and his Wedding and Funeral Band with Choir

Roots in the Balkans where he stems from, head in the 21^st Century which he fully inhabits, Goran Bregovic's music marries sounds of a gypsy brass band with traditional Bulgarian polyphonies, those of an electric guitar and traditional percussion with a curious rock accent…. all against a background of a bedevilled string orchestra and deep sonorities of a male choir, creating music that our soul recognises instinctively and the body greets with an irresistible urge to dance.

Born in Sarajevo of a Serbian mother and a Croatian father.  After a few years of  music studies at the conservatory (violin), Goran forms his first group “The White Button” at the age of sixteen.  Composer and guitar player. At the end of the eighties BREGOVIC takes time away from this permanent hustle-bustle to compose music for Kusturica’s "Times of the Gypsies. Coming from the same background, the same generation, survivors of the same experiences, Goran BREGOVIC and Emir KUSTURICA formed a tandem which didn’t need words to communicate.  After “Times of the Gypsies” Goran had a free hand to compose the original soundtrack for “Arizona Dream”.  The music lives up to the film – poetical, original and incredibly enhancing.  Patrice Chereau entrusts him with the music for “La Reine Margot”, Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994.  Goran delivers a majestic piece with rock accents. The music for Emir Kusturica’s  “Underground”, Palme d’Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, was also signed by Goran. Recently Goran composed spicy music with a “kletzmer” aroma for the “Train de Vie” of Radu MIHAELANU acclaimed by the critics in Venice, Sao Paulo, Berlin and by the public everywhere it was shown. 
He has since devoted himself to the interpretation of his own music and lent himself to a second stage-career.  Without completely abandoning the movies, however. 
For over ten years, since he abandoned pure rock in 1985, the music of BREGOVIC had never been performed live.  This all changes in 1995 when, with a band of ten traditional musicians, a choir of fifty singers and a symphony orchestra, he undertakes a series of mega-concerts in Greece and Sweden followed by the concert given October 26th at the Forest National of Brussels for an audience of 7500. Very few concert performances in 1996 as the idea of a hundred and twenty performers on stage scared even the most enthusiastic promoters.
In June 1997, the group is reduced to fifty musicians for a two hour concert with the music he composed for films.  And it’s one success after another.  Bregovic undertakes a triumphal tour throughout Europe with his Wedding and Funeral Band presenting live his most beautiful pieces from the famous “ Ederlezi” (Time of the Gypsies) to the “ In the Death Car” (Arizona Dream) and the energetic “Kalasnikov” (Underground) taking off as delirious audience echoes the with the powerful “Juris” (Charge ! !). The number of entries – between 3,500 and 10,000 per concert - and the concert given May 1^st at the Piazza St. Giovanni in Rome in front of 500.000 people confirm beyond any doubt that his music now has a real impact on an international level.

Goran BREGOVIC continues his career, and the young local rock mega-star of the 70s and the 80s asserts his authority as a mature, successful, international composer.