The Café Antarsia Ensemble celebrates the release of their album “Songs of the Table”, featuring original compositions in the world folk/Americana genre inspired by Greek blues (rebetiko & café aman) and Balkan Rroma Gypsy music mixed with Arabic percussion. With exotic instrumentation including French Gypsy guitar, Greek bouzouki, tzouras and baglama, Cretan laouto, accordion, tabla and frame drums, Greek-Texan composer/songwriter Nikos Brisco’s hauntingly urgent melodies are complemented by the panoramic and portrait-driven lyrics of avant garde playwright/performer Ruth Margraff.

The Café Antarsia Ensemble was created in 2002 in New York City when Brisco and Margraff recruited Egyptian-American percussionist Rami El-Aasser to join them for live scoring of their theatre work JUDGES 19: BLACK LUNG EXHALING. Ron Riley joined in 2004 and the ensemble took the name The Café Antarsia Ensemble (Antarsia meaning “rebellious” in Greek) and began touring music and theater venues worldwide. Brisco and Margraff both lived and studied music, history and language with the Gourbeti Rromani tribe famous for Dragan Ristic’s band KAL (Valjevo, SERBIA) in 2004. CAE is dedicated to coexistence through new music and live art, transfusing Americana roots & world folk with working-class operatic flourishes.

CAE will perform selections from their “Songs of the Table” CD - a high passion "world folk" album inspired by Greek Rebetiko, Kritika rebel songs and Balkan Rroma/Gypsy music, rooted in the rhythms of Middle Eastern percussion and Americana folk. The album's ornaments and vocals owe much to wandering the maketplaces of Sarajevo, Dubrovnik and Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia as well as to the painted darkness of New York City's downtown theaters and epic taverns all the way from Astoria, Queens to the timeless island of Crete.

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