MOZAIK
Touring Australia in 2006
Andy
Irvine Website
ANDY
IRVINE, January 2002: The Big Idea
MOZAIK. I think it was somewhere between Deniliquin and Jerilderie
in New South Wales as I drove along on a beautiful December
morning that the ''great idea'' came to me. ''Get a bunch
of your favourite musicians together and do a tour of this
beautiful country'' said the Muse. I pondered for not very
long before emailing the suspects I had in mind. To my delight
they were all into it and thus emerged ''Mozaik''-a band to
die for…
DONAL LUNNY needs very little introduction
to those who have followed the history of Irish Traditional
Music for the last 30 years. One of the most innovative musicians
that Ireland has ever produced and a close friend of mine
since our early collaborations even before our Planxty days.
Donal is not only a great musician in his own right but the
perfect man to have in a band. As an arranger, he 'hears'
the band. Slots each musician into it and creates a band out
of the various talents that make it up. He is the 'glue'.
When he agreed to join, I knew we were on a winner!
I wanted this band to have a variety of strings
to its bow and having toured the USA with ''Andy Irvine's
East Wind Trio'' in 1996 I wanted to have NIKOLA PAROV.
I had first met Nikola in Budapest about twenty years ago
when he was playing with his Balkan band, ''Zsaratnok''. Nikola
is very special. The instrument that he cannot play has not
yet been invented! In The East Wind Trio he had played not
only the main Bulgarian instruments-gadulka (a bowed rebec
type instrument), gajda (the Bulgarian bagpipes) and kaval
(the Bulgarian end blown flute) but also guitar, bodhrán
and clarinet. All with equal brilliance. I knew that his long
stint in America with Riverdance was about to come to an end
and, to my delight, he was available. The other member of
the East Wind trio was my old friend RENS VAN DER ZALM
from Holland. I met Rens in Slovenia back in 1969 when he
was fresh out of school and we were both on the road. I have
played with Rens for years since then and could not imagine
this band without him. Rens is a very inventive musician playing
guitar, mandolin and fiddle. He also plays many other instruments
like accordion, tin whistle, bass guitar and you name it!
Then there is BRUCE MOLSKY. (www.brucemolsky.com)
The first time I ever heard Bruce was at a party in his house
when he lived in Atlanta, Georgia. He had sung ''I truly understand''
accompanying himself on the fiddle and I thought it was the
closest thing I had ever heard to the Old Timey music recorded
on 78s in the twenties and early thirties and which had so
enthralled me when I was a teenager. I think I must have asked
him to play the song about ten times that night and he did!
Bruce is also a very fine 5 string banjo player and guitarist
as well as a great singer.
Donal and I had briefly been in a band called
''Mosaic'' in 1985, made up of musicians from various different
European countries and when I proposed that we use the name
again with a different spelling, nobody said no. So there
it was. I could hardly believe my luck! Some of the finest
musicians I had ever come across and all willing to take a
chance and tour Australia with me….
 Live
from the Powerhouse
Mozaic was formed especially to tour Australia
and represented Andy's Irvine's dream band, a collection of
the best musicians he'd worked with over many years, several
of whom had never met, much less played together. The band
rehearsed for six days and nights in a house donated by Brunswick
percussionist Ian Clarke, and from that came an amazing repertoire,
which was ultimately recorded live in Brisbane Power House
just before the end of the tour. The tapes were then mixed
by Donal Lunny in Japan and Dublin to produce a superb live
album 'Live From the Powerhouse' which will be available on
the tour next year.
 Changing
Trains
Mozaic's first studio album 'Changing Trains'
recorded in Nikola's studio in Budapest in October 2005.
|
