Michael Leonhart & The Avramina 7 are featured in the March/April '10 issue of Elmore Music Magazine.  Make sure to pick up an issue today!  Read what Elmore had to say about Leonhart & his psychedelic funk band...

Michael Leonhart & The Avramina 7 is comprised of musicians New Yorkers see a lot in Bands like the Dap-Kings, Phenomenal Handclap Band, Budos Band, and Antibalas, among others.  Leonhart alone has played or recorded with Steely Dan, Mark Ronson, Levon Helm, Brian Eno, and many more.  Trumpet in hand and complex compositions in his back pocket, Leonhart created an album of experimental psychedelic funk called Seahorse & the Storyteller.  The group of musicians he’s been jamming with over the last ten years, the Avramina 7 has, as Leonhart puts it, a “telepathic way of working together” that comes through in their extraordinary live show. 

Combining instruments foreign (pocket theremin, waterphone, Indian harmonium, electric kazoos, glockenspiel, xylophone, Moog synth, Indian tabla, Indian dhol, African percussion) and familiar (bass, drums, guitar, piano, vox organ, trumpets, oboe, sax, toy piano, bells), Leonhart’s landscape of sound is like everything and nothing you’ve ever heard. 

For a creative arranger like Leonhart, the opportunities afforded by his large ensemble are endless; “Onstage with a ‘big band’, I have an almost full orchestral palette available to me,” he said.  “Nothing quite beats playing a song with one or two people only to have another 10-13 people lying in wait, ready to join in at the climactic moment.”  Sign me up!  DJs, if you’re listening, keep your day jobs.