Please take a moment to subscribe to Fishtank Ensembles YouTube Channel now, because we’ve got more great videos coming along in the near future.  We also humbly ask for your help to promote this video we worked very hard to produce with our friend and director extraordinaire Laban Pheideas and the hard working folks at TwoHeaded Horse Productions.  You could really help us get the exposure this video deserves by rating, commenting and sharing the video with your friends, email lists and social networks.  Promote! Promote! Promote!

We’ll be going into hibernation for the winter for a few months where we’ll work on new songs for a brand new album and world tour in 2012!  Happy Holidays, and we will be thinking of you till we meet again!

From Fishtank Ensemble Pictures

 

We stayed at old friend Oronzo Trio’s gorgeous Masseria Ospitale, and fiesta-ed and feasted with old friends and new ones. Food comas, late night music jams, more crazy drives, concerts, and days on the rocks above the Ionian Sea ensued. If you would like an answer to the, “who is the most fearless Fishtank Ensemble member?” question, please see the attached rock-diving video.

Our final Salentini days were spent with our dear friends Nick Gray and Maggie Armstrong, on their beautiful Masseria Spigolizzi, and Ursula is now diving into the book written by Nicks mother, Patience Gray, “Honey from a Weed“. Highly recommended for those Slow Food and Farm to Table food junkies. A special thanks to Bruno, Cesare, Nick and Maggie, Signora Ada and Sergio, Oronzo and Valeria, and the Associazone FiluFilese for great hospitality and support for our music.

What lies ahead in our tour of the magic of the mediterannean? Avignon, Montpellier, Corbieres, Toulouse, Milano, Piemonte again, and Naples. We are anxiously awaiting connecting with our good friends from California, Jessica Fichot and her group, in Avignon in a few days. Although we cannot say for sure what lies ahead, we know that  the wine will flow, the chords will strike, yes the eyelids will droop with sleep, but we will take back with us to the US the bella vita that we always try to bring to the stage for you…….

Well, it’s gearing up to be a VERY busy summer for Fishtank Ensemble. Come June 18, we’ll head to Europe for 6 weeks, then to Canada, the east coast and midwest and finally Mexico for 4 full months of jam-packed touring!  That being said we’ve got a couple of last shows for you folks in California this month before we head out into the great unknown . . .

This year Fishtank Ensemble was asked to perform at the amazing world music extravaganza known as the Harmony Festival in Sonoma County and to partake in a new ‘partnership’ wherein our stipend for our performance is 17 $45 “any day” tickets (awesome deal) that we are to sell to our fans. It will of course interest you that we are playing Friday June 10 at 4 pm on the Oasis stage, but the lineup all three days is amazing and includes headliners Michael Franti and Spearhead, Primus, and The Flaming Lips. One ticket is an all day pass for any day of the festival.

If you are interested in purchasing tickets, please contact:  band@fishtankensemble.com

There is also a June 11 performance in Mill Valley at Djangofest SF with the amazing Tcha Limberger.  This is seriously a once in a lifetime chance to see one of the guys that we are inspired from.  Tcha is a master of many romani music styles including Manouche, Hungarian, Gypsy Swing, Turkish and many more.

If you’re in Los Angeles and you still need MORE gypsy Flamenco music performed by yours truly, Fishtank Ensemble this year, then head out to Boulevard Music (4316 Sepulveda Blvd in Culver City) this saturday June 4th. This fantastic little music store has been giving LA some amazing folk, world music and jazz concerts for years and years now and we are proud to be a part of it! Show is at 8 pm, tickets are on sale in advance for $15.

Also, June 17 we will be performing as part of the fantastic evening of music and dancing in the ZULU Lounge at the famous Boardners in Hollywood.  The night features us, many tribal fusion and belly dancers, DJ Amar Solumnar and the amazing Rachel Brice!

Either of these shows would be a wonderful send off to your favorite band, right?  Cheers, and hope to see you there!

