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Welcome and thank You for visiting www.GasperBertoncelj.com. I hope you'll have fun surfing these few pages and I
hope you find out a thing or two about me.
SLOVENSKO:
News (April 2010): 2010 is very important year for me. After being in New York for seven and a half years I decided to expand my working and living environment to a new place – Israel. Israel, New York, Slovenia. Or maybe it should be Israel, USA, Europe? Of course none of this would have happened without my dearest Galia. I'm saying USA (and not just NY) because I was privileged to do a national tour in the last two months of last year. With this cool band Izzy & The Kesstronics – a rock'n'roll, blues, swing, country, rock'a'billy type of a band – we made a circle around the whole US. First we did two weeks on the East coast down to Florida, two weeks break (to organize the move to Israel) and then six weeks all around. It was amazing!!! America is such a big country and it is very different from place to place. California was nothing like Idaho, and Texas and North Carolina,..... Cold, colder, freezing, warmer, hot, cold, warm,.... that's how the weather changed. Mostly per day but sometimes we had those changes in the same day. Anyway we had a great time, the band is actually still on tour but with a different drummer and I hope there will be a chance for me to join them again soon. Here I go writing about this year and I got stuck on the previous one:-) Israel is slowly opening up for me. There are many great musicians here and the scene is nothing like New York, but still bigger than Slovenia. Tel Aviv is really a metropolis or should I say it functions like one. Clubs, night life, beaches, shops, cafe's,... Life here is nice if only you stay out of politics, what is kinda easy for me now since I don't understand much Hebrew yet. People speak English really well and almost everybody does it. I'm working on my visa now so that I can officially play and work here, but in the mean time I'm getting to know the scene and mentality here. OK let's move on. A month ago (March 2010) I had my first drum workshop. It was in Ljubljana at Jazz Club Gajo in Slovenia. We were mostly discussing about playing with brushes and things like that. There were 8 students and some of my fellow drummers showed up too, and we had a great 4 hour session. This will be repeated—as it seems there is a need for it—in the Summer. Special thanks here goes to the young doctor, father, husband, recording engineer and a drummer (I probably forgot something) Ales Kajtna for he gave the initiative and helped me to organize everything. He will still be in charge the next time so watch out for him. For a while I have a facebook account that I didn't want to deal with but it seems like I don't have much choice so please look me up under Gasper Bertoncelj of course. Projects: Summer 2010 looks very busy. Most of the Summer I'll be in Slovenia where I have a few projects and hopefully many last minute, local gigs. First I'm involved in a project with an amazing violinist, composer, teacher, many other things and organizer of Bled Festival—Jernej Brence. He has an orchestra that mixes classical, jazz and pop styles together; it backs up a Slovene singer/songwriter Jani Kovacic; does a project of old Slovene traditional songs, etc. And I'm his drummer. It feels nice to say that. Gasper Bertoncelj Quintet will be joined by my dear friend Paul Carlon (great tenor sax player whom I met in City College of NY) who visits Slovenia from July 9-17. we will play in different line-ups around Slovenia – Festival in Koper, Jazz festival Bled, Jazz Club Gajo are the most notable concerts then. After that I will do the Art Blakey project with Lenart Krecic, Jaka Kopac, Marko Djordjevic, Nikola Matosic and a guest piano player from Greece. Second half of July! Another dear friend—Lovro Ravbar—asked me to record something this Summer but I will keep quiet about this project as it seems to be some kind of a secret. In November I'm organizing a tour with the amazing Vincent Herring. This is a short description: Gasper Bertoncelj Quartet feat. Vincent Herring Gasper Bertoncelj is a Slovene drummer and a devout
hardbopper. New York jazz magazine “All About Jazz” described
his debut album CAUTION! Hard Hat Area! (New York label “Arabesque
Records”) as a continuation of Blue Note/Prestige approach of bringing
together a quintet—pared down to quartet or trio on some of the
tracks—to play originals in fairly minimal arrangements. The CD
brought together five of NY best jazz musicians: Jeremy Pelt (tp), Vincent
Herring (sax, fl), Boris Kozlov (b), Peter Mihelich (p ) and Gasper
Bertoncelj (dr).
Kristina Oberzan's project that was recorded around new years time is also in post production and hopefully it will come out this sometime this year.
I really want to bring to Slovenia one of the most amazing, energetic, unique saxophonists today Lew Tabackin. We played many sessions at his house in Upper West Side in NY and I just love to play with him. It's challenging and rewarding at the same time. I hope I'll be able to get enough concerts to bring him over. Tribute to Benny Carter – an international project with Tony Pancella on piano (Italy), Robert Anchipolovsky on alto sax (Israel), bass to be announced and myself. This is clearly a fruit that started growing since I moved to this part of the world and I hope it will get ripe in the first half of next year. Peter Mihelich Trio – for a long time we
are planning to do some playing together. Now that Sofia's (NY) isn't
just around the corner it's a bit tougher. We have a few gigs this Summer
but will work on a tour next year. Thank you for reading!
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