About the Orkestar

• Bio

  Wandering the streets of Vancouver with battered and ancient instruments, appearing and disappearing into the night, and dressed in the highest fashions of your great-grandparent’s youth, with a bottle in hand of that delicate concoction which is half of the band’s name, everything they cross paths with becomes a Balkan wedding dance party, with tunes from Serbia, Macedonia, and other mysterious and distant lands, and like this sentence, the music runs on forever… .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

• Members

  With OLIVER SUTTON sighing soulful solos on the sax, KRISTINA ZALITE bashing big beats on the bubanj, ALYSSA SEMCZYSZYN and KEVIN ROWE squeezing sorrow on the accordion, MAREN LISAC, GEOFF COLPITTS, and SKY LAMBOURNE crying out the pain of the past on trumpets, SUSAN GEROFSKY, CORY SWEET and MYTHICAL MAN backing the beat on the baritone horns, MICHAEL LOUW rolling rhythms of Eastern lands on the darabuka and snare, and DEIRDRA KIAI booming out the bottom end on the sousaphone, and everyone taking a turn at singing songs of suffering and joy. Frequent guest musicians and collaborations with the LUCITERRA dancers add their own magic to the mix… …… The ever-growing list of wonderful people who have performed with our band: Yves Guihur, Gavin Root, Paul Hendriks, Wayne Mercier, Jen Kat, Mike Soret, Laura Albert, Heidi Ravenel, Vern Clare, Candace Curlypaws, Adam Kiidumae, Simon Brock, Nola Semczyszyn, Meghan Anderson, Veronica Maynard, Brad Muirhead, Max Pashm, Dream Science Circus, Melissa Aston, Leslie, Jack Garton, Chelsea Walton, Matt Rodgers, and ongoing regular guests Vladan Vidakovic and  AJ Andrien!

• Influences

  Bakija Bakic, Slobodan Salijevic, Demiran Cerimovic, Kocani Orkestar, Ekrem Sajdic, Goran Bregovic, Ferus Mustafov, Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar, Emir Kusterica, Orkestar Zirkonium, Yuri Yunakov, Black Bear Combo, Fanfare Ciocarlia, , Le8lie, Karandila, Mostar Sevdah Reunion, the music of the Guca Festival in Serbia, the music you want at your wedding!

• Sounds Like

  Take your normal brass marching band, embalm them in plum brandy, ship them to a Roma village in Serbia for a year, force them to watch every Emir Kusterica film 100 times, bring them back to Vancouver and set them loose on an underground rave party.

• After one of our Slivovica Social Club nights, a guest left us the message that, “Everybody had a great time last night. It was absolutely one of the nights to remember for the rest of our lives”. ~Vesna Vidic …… …..