FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- 8/1/10
Morgan Arts Council • Berkeley Springs, WV
www.maicehouse.org

Press contact only: Mary Hott -- 304-258-2300



BALKAN MUSIC IN PARK CONCERT

BERKELEY SPRINGS, WV ---- Bring an instrument and dancing shoes to 
the Morgan Arts Council's (MAC) concert in the park on Saturday. 
Sviraj, a noted Balkan band, conducts a jam and dance session 
beginning at 4pm, followed by their concert at 5:30 on August 7 in 
Berkeley Springs State Park. Rain location is the Ice House. "The 
jam is a perfect opportunity to experience this passionate music in 
every way -- playing it, dancing to it or listening," said Mary Hott, 
MAC's Executive Director.

The music performed by Sviraj is tamburitza, the driving, spirited, 
celebratory folk music of the Balkans made for dancing. The quartet 
of Balkan musicians from Steelton, PA -- Mike “Misko” Furjanic, Lenny 
Tepsich, Chris Radanovic, and Danilo Yanich -- have performed together 
since 1988. In the tradition of roots music everywhere, they all grew 
up in homes surrounded by tamburitza. “I can’t remember a time when 
music wasn’t a part of our lives, when it wasn’t in our homes” says 
Tepsich, who plays celo and dumbek in the group and recalls his 
Steelton childhood fondly in a Folktowne interview. “When we were 
kids, everybody played music. At every kind of family or church event 
there was music.”

For their professional life, they added music from other southern 
European countries including Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. Their 
rhythmic complexities, sweet harmonies and virtuoso picking earn them 
a reputation as one of the best known Slavic music bands in the U.S. 
Sviraj plays instruments ranging from a red hot fiddle and accordian 
to the unique fretted dumbek,tamburica and bugarija passed down 
through the family.

Sviraj has five CDs through Minneapolis folk label Omnium Records, 
including a couple of rollicking live sets.

This concert is sponsored by the Fairfax Coffee House, and funded in 
part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and West 
Virginia Commission on the Arts as well as hotel/motel tax from the 
town and county. Sviraj is partially supported by a grant from 
Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, a program developed and funded 
by the Heinz Endowments; the William Penn Foundation; the Pennsylvania 
Council on the Arts, a state agency; and The Pew Charitable Trusts; 
and administered by Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.

For a full schedule and links to the music of the seven concert 
series, check online at www.macicehouse.org.