Opal | es

Baby Gopal was always an interesting band from the start. Fronted by Australian born singer/guitarist Sri Kesava, the band fused Hari Krishna dogma laced lyrics with a meld of hardcore and pop-punk to astonishing results. The music is endlessly catchy and Sri's beautiful voice will keep you captivated like a siren from wire to wire. .

Kadri Gopalnath (b. 1950) is an Indian saxophonist and one of the pioneers of Carnatic music on the saxophone. Kadri Gopalnath was born in Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka. He acquired a taste for music from his father Thaniappa, a nadhaswaram vidwan. Young Gopalnath once saw the saxophone being played in the Mysore palace band set. Thrilled on hearing the vibrant tone of the saxophone, Gopalnath decided to master it. It took him nearly 20 years for him to conquer the complex western wind instrument and he was eventually crowned as the "Saxophone Chakravarthy". Gopalnath had to make certain modifications to...

Birol Topaloglu was born to a Laz family, in the small village Apso, which is on the North Eastern shore of the Black Sea coast of Turkey, near the Georgian border. He grew up speaking the Lazuri language at home. He started to sing in both Turkish and Lazuri, as well as his experiments in instrumentation drew serious attention. After having worked as an electronic engineer, at home in Turkey and abroad, he chose his music as his primary career. Birol Topaloglu started collecting the lullabies, and the ballads sung by his mother. In 1997 he recorded the music of...

Copal: NYC-based Evocative Orchestral Experience “Beguiling” (First Coast News) and “artistically beautiful yet darkly tantalizing” (Maximum Ink), Copal sets an evocative tone; lavish voices of violin and cello flicker against a twilight scape of electronic swells and textures, impelled by a driving rhythmic sense, and original melodies steeped in global musical traditions. NYC-based, Copal is lead by violinist/composer Hannah Thiem, with collaborators Isabel Castellvi (cello), Rob Chamberlain (drums), Lorenzo Wolff (bass), and Tripp Dudley (percussion). The band’s sound is a steampunk melding of styles set on a world stage. Nordic melodies ride Middle-Eastern rhythms into the halls of a remembered...