Halifax-based Gypsophilia is a group of seven young performers whose music straddles the jazz and indie worlds. The band started in 2004 as a Django Reinhardt tribute, but soon found itself mixing gypsy jazz with klezmer, funk, classical music, indie rock, and bebop, writing its own tunes and playing to sold out crowds.
Their latest record, the double ECMA-award winning Sa-ba-da-OW! (June 2009), offers up a wide variety of sounds, self-produced and recorded in Halifax’s Echo Chamber studio, and engineered by Charles Austin (Joel Plaskett, Buck 65, Al Tuck, Matt Mays, Super Friendz, Garrett Mason). The band’s typical lineup of three guitars, violin, double bass, trumpet and piano is bolstered on the album with synthesizer, backbeat handclaps, impromptu gang vocals, percussion, and slide whistle. And next to some classic swing grooves, be prepared to find klezmer, funk, reggae, tango and game show music.
Sa-ba-da-OW! has sold well across the country during the band’s national festival tours in 2009 and 2010, and has charted well, finishing in the number 1 slot overall for 2009 on !chartattack’s national campus radio jazz charts.
In December 2010 Gypsophilia spent a week in Montréal’s Hotel2Tango studio with Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre, Basia Bulat, Black Ox Orkestar, Stars, Lhasa) to record their next album, to be released in the fall of 2011. They also recently recorded the soundtrack to Chaz Thorne’s feature film Whirligig as well as releasing two different music videos this past year.
The seven-piece Gypsophilia features Alec Frith, Nick Wilkinson and Ross Burns on guitars; Sageev Oore on piano and keyboards; Matt Myer on trumpet; Adam Fine on double bass and Gina Burgess on violin. Frith, Myer and Burns all play with the roots- Reggae band Verbal Warnin’; Myer is an ECMA and Juno winner with the Johnny Favorite Swing Orchestra; Fine plays regularly with Bend the River and improvising guitarist Jeff Torbert. Oore has been a featured soloist with Symphony Nova Scotia and a member of the Woodchoppers Association, while Burgess has also played with Symphony Nova Scotia and with the Maria Osende Flamenco Company.