Throughout our relatively short history, several excellent musicians have been so kind to join us on stage. On different occasions, they contributed their energy and time and most importantly their talent to the sound of the Balkanics. Featuring them here is a modest way of expressing our gratitude.
(The names do not appear in any particular order.)

Brad began learning Balkan folkdances in 1976, and a year later he was asked to join Balkanske Igre, a performance group at University of Chicago. Several years later, he began learning darbuka, and as a potter, he also began making the instrument. Brad was a member of BAMCO, a Balkan music group, for 18 years. He also played with a Greek band for 8 years, playing at Greek restaurants, weddings and christenings. Recently, he founded Grup Nazar, which focuses mostly on Turkish Romani (gypsy) music.

Brad teaches darabuka for Balkan, Greek, Turkish and Arabic music. He has taught at Studio Artemis, Rakkasah East, Baltimore Bellypalooza, and M.E.D. Folktours Music and Dance camp. He currently directs the darbuka program at Sahara Dance in Washington, DC, where he gives weekly lessons.

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As a result of the fact that Rudi Sautean is very difficult to get in touch with, we are obliged to write something about him ourselves. Unfortunately we do not know much about the guy’s education or how he became such a wonderful musician. A fact that we do know is that Rudi is a Romanian young fellow who likes to play everything very fast. If you have ever in your life heard Romanian music you will know why that is. His saxophone can produce more notes per second than your brain can process while its sound remains ever so calm and soft.

Rudi is working with a group of fellow Romanians entertaining almost exclusively the Romanian ethnic community around Washington, D.C. He was drawn to the Balkanics largely because our instrumentation which gave him a chance to play some “turbo-folk” licks. He bears a special place in our hearts for helping establish this group and the direction it was heading early on.

Evan heard about our band via Craig’s List and he joined us for one gig. He is a very experienced clarinet player who then was in search of a band to play his original material. As it turned out, that band was not going to be the Balkanics but we sure had a good time playing together. In lieu of more information about Evan we are attaching a photo of the gig he played with us.

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Meg York is from Colorado. She joined us on a single occasion in the winter of 2005 when she was visiting Washington D.C. on a family trip. Her visit coincided with one of our gigs. She found out we were playing and made arrangements to come rehearse with us before the gig. Way to go Meg! And now a word from Meg…

I play clarinet, sax, flute, kaval, ney, some percussion. I lead a handful of small ensembles here in Colorado of various styles.
One is a Bulgarian Wedding style group, Veelah that has been together for about three years, and recently name-changed from “Mojo Balkan Brass Band.” We had started out as a 12 piece brass band and whittled down to a quintet — Dave Willey, accordion, Jesse Manno percussion, Dexter Payne, alto, bari saxes and clarinet, and Jon Erikson, tuba…

Another band is Jurjuna, which plays Turkish Rom material, with a kanunist Kylie Faint, and oud/Kaman/percussion Chakib Hilali, and sometimes other percussionists, which with a violinist Kialin Yong becomes Khalil al Tarab and plays classical Arabic music.

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