The Berkeley Balkan Bacchanal presents
Lars & In Charge (10 pm)
Andrew Cohen/Lulu Starr Duo (8 pm)
Saturday, May 18, 2024
The Starry Plough Pub
3101 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA
$20 general/$15 students. Show starts at 8 pm. Doors open at 7 pm.
All ages before 10 pm. 21+ after 10 pm when kitchen closes. Food, beer and wine available from the bar.
LARS AND IN CHARGE plays high-energy dance music from the Balkans and Near East. Lars Tergis leads the charge on violin with driving, gritty interpretations of Turkish Roman and Greek dance tunes, and original compositions.Gregory Masaki Jenkins brings his vast experience and soulful clarinet playing and vocals to the mix. Chris Reid adds a touch of ‘West’ with percussive chordal accompaniment on steel-string guitar. Joe Rosato Jr. fills out the low end on upright bass while Sean Tergis and Faisal Zedan keep the beat popping on derbekki, riqq and davul.
Andrew Cohen
Andrew Cohen is on a mission with the accordion. After experiencing an existential crisis common among classically trained musicians, he decided to pick up the instrument and hasn’t looked back. Andrew performed constantly for years as part of the rich Bay Area Balkan music scene, learning traditional folk music from Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, and Turkey. After a time, Romanian Gypsy music, Muzica Lautareasca caught his attention. In 2019, after recording his album Californeasca featuring professional Romanian vocalist Ionela Guzic, Andrew was invited to study in Romania with master accordionist Ionica Minune, living for months with him, his wife, and their ten dogs in the village of Stefanestii-de-Jos. To date, Andrew is the first and only American musician to be given the opportunity to study with Ionica who is one of the national figures of Romania, and the experience has inspired him to bring this virtuosic and little-known music to an audience here in the US. Andrew has performed at many venues around California and the western US, and at festivals including Outside Lands and Symbiosis festival.
Andrew has also studied for years with master musician Sergiu Popa, and has degrees in Music Education and Instrumental Performance from the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut. He currently runs a music school in San Francisco named Village Music and lives in Bolinas, California.
andrewsaccordion.com
Lulu Starr
Hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area in California, Lulu was born into a family of classical and jazz musicians with French, Romanian and Moldovan roots. She started learning classical violin from her father at the age of six. Eventually choosing not to pursue a career in classical music, she stopped playing violin when she was ten years old. In 2005, Lulu graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara with a BA in Fine Arts and French Literature. After finishing university, not having played violin for twelve years, she began to play Eastern European and Balkan folk music, traditional jazz, blues and country music on the streets of New Orleans. From then on, she continued as a traveling street performer. She played with numerous groups across the globe such as Tuba Skinny, Petrojvic Blasting Company, California Feetwarmers, Cyclown Circus, G-String Orchestra, Magnolia Beacon and Lovaskocsi Banda. Nowadays, Lulu is based in Budapest, Hungary, where she is an active performer, recording artist and violin teacher. Since 2008 she has been studying at length with folk musicians in Romania, Hungary and Moldova. She frequently travels to Romania where she has been learning from some of the finest living Roma musicians, including violinists Gheorghe Anghel “Caliu” from the Taraf de Haïdouks, Marcel Râmba, Kodoba Florin, and Varga István “Kiscsipás”. Lulu leads and manages her band Taraf de Akácfa in Budapest, which she founded in 2014 with accordionist Johannes Olsson.
Berkeley Balkan Bacchanal 