Dominic Legault is self-taught on accordion and writes most of Elephantizer’s original material. He has composed, recorded and produced 3 CDs of original music and has led many groups featuring his own compositions. He has performed throughout Europe, Australia and Canada at various festivals, in groups as well as a solo accordionist. He was a member of the Darylectones for 4 years and has shared the stage with artists such as the Wassabi Collective, Brodie West, les Hurlements de Leo and Courtney Wing. Dominic has developed his own distinctive style on accordion, obliging his left hand to perform unusually extensive bass lines while striving towards the expressiveness found in traditional world music vocals with the right hand. This has progressed to both hands having melodic and rhythmical independence. Dominic has scored music for film and theatre and performed in various theatrical and multi-media collaborations. He has organized “open ear events”, a series of community concerts dedicated to presenting adventurous music seldom heard in small towns. The concerts included improvising musicians interpreting theatrical life-experience stories as told by audience members. He is interested in exploring musical composition and improvisation as avenues of communicative expression. Dominic has studied the karkaba rythms of Gnawa music in Morocco with master musician Abdelaziz Arradi of the group Nass Marrakech. He also plays contra-alto clarinet and lives in the rainforest near Masset, Haida Gwaii where he is building a log home and writing music for the next Elephantizer album. |
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| Upright Bass | ||
Stefan Bienz has a wide ranging musical curiosity which has led him to play with a wide variety of musicians. He has recorded with and appeared on stage with pop singer songwriters such as Sarah Wheeler, and Kevin Kane (formerly of the Grapes of Wrath), and rock groups such as Fighting Urges and Dorothy Missing. He's been half of the Darylectones for the past few years and has performed everything from dixieland to the modern jazz with the group Offramp. He was the bass player with the popular Vancouver jazz/blues groups Les is More and Continental Clyde. He has performed with the electronic band Mercury Sound Cartel which featured vocals, turntables, percussion and his upright bass. He's played at jazz, folk, bluegrass, rock and blues festivals throughout Canada and the United States. He's been in demand as a freelance musician for live shows, recordings, musicals and has performed for weddings, circus shows and bingo extravaganzas. He spent three months travelling around Cuba and studying music with the amazing musicians there. He enjoys getting together with all sorts of people and feels there is something to learn from any situation. With any luck, he hopes life will continue to throw crazy surprising new challenges his way. |
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| VIOLIN | ||
Amelia Rose Slobogean began her violin studies at the age of 5. She studied classical technique with Kenneth Yunke in vancouver for 8 years, then put her violin down for a decade. In 1998 she co-formed the raucous high energy celtic-bluegrass band, Fishead Stew. Based in Whitehorse Yukon, they toured extensively over the next five years playing festivals and gigs across Canada, Alaska and Scotland. Amelia has also delved into other musical genres and has immersed herself in gypsy music, music of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, swing and jazz, as well as re-aquainting herself with her classical background. Amelia toured Europe in 2004 for three months where she researched and learned gypsy music. She has since taken lessons with romanian gypsy violinist Lache Cercel, and Serbia's violinist extraordinaire, Aleksandar Sisic. She currently plays with the Ukranian "slavic soul" group, Zeellia, and is one half of the duo "BonBon & Rose". Now based on Galiano Island BC, Amelia plays a weekly jazz gig, and is composing music for trios, as well as a material for a solo violin album. |
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