| Biography | ZUM is the brainchild of cellist, Chris Grist. Chris came up with the idea late in 2000 after firstly having been introduced to the genius of Astor Piazzolla (through the music of US guitarist, Al di Meola) and then on hearing a gig at Ronnie Scotts in London of the renowned Hungarian gypsy violinist, Roby Lakatos. Unable to get the two strands out of his head, he came up with the idea of fusing the two to create a completely new genre, Gypsy Tango.
It transpired that the project was a natural meeting of musical worlds - both halves of the music originated from poor beginnings; the gypsy from the back streets of Eastern Europe and the tango from the bordellos of South America - and both subsequently went on to be embraced by the concert halls of the West, admired for the sheer beauty and soulfulness of the music. Not only did the music all originate long ago from the same place (gypsies who took different routes across Europe, some ending up in eastern Europe, the others heading to Spain where émigrés then took Spanish music to the Americas where it became tango), but these two folk-music styles then grew independently in parallel from opposite sides of the Atlantic, using almost identical instruments. |