ABOUT ME

I was born in 1959 in the small village of Dumbrăvița, in the Carpathian region of Transylvania. My musical talent showed itself very early. I studied at the music high school in Brașov, then continued my classical education at the Music Academy in Bucharest.

During those years, I began to fall in love with the spontaneity and freedom of jazz. Together with pianist Mircea Tiberian and saxophonist Dan Mândrilă, I founded the band Opus 4. In the 1980s, the group quickly became one of the most popular jazz bands in Romania.

After many concerts across the country and numerous invitations abroad, I decided to emigrate to the West in 1989. I took part in important jazz festivals in East Berlin and Warsaw and had the chance to perform in Vienna with outstanding international musicians such as Leo Wright, Idris Muhammad, Jim Pepper, Harry Sokal, and Christian Muthspiel.

In 1992, I released my first CD in the West, titled “Black Sea”. Since then, I have continued to publish albums and musical projects, collaborating with many renowned American musicians, including Graham Haynes, Lonnie Plaxico, Ed Schuller, Peter Perfido, and pianist Mal Waldron.

A very important artistic partnership in my life was with saxophonist Nicolae Simion, whose sensitivity, flexibility, and deep ethnic roots I greatly admired. Our collaboration led to the duo album “The Big Rochade” and many live performances, especially in the late 1990s. I was also fortunate to work closely with the great Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stańko, with whom I recorded several remarkable sessions.

American composer and conductor Gunther Schuller showed strong interest in my work and released some of my recordings under his GM label. I was also invited to take part as a soloist in his project dedicated to the music of Jim Pepper.

Alongside jazz, I have always been active as a composer of contemporary music. In 1995, I received the Körner Prize from the Austrian Ministry of Culture for commissioned works that included brass ensembles and saxophone formations. One of my major works, “Canzonieri Sacrale”, was completed in 1998. It combines sacred chants from different cultures with jazz and orchestral music and was premiered at Vienna’s oldest church, St. Ruprecht’s. Later, an expanded version was presented at the ORF Radio Kulturhaus and performed in Brașov in 2001.

In the late 1990s, my work increasingly brought me to Germany, where I finally settled in 1997. In the following years, I focused on a new jazz project inspired by Balkan music, reconnecting consciously with the musical roots of my homeland. One of the results of this journey is the project “Lullabies”.