Boris Kovac's second album for the Canadian label Disques Victo, East Off Europe: Closing the Circle ranks among the best musical achievements of his career. This cycle is clearly related to his previous album Anamnesis: Ecumenical Mysteries. One finds a similar instrumentation (violin, clarinet, saxophone, double bass, piano, voice), the same chamber music meets tradition meets modernity approach. But this time Kovac took the recipe to a new level of emotional power. Split into three parts,    [ read more ]

CD $17.08

Anamnesis: Ecumenical Mysteries was Yugoslavian saxophonist/composer Boris Kovac's first release out of Europe (on the Canadian label Disques Victo). It was also his first work recorded in Yugoslavia following the war that forced him to an Italian exile for a few years. Back in his native town Novi Sad, he reformed his Ritual Nova Ensemble (disbanded by the war) and composed this suite in four parts and three intermezzos. The music does not have the same power of impact and emotional strength as   [ read more ]

CD $17.08

CD $24.68

It's the morning after the apocalypse and (assuming you've survived) where are you? How are you feeling? That's the idea behind this disc. Boris Kovac is one of the most creative musicians to come out of Serbia, and his music breaks out of the gypsy/village ghetto to which most Balkan sounds are consigned. The second part of his "La Danza Apocalypsa Balcanica Project" shows the quieter, reflective, more rustic and impressionistic side of Kovac. The music on Boris Kovac & Ladaaba Orchestra's {   [ read more ]

CD $24.68

A composer and multi-instrumentalist from the ethnically and culturally diverse Pannonia region of the former Yugoslavia, Boris Kovac has an admirably wide-ranging musical aesthetic. Rather than attempting to re-create a particular musical style from the past, Kovac and his group take the basic common building blocks of Eastern European and Mediterranean folk music -- violin, accordion, clarinet, guitar -- and set them to a traditional bass-and-drums rhythm section. They're not as fearlessly cross-   [ read more ]

CD $24.68