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All aboard the Velvet Caravan
Savannah’s purveyors of gypsy jazz debut their first album this week
THE BRONZED CHORUS 03
Velvet Caravan, acoustic in nature: From left Eric Dunn, Jared Hall, Ricardo Ochoa, Sasha Strunjas and Jesse Monkman.
T T H N IGH NIG @ 11PM w/ MC BASIK LEE
by bill deyoung | bill@connectsavannah.com
Musicians aren’t known for their long-range planning. Never could Venezuelan violinist Ricardo Ochoa, who moved to Savannah in 2000, predict he’d be playing gypsy jazz, that European swing music that’s so evocative of a time and place a million miles away. In Georgia. Ochoa came here from Pittsburgh to join the Savannah Symphony, which was dissolved only a few years later. “It was supposed to be a stepping stone for me to go to another symphony,” he says. “I decided I wanted to expand my repertoire and start learning other styles so I can survive. And I did.” Ochoa plays jazz, bluegrass, and
(with the Train Wrecks) chug-chug electric Americana. He’s also kept up his classical chops as a member of the Savannah Philharmonic. When Slovenia-born psychiatrist Sasha Strunjas arrived in 2011, he brought with him an immense knowledge of gypsy jazz guitar, and an even bigger talent for playing its tricky Hungarian and Romanian scales. The first person he went looking for was Ricardo Ochoa. Strunjas’ wife had accepted a job at Armstrong Atlantic State University, and during an interview trip, he’d seen Ochoa playing with Julie Wilde and Jackson Evans. And he never forgot it.
“Two days after he moved to Savannah, we began playing,” Ochoa says. “And Sasha and I have been playing since then three or four times a week.” Along with their duo gigs, Ochoa and Strunjas form the centerpiece of Velvet Caravan, one of our city’s most unique musical groups, and certainly the group most packed with virtuosi. Check out Acoustic in Nature, the Kickstarter-funded debut Velvet Caravan album. The band will introduce the record Feb. 1 as part of Trinity United Methodist Church’s new concert series. More than just a carbon-copy of the gypsy jazz so eloquently laid down by the early 20th Century masters, guitarist Django Reinhardt and