Intersections Concert featuring the Slavic Soul Party

You are invited to the Intersections Concert Series featuring Slavic Soul Party: Balkan Brass Beats & Beyond, an exploration of Balkan Folk Music (12.07.23). Join UC San Diego for our Intersections Concert Series at Park & Market in the Guggenheim Theatre hosted by UC San Diego and New York-based violinist Yale Strom, one of the world’s leading ethnographer-artists of klezmer and Romani music and history.

Fiery Balkan brass, throbbing funk grooves, Roma (Gypsy) accordion wizardry, and virtuoso jazz chops make Slavic Soul Party! NYC’s official #1 brass band for BalkanSoul GypsyFunk. SSP! pumps a strong Balkan brass sound through the filter of life in New York’s outer boroughs, making new music out of the unplanned results of immigration, proximity, and globalization. Over the past 15 years the band has released 7 full-length albums, and toured in the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Turkey, and Zimbabwe, from pasha’s palaces to dive bars, Carnegie Hall to Serbian schoolyards, festival stages to prison courtyards. The band’s music has fans on both sides of the Atlantic, and their tunes have been covered by Serbian brass stars, New Orleans funk stalwarts, and legendary street bands. SSP!’s Tuesday night residency in Brooklyn has become a destination for music fans from around the world, and is famous for “delivering a great time.” (New York Times)

In September 2016 Ropeadope Records released Slavic Soul Party! Plays Duke Ellington’s Far East Suite. SSP! re-imagines Duke Ellington’s iconic Far East Suite as an Eastern European brass band discovering an exotic American sound, reversing the “exotic tinge” and reveling in this subtle, funky, and brilliant music. Ellington’s suite (created with Billy Strayhorn) was inspired by a 1963 State Department tour that was cut short – they didn’t make it to the “Far East” – and serves as a perfect foil for SSP!’s blend of East European, Romani, and American sounds. Critics call it “a pretty heavenly match” (TimeOut NY) and say “parts of SSP’s reinterpretation sounds like a Bulgarian wedding, others like a gypsy jazz funeral in New Orleans. And yet… it all sounds like Duke Ellington.” (Wall St Journal).

“Of all the NYC dance bands that draw on Eastern European music, Slavic Soul Party! is the coolest…. SSP! jumps from traditional songs to contemporary covers and originals, connecting the dots of a number of folk schools with surprising finesse… Its members seem acutely aware of the common principle that unites the traditions they borrow from: Music ought to move you.”

—Cristina Black, TimeOut NY

“Anytime musicians study traditions deeply, and then free themselves to follow their own whims, it’s a beautiful thing. But when it comes to the brass band fusion of Slavic Soul Party! that’s just the beginning. With razor-sharp precision, juggernaut force, and a healthy dose of playfulness, these guys start out in overdrive and never let up… Slavic Soul Party! offers a gutpunch to preconceptions about traditional music, world music, pop music, dance music, but I’ll tell you, this is one gutpunch you’ll enjoy.”

—Banning Eyre, NPR’s All Things Considered

More info: The Intersections Concert is a new interdisciplinary event series, presented by UC San Diego Division of Extended Studies, taking place at the multi-tenant, mixed-use business, arts, and educational office building in downtown San Diego’s East Village. Intersections offers new, diverse takes on traditional ideas and forms in a variety of disciplines, from artistic performances to educational lectures will take place at Park & Market’s state-of-the-art Guggenheim Theatre. Hosted by UC San Diego and New York-based violinist Yale Strom, one of the world's leading ethnographer-artists of klezmer and Romani music and history.