Martin Lubenov
MARTIN LUBENOV
Sofia Mahala - Balkan Grooves
He is the new star shining on Vienna’s accordion sky. At the age of only 30 years, Martin Lubenov is already among the top Balkan accordionists. With breathtaking virtuosity and playful elegance he combines Balkan Roma music with shades of swing, modern jazz, tango nuevo, salsa and musette and, doing so, pays honour to it like Astor Piazzolla did to tango and Richard Galliano did to musette.
The Martin Lubenov Orkestar (MLO), founded in 2003, is recruited from renowned Bulgarian Roma musicians and representatives of the Vienna balkan jazz scene. With Lubenov the Roma songs’ unmistakable soul never topples over to kitsch and complaisance – using weird arrangements full of experimental jazzlines, powerful brass sounds, marrying salsa to Balkan brass in an unpretentious way, with Lubenov’s frisky tango and gypsy-swing quotations as well as Alexander Stojic's and Stefan Thaler's brilliant guitar- and bass-backings and soli. Subtly light-footed and nevertheless melancholic, definitely very southern music – Martin Lubenov and his Orkestar have created something quite impossible: a completely new hybrid, which will carry away intellectuals, jazz fans, world-music-afficionados as well as popfreaks.
Martin Lubenov CD's
