Album Notes

Zabava is a widely-used Slavic word for party – a music-focused, heart-pounding, dance-driven gathering of virtuoso musicians intent on having a very good time. The spirit of the music at the center of these parties inspired this recording. It’s a nod to that tradition of instrumental fire, infused with a modern club vibe.

Zabava is the second recording released by trumpeter Charles Lazarus. An avid proponent of original music and an active soloist and composer, Lazarus is also a member of the Minnesota Orchestra. He premiered an original orchestral pops show, A Night in the Tropics, with that group in 2007. Critic Rod Smith writes of his music "Roll over Martin Denny, and tell Yma Sumac the news: Charles Lazarus has supplanted you both and then some. Informed by classical music and jazz (as well as life itself), the Minneapolis-based trumpet virtuoso's far-ranging exotica eschews cheap theatrics in favor of solid composition and the kind of self-assurance that skews toward eloquent understatement, evoking myriad realms every bit as pregnant with possibility as the one we inhabit."

Lazarus has been a member of some of the best-known brass ensembles in the world, including Canadian Brass, Dallas Brass and the Meridian Arts Ensemble. In 2007, he was awarded a prestigious McKnight Fellowship for Performing Musicians.