Tsigunz Fanfara Avantura: a Balkan brass orchestra and “Turbo Balkan Groove”

Essential for lovers of Balkan madness! TSIGUNZ FANFARA AVANTURA did not appear at last year's legendary brass orchestra festival in Guča, Serbia, by accident. Participating in Guča is the greatest honour for any orchestra worldwide.

TSIGUNZ FANFARA AVANTURA is a seven-headed monster serving up high-calorie bombs in a trance-psychedelic-Balkan-tutti-frutti style. Its members mainly come from alternative music, improvisation and jazz. For them, the brass-band format, largely forgotten in recent years, became a springboard for their own original musical vision: a brazen confrontation between traditional folk melodies and approaches usually reserved for club music, electronica or contemporary jazz, achieved using only hands, feet and wind instruments, underpinned by a powerful rhythm section.

The band came together by chance in 2010. By 2011, they were accompanying Kayah in concerts featuring Goran Bregovic’s songs; in 2012, they reached the podium at Polish Radio’s Nowa Tradycja festival; and in 2013, they performed at the legendary brass band festival in Guča, Serbia, and Hungary’s Sziget Festival. They have toured Portugal, France, Russia, the Czech Republic, Moldova, Ukraine and Germany. The “Cygansi” have also appeared at Top Trendy, Malta, Warszawa Singera and Ethno Port, played TVP2’s New Year’s Eve celebrations, the Stock Exchange and Dolina Charlotty, proved themselves at many Polish weddings and even a Corpus Christi procession! Their live album “Tsigunz Live at Meskalina” came out in 2012, followed in September 2014 by the eagerly awaited Turbo Balkan Groove!! on Gusstaff Records.