LINCOLN CENTER

David Geffen Hall
Goran Bregović - Wedding and Funeral Orchestra

We ran into a Balkan Buzz Saw!  The crowd, adults and all, became frenzied.  And they did it in Geffen Hall where we hear the New York Philharmonic.  It was very ethnic and emotional for the adults there.

Listen! 

“Bregović is both the catalyst and ringmaster for a musical spectacle unlike anything else on North American stages. ”

—San Francisco Chronicle

For two nights only, David Geffen Hall will reverberate with the ecstatic energy of an Eastern European brass band, accented with soulful invocations and new world rhythms. Bregović, the most famous rock star of the former Yugoslavia, gained international renown for his colorful scores to the award-winning movies of Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica.

Performing as a group since 1998, the Wedding and Funeral Orchestra creates a party atmosphere wherever it goes, bringing together Gypsy brass players, Bulgarian vocalists, and conservatory-trained string players. While the music has a serious side—Bregović has said that it arises from “a terrible frontier” where Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Gypsies have coexisted fitfully for centuries—an infectious joy trumps any underlying sorrow.

About Goran Bregovic ́

Making his New York debut at Lincoln Center Festival in 2006, Goran Bregović returned to the festival two years later for two more sold-out concerts. Through his songs and performances, the music of the Balkans has reached a wider audience, and he has become well-known for his collaborations with other performers as well as for being an eloquent spokesman for the Gypsy culture of Eastern Europe. His Wedding and Funeral Orchestra—which, for nearly two decades, has roamed every continent on an unending tour totaling some 1,500 shows to date—performs concerts which mix Gypsy musicians on wind instruments with percussion, Bulgarian polyphonies, and a choir of male voices.

Born in Sarajevo, Bregović studied violin at a music conservatory, but quit at age 16 to form the rock group White Button (Bijelo Dugme), which toured for 15 years and became a household name throughout the Balkans until its final recording in 1989.