Yuri Yunakov Ensemble
New Colors in Bulgarian Wedding Music

Yuri Yunakov, the most famous Bulgarian saxophone player, presents his first American recording since immigrating to the US in 1995. If you haven't heard the music spilling out of the post-communist regions of southern Eastern Europe, the creativity and dizzying energy of Bulgaria's and Macedonia's so-called "wedding music" will shock and delight you. Fast speeds, impossible rhythms, plummeting key changes; village folk tunes melded with jazz, rock, and Turkish music, this is of the most exciting world music sounds today, played with virtuosity by Yuri and his 6-member ensemble. Suppressed by the socialist government in Bulgaria, wedding music still prospered and has become the most widely listened to form of folk/popular music in both Bulgaria and Macedonia and in their diaspora communities. Yuri Yunakov was one of the founders of this music, and the Yuri Yunakov Ensemble is the only group performing it on American soil.