Global jazz meets exotic chamber music

Referencing the exotica of composers ranging from Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich to George Gershwin, Martin Denny, and John Adams, The Orchestrotica—as a vibraphone quintet—presents an original collection of untraditional jazz, classical arrangements, and world music with flavors from Asia, the Middle East, the Balkans, and Latin America. Led by multi-percussionist, vibraphonist and composer Brian O’Neill, the group also features bass flute/woodwinds (Geni Skendo), percussion (Shane Shanahan), oud/tanbur (Tev Stevig), and acoustic bass (Jason avis). The quartet focuses on original music written by O'Neill (“a first-rate composer”–Huffington Post) that is highly influenced by his fifteen-year career as a multi-percussionist in symphony orchestras, jazz groups, and world music ensembles leading AllAboutJazz to say, "...If John Zorn is an exotica Picasso, O'Neill is his Georges-Braque counterpart in cubism’s transposition to music.”

In June 2011, they released their debut CD as a quartet, Third River Rangoon, which was described the Boston Herald as"...serious jazz and chamber-music writing..." and cited as one of the Huffington Post’s Top 10 Albums for 2011.

“...borrowing themes from Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, O’Neill has created his own rigorous classical-jazz hybrid. Are you listening, Keith Lockhart? ...” –The Boston Phoenix

Brian O'Neill

Brian O'Neill is a versatile multi-percussionist and composer based in New York City and Boston. A "percussion master and musical polymath" (Boston Phoenix), he has performed in a variety of contexts including opera and classical (South Florida Symphony, Boston Festival Orchestra, Arizona Opera Ring Cycle Orchestra, Flagstaff Symphony), as a concert soloist (Sun City Symphony), pop music (Kristin Chenoweth, Donna Summer, Archie Bell, the Del-Larks), and jazz (Bert Seager, Peter Erskine, Wallace Roney, Ernie Watts). Currently, he is the percussionist with balkan-klezmer rockers The Klezwoods, Bert Seager's new quartet "The Why", the Boston-based sephardic trio Aljashu, and he also performs as pianist/occasional guitarist with the contemporary chamber quartet, CORDIS. He also is a regular guest artist with the hit Mexo-Americana band, David Wax Museum. Brian's musical adventures have brought him to the Montreal Jazz Festival, The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall and beyond with a variety of ensembles. In addition to being a sideman, he also leads Boston's "2012 Best World Music Act" (Boston Phoenix), Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica, which is comprised of two unique ensembles: a vibraphone quartet performing global jazz and exotic chamber music, and the world's only big band performing Brian's transcriptions of the lost music of Juan Garcia Esquivel–the late 1950s Mexican arranger of space-age pop music. In 2010, his Exotica for Modern Living recording series launched with an homage to Esquivel that received "four stars" from the Sunday Times London and that CD, along with a subsequent CD by the quartet in 2011, each made the Huffington Post's Top 10 CDs for 2011. AllAboutJazz says, "O'Neill may be, in the long run, a better exoticist than [John] Zorn." Keep up with Brian in English, Spanish or Portuguese, and learn about his addiction to global tambourine techniques at crashandboom.com or on Twitter (@orchestrotica).