Spring Concert

Luanne Homzy

Internationally acclaimed American/French-Canadian violinist Luanne Homzy is highly sought-after for her technical facility, sensitive musicality and expansive versatility. Based in Los Angeles, she works as a studio musician, a composer, and is the leader of crossover supergroup Trio Dinicu and co-leader of Project: CSQ and of the California String Quartet.

First Prize winner of the Hamburg International Chamber Music Competition in 2009 (with the Saguaro Piano Trio), she has performed concerti with the Montréal and the Hamburg Symphony Orchestras, and the Colburn Chamber Orchestra. Having served as concertmaster for the Colburn Orchestra, the Los Angeles Virtuosi Orchestra, and the American Youth Orchestra, she has worked closely with masters such as Sir Neville Mariner, Gustavo Dudamel, James Conlon, David Newman, and John Williams. Ms. Homzy has collaborated with artists such as Arnold Steinhardt, Franklin Cohen, Ani Kavafian, Paul Coletti, Ronald Leonard, Niklas Schmidt, Paul Neubauer, the Tokyo String Quartet, and members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

In December 2019, she was awarded 2nd Prize at the Roby Lakatos International Violin Improvisational Competition, and since her introduction to many of the most highly regarded Hungarian Gypsy musicians, she became a pupil of Miklós Lakatos. During the pandemic, she recorded a full album of Hungarian Gypsy Music, remotely from her home studio, with the Miklós Lakatos Gypsy Orchestra, who recorded from Budapest. The album will be coming out in early 2022, and a digital download is currently available on BandCamp.

Equally at home in many genres, whether it be classical, jazz, rock, gypsy or Eastern European folk music, Ms. Homzy performs world wide with crossover supergroup Trio Dinicu, hailed as “dazzling” by the San Francisco Chronicle. She has been featured with artists such as Roby Lakatos, the John Jorgenson Quintet, Florin Niculescu, and Tcha Limberger, and has performed with Coldplay, Pink Martini, Billie Eilish, Danny Elfman, and Sting, among others.

In addition to her performing career, Ms. Homzy composes and arranges jazz, popular, classical, folk, and world music for diverse performing ensembles. Recent works include her composition “Un Souvenir d’hiver” commissioned by the California String Quartet, her string quartet arrangement of “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay, and her orchestral arrangement can be heard on Kid Cudi’s track “Kitchen”.

As a studio musician, she can be heard (and occasionally seen) on hundreds of movies and TV shows such as “Encanto”, “The Mandalorian”, “Jungle Cruise”,  “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”, “A Star is Born”, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, “Lalaland”, “Glee”, “Rent: Live on Fox”, and on albums by Kelly Clarkson, Leonard Cohen and Seal. She also orchestrated the HBO show “Into The Storm”, and along with Project: CSQ, recorded the whole show remotely during the pandemic.

Luanne Homzy, originally from Montréal, studied with Robert Lipsett and Arnold Steinhardt on a full scholarship at the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles, and later obtained her Masters from the Hamburg Hochschule in Germany. She performs on a violin of unknown origin and maker, likely from the mid 1800s.

Tommy Davy

Whether it’s French waltzes, poignant interpretations of gypsy folk music or the swinging standards of the Hot Club of France, guitarist Tommy demonstrates technical mastery, compositional creativity and feeling.

He has performed internationally with the greatest masters of the Gypsy Jazz Genre, such as Angelo Debarre,  Stochelo Rosenberg, Yorgui Loeffler, Petro Ivanovitch, Stephane Wrembel, Florin Niculescu, Tcha Limberger, Lolo Meier and Andreas Oberg. His vast repertoire also includes Romanian, Hungarian, Yugoslavian and Russian traditional folk music. He is one of the rare few who deeply understands the “old generation” repertoire. Tommy Davy and his ensemble Trio Dinicu have been featured at Django A GO GO NYC, Grand Performances, Djangofest Northwest, Djangofest LA, Djangofest San Francisco, Djangofest Colorado, Music By The Sea at Bamfield and NY Birdland’s Django Reinhardt Festival Tour.

He studied independently and extensively with masters Boulou Ferre, Angelo Debarre, Petro Ivanovitch, Ernest Bango, Frank Anastasio and Serge Camps.

In 2008 Tommy founded DjangoGuitars; a purpose-built specialty shop and preservation hub that brings a deeply-rooted European sensibility to the American guitar market. There are over 150 DjangoGuitars self-produced brand items and accessories offered. Tommy has restored and adjusted some of the most highly regarded and valuable vintage guitars. Tommy’s clientele includes discerning artists and connoisseurs such as Boulou Ferre, Andy Summers, Pat Metheny, Nile Rodgers, Willie Nelson, Angelo Debarre, Stephane Wrembel, Johnny Rosenberg, Stochelo Rosenberg.

Tommy performs on a Selmer-Maccaferri guitar #824.

Felix Kochendörfer

Felix Kochendörfer was born in Weimar, Germany, into a musical family and started playing violin in primary school. In his early teenage years he picked up the trombone which got him into jazz and he started to learn upright bass at the age of 17. Soon after he joined a group of young musicians dedicated to the music of Django Reinhardt, with whom he toured through Germany and Italy.

Felix has lived in Germany, Denmark, and Austria before moving to the United States, where he continues to be an established bass player in the Los Angeles gypsy jazz scene. He has appeared with artists such as Yorgui Loeffler, Christiaan van Hemert, Trio Dinicu, Jimmy Grant, Brad Brose, and the New Orleans Swinging Gypsies.

He studied Acoustics Engineering at Dresden University of Technology and Aalborg University, Denmark and now works primarily as an audio engineer in Los Angeles following his passion to develop high-quality loudspeakers and audio systems.

One of the world’s leading interpreters of the cimbalom ( known as cimbalom, or hammered dulcimer), a symbolic instrument of the Hungarian and Romanian repertoire, a modern and “chromatic” variant of the so-called psaltery, an instrument in which the strings are struck by two stakes.

He was born into a Lautari family, professional musicians mostly of Roma ethnicity, son of the legendary Ion Miu, nicknamed “The Godfather of the Cimbalom”, considered one of the main innovators of the modern technique of the Cimbalom, recognized for having broadened the horizons of the instrument from traditional music to classical music and jazz.

George has spent every single day of his life performing with the most famous musicians in Romania. His repertoire is immense and ranges from popular music from all over the Romanian, Hungarian music, jazz, and classical music, sometimes these repertoires intersect each other in such a natural way that they fade the boundaries between one genre and another.