Oi Va Voi, Exeter Phoenix, Friday 25th September, 8pm
Oi Va Voi came together in the late 1990s when trumpeter Lemez Lovas, drummer Josh Breslaw, bassist Leo Bryant, clarinettist Steve Levi, guitarist Nik Ammar and violinist Sophie Solomon pooled their diverse musical backgrounds in left-field jazz, hip-hop, rock bands, drum ‘n bass and Jewish Klezmer.
With the addition of K.T.Tunstall on guest vocals, their debut album ‘Laughter Through Tears’ fused modern dance music, singer-songwriter sensitivity and their Jewish cultural heritage with global rhythms drawn from Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and beyond.
The album received rave reviews and won two awards in the BBC Radio 2 awards for world music. Yet anybody who saw Oi Va Voi’s spectacular live shows was left in little doubt that they were far more than a world music act with an enviable ability to rock a crowd and get a dance floor heaving. The album went on to sell more than 100,000 copies worldwide.
The follow up album “Oi Va Voi” was greeted with great press acclaim in Europe, and beyond but within a month of its release the group’s label, V2, was sold to Universal and closed down.
Undaunted, the band regrouped in the spring of 2008. They knew that the only way for them to have real, long lasting success on their own terms was to take control of every aspect of their career. The band played a string of festivals across Europe, pouring all profits into the recording of the new album and in October 2008, “Travelling The Face Of The Globe” was completed.
The core of the group remains the unique eclecticism and outstanding musicianship of its members, both founding ones and now established new faces. Reuniting the group with the producers of “Laughter Through Tears” (Grammy winners Kevin Bacon and Jonathan Quarmby), “Travelling The Face Of The Globe” is the realisation of five years hard work and the coming together of a band on top of their form and with a full understanding of the way forward. The early reactions to the album and recent live shows have been overwhelming in their praise.
Come and see for yourself on the only Devon date of the tour this autumn.
Tickets cost £10/£8 (concessions). For more info, visit www.exeterphoenix.org.uk or phone 01392 667 080.