The Vampires

The Vampires are renowned for their unique blend of soulful jazz, old-school reggae, exotic Balkan and all-out funk-laden Afrobeat. Combined with risk-taking improvisation, sophisticated compositions and an uncanny sense of dialogue and emotion between the sax/trumpet front line, the band defies these genres and have wrought a style of their own.

The band has enjoyed success from their four critically acclaimed albums and extensive touring and festival appearances over the past ten years. Recent highlights include a sold out Australian tour, performing at the Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane Jazz Festivals, as well as the Love Supreme, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Jazzahead! Festivals in Europe and the UK.

The media has claimed that “each member is an expert soloist” (The Advertiser), The Vampires’s music “excites, provokes and soothes”, and that their music is “a distinctive gumbo more eminently accessible, grooves harder and creates a bigger sound than might have seemed otherwise possible” (All About Jazz). The band features numerous award winning members including saxophonist Jeremy Rose (Young Australian Jazz Artist, APRA Professional Development Award), trumpeter Nick Garbett (National Jazz Award, runner-up), guitarist Ben Hauptmann (Freedman Fellowship), bassist Jonathan Zwartz (Bell Award winner) and drummer Alex Masso.

The band will be celebrating the release of their fifth album, 'The Vampires meet Lionel Loueke' (Earshift Music/MGM), a collaboration with Benin born US guitarist and Blue Note Records’ artist Lionel Loueke. In search of a musical collaborator for their latest release, they could not have found anyone more suitable than Loueke, an artist who has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the jazz world, working with seminal jazz figures including Wayne Shorter, Esperanza Spalding and Herbie Hancock, who has praised Loueke as “a musical painter”. With influences from Ethio-jazz, Dub, Afro-Cuban and Indonesian Gamelan, The Vampires Meet Lionel Louke is a truly expansive album that is exciting, beautiful and unique.

For the band’s appearance at the Street Theatre, they will feature music from their latest album, and revisit favourites from their growing catalogue of original tunes.

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