Guy Klucevsek

Accomplished accordionist and composer Guy Klucevsek has astonished listeners across the globe through his command of the cumbersome instrument during avant-garde performances shaped by jazz and global traditions. His contributions appear on anthologies ranging from Tzadik’s Burt Bacharach tribute to the broader-appeal Ellipsis Arts collection Planet Squeezebox, and he has directed more than fifteen projects issued under his own leadership on Tzadik, Winter & Winter, Ewa, and CRI. Extensive scores for modern dance earned him a BESSIE award in 1995 for the music to Hey, created with choreographer David Dormanis. Beginning no later than the mid-1980s, he has collaborated in performance and on record with inventive artists such as John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Anthony Braxton, and Kronos Quartet.

In 1996 Klucevsek joined master accordionists Lars Hollmer from Sweden, Maria Kalaniemi from Finland, Bratko Bibic from Slovenia, and Otto Lechner from Austria to establish Accordion Tribe. The ensemble’s first recording, issued by Intuition in 1998, coincided with Winter & Winter’s release of an album by Dave Douglas’s new ensemble Charms of the Night Sky, which featured Klucevsek alongside bassist Greg Cohen and violinist Mark Feldman. Over the following three years the group toured portions of North America and Europe and captured A Thousand Evenings for RCA, while Accordion Tribe produced two further Intuition discs—Sea of Reeds in 2003 and Lunghorn Twist in 2006—and maintained a busy European touring schedule well into the new millennium.

During the same period Klucevsek continued issuing recordings under his own name both as leader and in partnership, among them the Winter & Winter duet albums Accordance from 2001 and Notefalls from 2007 with pianist and accordionist Alan Bern, the 2003 duo project Tales from the Cryptic alongside saxophonist Phillip Johnston, and the solo accordion collection The Well-Tampered Accordion in 2005. His Tzadik releases as leader comprise Stolen Memories from 1996 with the Bantam Orchestra, the modern-composition-focused Song of Remembrance in 2007, and Dancing on the Volcano in 2009, realized by a quartet that includes clarinet or saxophone, bass, and drums. Solo appearances at festivals worldwide complement his recorded work, which also includes the musical backdrop for the audiobook edition of E. Annie Proulx’s novel Accordion Crimes.