-Fishtank Ensemble

From Fishtank Ensemble Pictures

We are especially excited because we have a great concept and an amazing director attached to the project, Laban Pheidias with his super-talented staff at 2HeadedHorse Productions.  We will be rolling a hand-built gypsy wagon, shipped over from Europe, through the streets of Los Angeles in a roving musical party.  At various times in the video, we will go into the wagon to see what fantastical worlds await us inside.   Check out the beautiful gypsy wagon, otherwise known as a Vardo, that was hand built by our violinist extraordinaire Fabrice Martinez and our Operatic singer Ursula Knudson when they were living in Italy.

With your help, we are trying to raise $2000 to make this happen.  Any money raised above that amount will go directly into the production and promotion of this ambitious musical video.  If we can reach about $4000, we’ll actually shoot two videos at the same time.

Since our start, we have been a completely do-it-yourself band.  This is the first time we’re asking for help to complete a project because we want to do it really well.  We work very hard at making this music and we travel eight months of the year to bring it to our fans.  We would be truly appreciative if you would help us achieve our goal and we promise that this same work ethic will be applied to the making of this gypsy music video.  Thanks for reading and we hope to see you at one of our shows sometime soon.

It’s been a while, but we’re happy to announce that were practicing and working on many new songs to delight and amuse you at future Fishtank Ensemble shows. We just played 2 (almost) sold out shows at the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center with our good friends, the Jessica Fichot Band. There was a nice article in the LA weekly to go along with the show called, ‘Gypsy Revivalism is Not Washed Up‘.

We have pretty light schedule for the spring but we’re getting geared up for lots of touring in the summer and fall.  Were also working on a couple music videos for ‘Woman in Sin’ and ‘Opa Opa’.  It’s about time we had some good videos of us on Youtube.  (as a test, can you click on this link and subscribe to our Fishtank Ensemble Youtube Channel, so we can let you know when the videos are ready.)   Here’s a great picture of us playing at the House of Blues taken by our friend Dalen Muster.

From Fishtank Ensemble Pictures

In other news about cool things happening,  we’re the featured band for March the website Almost Famous Artists.    There’s an interesting interview there with guitarist ‘douje‘ of Fishtank Ensemble.  Speaking of ‘douje’, here is a good video of the Flamenco song he wrote for Woman in Sin called ‘Pena Andaluz‘.

Here’s a picture of us performing at Steinman Hall in Lancaster, PA (taken by Audrey Fox).  For more photos of this show by our friend Scott Bookman, check out his Fishtank Ensemble Gallery.

In another huge honor, we’ve also been crowned as some of the “Best Drinking music of 2010”

Infusing its sprightly gypsy-jazz style with influences from all around the world, Fishtank has crafted a record that could make even the most skeptical jazz listener jig like a madman. On Woman in Sin, the group plays to its strengths, unleashing singer Ursula Knudsen’s fearsome voice on nearly every track. You won’t understand this woman’s presence until you listen . . . . .  ‘Woman in Sin’ requires a beer that’s full of the same spark and worldly spice, so I’ll need a beer from . . . . (read the whole article to find out)

We had a great time in NY playing at APAP with friends The George Cole Quintet (awesome original swing jazz), 2 Man Gentleman Band (who are hilarious and great), The Defibulators (Kick ass Alt country rock), Jessica Fichot (Chanteuse and Songwriter) other great Charisma Artist Agency Bands.

Here is an excerpt of a good article on us by Emily Burnham of the Bangor Daily News in Maine.

Jan. 06 – The gypsy jazz quartet Fishtank Ensemble gets its name from the performance and art space the lead singer, Ursula Knudson, was living in when the band formed in 2004. Knudson was living in the Oakland, Calif., collective known back then as the Fishtank, when Fabrice Martinez, a French violinist, came to visit her.

“It was the happiest kind of accident, because no one was really looking to form a band, but we did,” said Knudson, who married Martinez in 2004. “A woman at the show asked us what our name was, and we really had no idea what to say. So we just said, ‘Err, the Fishtank Ensemble?’

