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born in Sofia in 1976. The most iridescent traditions of the Balkans
meet in his unconventional play: Macedonian-Bulgarian folk music and
music of the Roma living in the southern part of the Balkans, constantly
developing, bursting with vivacity. Add to this musical base jazz, tango
nuevo, Parisian musette, Serbian, Roumanian, Greek and Turkish music,
breathtaking virtuosity and unusual arrangements: That’s Martin
Lubenov.
Martin studied classical music and jazz in Sofia and Vienna. His roots
in the vibrating ground of balkan wedding music kept him from becoming
an “academic” musician. And fortunately his musical education
helped him quite soon to outgrow popular music, to which a lot of Roma
musicians on the Balkans are confined.
Around the turn of the millennium Martin Lubenov came to Vienna in order
to study and soon became a link between the music of Yugoslav and Macedonian
communities and the Austrian folk and world music scenery. Fast his
talent got around, and he played first with Tschuschenkapelle, lateron
also with bands like for example the Ensemble Klesmer, Mandys Mischpoche,
die Marios & Julie Kompania and recently the Sandy Lopi_i_ Orkestar,
the ethnojazz band Dunja and the Musette/Gypsy-Swing-Newcomer Déjà
Vu, to name just a few Austrian bands.
In Bulgaria, in addition to this, he was instrumentalist and arranger
for Jony Iliev Band and, in 2003, founded his own Martin Lubenov Orkestar,
which plays exclusively his compositions and arrangements and of his
country’s best Roma musicians.
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