MIKELANGELO AND THE BLACK SEA GENTLEMEN

The band are:

Michael Simic (Lead vocals/baritone & guitar - Mikelangelo

Philip Branson (violin) - Rufino / The Catalan Casanova
Guy Freer (piano accordion) - Guido Libido
Sam Martin (doublebass/contrabass) - Baron Von Babyface
Philip Moriarty (clarinet) - The Great Muldavio

TESTIMONIALS

“Rich, dark and deeply funny…” Sydney Morning Herald

“This is extraordinary music, you have to see one of their live shows to feel the impact this group has”  Phillip Adams ABC Radio National

“exuberant and extremely funny”  The Independent (UK)

 “Overtly comic elements are welded into such beautiful eastern European music that you can enjoy the tunes and the evocative moods even as the melodrama and crazed lyrics induce rib-aching laughter.”    John Shand, SMH, 2007

“This wonderfully theatrical show frequently veers from one extreme to the other in a second. These are performers at the top of their game…Five stars”.     THE SCOTSMAN

“A collection of the most entertaining and enchanting songs and musicians you are ever likely to witness”.    Spiegeltent

“Riotous fun and frankly unforgettable”     The List (USA)

"Impossible to fault on ANY level, this is a must see show.  NOT TO BE MISSED!"     Radio Fourth 

Since forming in 2000, Mikelangelo And The Black Sea Gentlemen have packed houses and received accolades for their superlative, part fairy-tale, part cabaret, part cautionary huckstering live performances featuring unique, Gypsy-esque vivid storytelling songs. Hit seasons at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, the Melbourne Festival, the Christchurch Arts Festival and the Sydney Opera House have led to the group becoming a prominent feature on the Australian and New Zealand arts and music festival circuit. With recent successes at the Edinburgh Fringe and Sziget Festival in Budapest, Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen also look set to become a highlight of the European festival calendar.

In concert Mikelangelo commands the stage with his thunderous baritone voice. He is part-ringmaster, part-crooner, part-beast-possessed. A prolific songwriter of the highest calibre, Mikelangelo plumbs the metaphysical depths and creates an exotic storybook filled with tales that are at once inviting and foreboding. The Black Sea Gentlemen are his formidable musical ensemble and together they waltz, tango and polka their way through a show bristling with humour, pathos and beauty.  Their stunning new show From Here To There - A Journey through the Land of Shadows – is a gritty and intoxicating Kabaret Noir.

The band features Mikelangelo on vocals & guitar, The Great Muldavio on clarinet, Rufino “The Catalan Casanonva” on violin (as well as the occasional spot on the Glockenspiel), Guido Libido on Piano Accordion (he was introduced as “The man of a thousand faces, although he will be only using one of them tonight”) and Baron Von Babyface, the fearsome contrabassman. All of the band members portray their larger than life characters with gusto. Mikelangelo and his Black Sea Gentlemen are brave enough to confront us with puzzles - layer after layer of them. Where are they from? What is their history? How did they carry the bleak existentialism of Paris to Australia, via the Balkans? And that music - so hauntingly evocative - but from where? It speaks to us of middle Europe, the southern Russias, and yet has evolved far beyond that - are we, nervously, entering a post-modern world here, where these rootless buccaneers reflect on their new lives in the Antipodes?