winning producer (and band member) Roberto Occhipinti, the ensemble has captured the fresh, fiery and innovative sound that ignited audiences at Lula World 2007 and their sold-out debut performance at the Ashkenaz Festival 2006. The recording was released November, 2007 on Tzadik.

Odessa/Havana is a high-powered collision of two great musical styles predated but not predicted by the Jewish-fuelled, American Mambo craze of the 1950s. Working from the roots of each tradition and finding many areas of sonic commonality, Buchbinder and Durán have crafted a sound that is unique and compelling, challenging listeners comfortable genre preconceptions. This is as about as far from Fiddler on the Roof meets Desi Arnaz as you can get!

While the cities and cultures of Odessa and Havana might seem many miles apart, their musical associations are many-faceted, multi-layered and rich indeed, rooted in their common ancestry on the Iberian peninsula and sharing Arabic, Roma (Gypsy), Sephardic and North African forebears. The two musics already share haunting minor modalities, improvisatory flourishes, a strong rhythmic drive and deeply spiritual underpinnings. Buchbinder and Durán’s compositions explore these commonalities as they break new ground, creating a truly unprecedented sound.

Odessa/Havana is also emblematic of what might be termed post-multicultural creation, something that is increasingly happening in Canada’s major urban centres as mature musicians from diverse musical and cultural backgrounds meet, collaborate and create new sounds that transcend countries and cultures of origin. It is no coincidence that Odessa/Havana was born in the musical ferment of downtown Toronto, where there is so much natural experimentation occurring, and where musicians and creators from many different backgrounds are coming together in an a staggering array of projects.

The musicians of Odessa/Havana, on recording and in performance, truly represent the cream of the crop in Canada and beyond. This is an ensemble of incredible, award-winning instrumentalists, bandleaders, producers and educators whose performing, producing and compositional credits read like a Who’s Who of the international world jazz and pop scene.