Guy Klucevsek, well known accordionist/composer recently performed a solo concert on April 30th at Sarah Lawrence College.
On May 3rd, he performed at Barbes in Brooklyn with Tod Reynolds, violinist. They played homages to Satie, Piazzolla, Kepa Junkera, Lou Harrison/John Cage; the score to “Ruth Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” composed for the eponymous dance/theatre piece by Lionel Popkin which premiered and toured in March; you may catch them “Riding the Wild Tangaroo”, “Waltzing at the Edge of Dawn”, all the while “Teetering on the Verge of Normalcy.”
Guy Klucevsek is one of the world’s most versatile and highly-respected accordionists. He has performed and/or recorded with Laurie Anderson, Bang On a Can, Alan Bern, Brave Combo, Anthony Braxton, Anthony Coleman, Dave Douglas, Fred Frith, Bill Frisell, Rahim Alhaj, Phillip Johnston, Kepa Junkera, the Kronos Quartet, Natalie Merchant, Present Music, Relâche, and John Zorn.
A composer, accordion virtuoso, and improvisor, he has been a major contributor to the accordion renaissance of the last 25 years. His music reverberates with sounds of the ballroom, the beer garden and the concert hall, fusing elements of regional accordion styles with jazz and avant-garde music.
For more than 30 years, his composer focus has been on collaborations with artists from other media, including choreographers David Dorfman, Maureen Fleming, Victoria Marks, Lionel Popkin, and Claire Porter; in theatre projects with Ping Chong and Company, The Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, and Laurie McCants; and film directors Stefan Schwietert, Pola Rapaport, and Federico Bondi.
He and Dan Hurlin were jointly awarded a BESSIE for their object-theatre piece, “The Heart of the Andes.” Klucevsek’s 1987 project, Polka From the Fringe, a collection of commissioned “polkas” by Fred Frith, Elliott Sharp, Mary Ellen Childs, Aaron Jay Kernis, Bobby Previte, Carl Finch, et. al., premiered at New Music America ’87 in Philadelphia, was presented on the 1988 BAM Next Wave Festival, and has toured around the world. The recordings of the project, on the Japanese eva label, were chosen as “best recordings 1992” on WNYC-FM’s “New Sounds” program by host John Schaefer. Out-of-print for the last 20 years, these landmark recordings have recently been reissued by the intrepid indie label, Starkland.
In 1996, he founded the accordion quintet, Accordion Tribe, with Maria Kalaniemi from Finland, Lars Hollmer from Sweden, Otto Lechner from Austria, and Bratko Bibic from Slovenia. Between ’96 and 2009, the band produced three albums of their music for the German label, Intuition, and toured extensively throughout Europe. Stefan Schwietert’s documentary film about the group, Accordion Tribe – Music Travels, premiered in January 2004 in Zürich, where it had a long theatrical run, and was awarded the Swiss Film Prize for Best Documentary Film.
Klucevsek’s performances include Ten Days on the Island (Tasmania), the Adelaide Festival, the Berlin Jazz Festival, Lincoln Center, Spoleto Festival/USA, BAM Next Wave Festival, international accordion festivals in Vienna, Cotati (CA), and San Antonio, and the children’s television show “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
He has released over 20 recordings as soloist/leader on Tzadik, Winter & Winter, Innova, Starkland, Review, Intuition, CRI, and XI. He can also be heard on John Williams’s orchestral scores for the Steven Spielberg films, “The Terminal,” “Munich,” “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” and “The Adventures of Tin-Tin,” and on A. R. Rahman’s score for “People Like Us.” He is the recipient of a 2010 United States Artists Collins Fellowship.
Todd Reynolds, violinist, composer, educator and technologist is known as one of the founding fathers of the hybrid-musician movement and one of the most active and versatile proponents of what he calls ‘present music’. The violinist of choice for Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, Bang on a Can, and founder of the string quartet known as ETHEL, his compositional and performance style is a hybrid of old and new technology, multi-disciplinary aesthetic and pan-genre composition and improvisation.
Reynolds’ music has been called “a charming, multi-mood extravaganza, playful like Milhaud, but hard-edged like Hendrix” (Strings Magazine), and his countless premieres and performances of everything from classical music to Jazz to Rock‘n’Roll seem to redefine the concert hall and underground club as undeniably and unavoidably intertwined. His double CD set, Outerborough, on Innova Recordings, features InSide, a collection of his own music, paired with OutSide, music written by a veritable who’s who of contemporary composers.
Guy will present his first concert in the Ukraine on May 24 in Kiev, Ukraine where he will play a solo concert as the opening night event of the Book Arsenal Festival. From 21st May to 1st June 2013, the national art and culture museum complex Mystetskyi Arsenal will present III International Arsenal Book Festival, the largest book fair in Ukraine that combines literature and art.
With the Book Arsenal project the museum complex is trying to popularise reading, establish cross-collaborative links between art and literature and support intellectual and art publications. Moreover, the book festival is trying to encourage the dialogue between readers and the publishing industry about the nature of contemporary literature.
Guy will be touring as a soloist in Europe in August, 2013. Included will be Würzburg, Aug. 11, Ludwigshafen, Aug. 15, and the Alpentöne Festival, Aug. 16. Artists & Partners, Vienna, is building a European tour around these dates. If an interested festival or concert organizer, please contact Jakob Lajta: lajta@martschin.com. For fans, please check back for updates on the tour as it develops.
For further information: gklucevsek@si.rr.com
