Fanfare Ciocarlia
The fastest gypsy brass band comes to introduce their first live album and collection "best of gypsy brass".
Over the course of the decades they have lost their shine and gained their own patina, they have countless scars and dents and they are made of brass - the instruments belonging to the high-speed brass music masters of FANFARE CIOCÂRLIA. They are loved and mistreated. More than 100 concerts per year, countless flights, battered bass tuba funnels, dozens of valves re-soldered, funnels straightened, valves made to work with rubber bands.
Following the release of “Gili Garabdi” in spring 2005, which promptly landed at number 1 in the WMCE Top 10, FANFARE CIOCARLIA decided to invite the great Roma voices to join them in the studio to work together with them on their 5th studio album. They meet SABAN BAJRAMOVIC from Serbia, ESMA REDZEPOVA from Macedonia, JONY ILIEV from Bulgaria, LIJLJANA BUTTLER from Bosnia, FLORENTINA SANDU and DAN ARMEANCA from Romania, MITSOU from Hungary and KALOOME - Gitanos from Perpignan from France. On this record, accompanied by some of Europe's finest singers, Romania’s brass dervishes share tales of life, love and loss. “Queens and Kings” celebrates unity in diversity while standing as a testament to the vision of Ioan Ivancea, Fanfare Ciocarlia’s clarinet-playing patriarch, who died in October 2006. To Ioan then, a true Gypsy King, this album is dedicated.
The art of playing music has been handed down from generation to generation since time immemorial. There is no sheet music. The instruments, bearing the marks of the previous decades, have lost their shine and gained their own patina. On them FANFARE CIOCÂRLIA manage to set off a musical firework display, with an unbelievable talent for intricate rhythms and dizzy tempos. Traditional dances from Romania and rhythms from Turkey, Bulgaria and Macedonia are played on horns, trumpets, clarinets and timpani. For each different moment in life there is an appropriate piece: geamparale, sîrba, hora, and if the mood requires, a racy ruseasca at the end.
Meanwhile the stars of Gypsy Brass toured almost every country and continent one can think of and even were invited to throw Danny Elfman’s 50’s birthday party in musical terms down in Hollywood ……
The party FANFARE CIOCÂRLIA kicks off just after entering the stage and which drives everyone sheer mad was also put on celluloid. Director Ralf Marschalleck, Berlin, visualized the two exciting but so different worlds the musicians of the Gypsy Brass Band FANFARE CIOCÂRLIA live in: the tiny Gypsy village Zece Prajini in Romania and their life on the big concert stages abroad. The full length road movie “iag bari – brass on fire” for cinema release features the musicians’ life which is based on an old tradition, a tradition which was discovered by an international fan community to assuage a hunger for a Balkan atmosphere and unleashing brass music.
Furthermore the German film director Fatih Akin fit the musicians in several scenes of his acclaimed movie “head on”, which won the Golden Bear at the International Filmfestival in Berlin 2004.
Music by FANFARE CIOCARLIA was represented again in the cinemas all around the world in 2006 - their cover version of "Born To Be Wild" makes part of the soundtrack of "BORAT".
In 2007 the band released its fifth album Quenns and Kings. For this album Fanfare Ciocărlia travelled throughout Europe to record with musicians from the continent's extended Romany community. The band is now coming to Prague to introduce its first live album and „best of“ collection.
