Guitarist/improvisor/oudist/sarodiyya Mustafa Stefan Dill was born in New Mexico to a Mexican mother and German-Irish father. His mutli-national and cross-cultural childhood experiences include strong memories with Lebanese relatives in Mexico and formative years in the culturally diverse city of Montpellier, France.
His initial music - an intense and unique convergence of traditional flamenco elements and modern free improvisation - won critical praise with recordings such as "Warning Clothed in Bright Robes of Dawn", "Sangre Del Rio", and "Six Peaces", paving the way for the current approach of combining modern and traditional improvising techniques within a deep immersion of various cultural musical traditions.
A guitarist for over 30 years, he earned a Masters degree in composition from the New England Conservatory in Boston, studying with Joe Maneri. He has performed in solo concerts throughout Europe since 1992 in both improvised music and guitar circles at such venues and festivals as FMP's Total Music Meeting, Wirral Guitar Festival, Paderborn Guitar Festival, Zuid Nederlands Jazz Festival, Festival HispanoAmericano de la Guitarra, Erlbach, Nickelsdorf, and others.
He has performed with artists such as Cecil Taylor (special invitation as part of the Ensemble, Knitting Factory, May 1996), Guus Janssen (Eindhoven 1995), and more recently with mJane and Out of Context.
He has also maintained the adventurous energy of classic progressive rock and free jazz in such projects as the Stefan Dill Trio's release Run For Heaven (2002).
His current focus is the Sama Duo with percussionist Jefferson Voorhees, a groove-oriented energetic jamrock improv/ free jazz duet with a south Asian twist (think Bill Frisell and late Coltrane guesting with the White Stripes in Calcutta).
Sama' Duo retains an improvisational focus, applying a deep core of both cutting-edge and ancient improvising methods within the musical traditions of India and the Middle East. The Duo reaches into the inner aspects of form and method from the established traditions, adds their previous experience as post-modern improvisors to the process and wraps it all with a rhythmically- driven, wide-ranging classic rock/funk ethos.
The group takes as its name a nuanced Arabic term that describes the spectrum of relationships between intense listening, sprituality, and music-making itself.
The Duo was chosen in 2006 to provide the music score for the independent film "Birth of a Pillow" by director Sharmy Pandey, from Kolkata, India. The film is a 47 minute feature with no dialogue, requiring a continuous music score that would amplify and emotionally detail the story to a very high degree.
The Duo's current instrumentation is fretless electric guitar and drum set, though they still use the sarod/tabla combination that marked their earlier phase, as well as the underutlilzed oud/gome combination.
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