Flying Bulgars:
aka The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band
The Bulgars burst onto the scene in 1988, being the first Canadian Klezmer band with a tuly national and then international reach. For over twenty years of full-on activity the Bulgars were recognized as being “at the forefront of progressive klezmer and Yiddish music, firmly rooted in tradition yet fully engaged with the immediate present” (Sing Out).
Formed by trumpeter and composer David Buchbinder to play at a wedding in 1987, and and later co-lead with singer Dave Wall, the Flying Bulgars have consistently charted a course between the calm waters of tradition and the exciting, uncertain seas of innovation. The band made an immediate splash in the Canadian independent music scene, achieving a noteriety well beyond the borders of the Jewish music community and the nascent Global Music scene.
Through six CDs (and three JUNO nominations), three music videos (including Alle Brider, which had a significant presence on the Much Music television station and Angel directed by Canadian indie film icon Bruce MacDonald), and hundreds of shows — from Folk on the Rocks to WOMAD (English version) to the Tollwood Festival in Munich, to the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival in New York to Folk on the Rocks in Yellowknife to Klezmermania in San Francisco, to concerts in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Frankfurt, Hamburg and more — this band knew how to take an audience on an electric ride. Stay tuned for news of a possible return!
“Florid, frenzied, ostentatious…the musicianship is exhilarating, mixing the pinpoint precision of a symphony orchestra with a saloon air of unabashed abandon…hitting all the emotional buttons at once, the Bulgars break through the other side of corn to posit klezmer as the wisest counsel on the planet.”
“A combination of rootedness, compositional smarts and virtuosic performances [that] works beautifully.”