While Fishtank Ensemble certainly has honed its chops in terms of the history of gypsy jazz and Eastern European music, the band takes a contemporary outlook in what they actually write and perform.  ”We don’t claim to be a totally authentic experience. We aren’t totally traditional,” said Knudson. “I do things my own way, that may or may not be authentic in some ways. We all do. We play the music that we want to play, and a lot of the time, it comes out as this kind of music.”

To promote Woman in Sin we embarked on about 7 months of touring this year which is more than we’ve ever done.  Our lovely and talented singer Ursula deserves extra recognition for the unending work she does for us booking and managing the band.   We played all over the United States this year except for Alaska and Hawaii (maybe in 2011 we’ll make it there??)  In September and October we did our first tour of Europe, which was crazy, fun, exhausting and even a little profitable.

We’ve had lots of great reviews come in for ‘Woman in Sin’ this year, which you can read on the album page or in earlier blog posts.   We also got mentioned by the “Dean of American Rock Critics”, Robert Christgau.   He is known for his terse, capsule reviews of albums and ours was no different and perhaps a little odd, but we’ll take it.   We also made the Top 10 Listens for 2010 by Richard Marcus!  We are of course all over the social networks at Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Reverbnation, Bandcamp, LastFM, iLike, Youtube and probably a lot others.  Please keep in touch with us whichever way you like . . . even write us letter if you into that.

We especially want to thank all of you, our friends and fans for all your support.  It makes all the hard work and long hours in the car worthwhile.  We’re getting ready to do it all again in 2011.   There’s still 20% of everything at the Fishtank Ensemble Store from now until sometime early in january.   Happy new years, Opa!

In touring news, we’re getting ready to brave the winter weather of the east coast from January 6 – 15 for a little tour that will bring us to Maine, Boston, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont.  We’ll also be playing several showcases at the illustrious Association of Performing Arts Presenters, or APAP in New York City.

Here’s a video of us playing at the prestigious Festival International in Lafayette, Louisiana in April 2010.  The song is called  KOLO SUITE.  It is a medley made out of the Serbian kolo “Obrenovcanka”, the song “Zvezda tera meseca” and the song from Transylvania “Mamaliga brinza li”.  It’s available on the latest Fishtank Ensemble release WOMAN IN SIN at the band’s website www.fishtankensemble.com

Here’s a picture of us in Venice.  As soon as we arrived, Mauritzio, the guy with the white hair in the back, picked us up at the train station and popped open the champagne and oysters.  That was indicative of how our  four days went in Venice. The food, drinks and hospitality in Europe were incredible.  They even indulged our demands for a bowl of blue M&Ms.

After a very busy 2010 touring like crazy to support our newest album ‘Woman in Sin‘, we are taking a 2 month break for november and december.  This will give us time to plot and conspire our plan of attack for 2011.

In other Fishtank Ensemble news, 2 of our songs are featured in the British comedy out now called Wild Target.  They use two songs from our 2nd CD, ‘Samurai Over Serbia‘, Mehum Mato and Face the Dragon.  I watched the movie and it’s pretty entertaining too.

Just because we’re taking a break doesn’t mean you can’t still stock up on all the Fishtank Ensemble Merchandise you don’t already have.  Give the gift of gypsy music this holiday season and make the world a better place.

Here’s a video of us playing ‘Djordjes Rachenitza’ at Amadeus-Song, Bordeaux september 15th 2010.

Here’s a brief excerpt from a new review of our 3rd CD, “Woman in Sin” by  Joel Okida of Folkworks Magazine.  Thanks Joel! . . . .

“The ever chameleonic Fishtank Ensemble have once again added more colors to their palette, spilling over into a pastiche of songs, traditional and new, retaining their own style, but honoring the sources. This is an epic musical variety show except all the performances are performed by four talented musicians and some added guests.”

Special shout out and thank you to Linda McHenry of the Dragonfly In Bed & Breakfast in Ironton Missouri. She was very kind to offer up her beautiful B&B to us while we were on tour.  There’s a private lake with boating, fishing, beautiful hiking.  It was an incredible oasis on our crazy touring schedule.  You should check it out if you’re ever in the area.