Steve Sandberg and Zach Brock to perform at Millburn Library

The Millburn Free Public Library is pleased to welcome back Steve Sandberg and Zach Brock to the library on Thursday, May 31 at 6:00pm in the auditorium.

Steve Sandberg is an eclectic musician with a lifetime of experience in many worlds of music.
He is a three-time Emmy-nominated composer whose scoring, songwriting and musical direction for “Dora the Explorer”, “Go, Diego, Go!” and “Dora and Friends” helped make these shows the landmarks they are in children’s television worldwide.

He began classical piano studies at age 4 and won a BMI composers award before attending Yale University, where he majored in musical theory and composition. At Yale, his studies with noted African art theorist Robert Farris Thompson inspired him to immerse himself in the world of Afro-Caribbean music. Upon returning to NYC he played with, arranged and composed for some of the great salsa artists of the 1970s and 1980s, including Celia Cruz, Ruben Blades, and Daniel Ponce (featuring Tito Puente). A highlight of this period was an appearance in Rio and São Paolo opening for the legendary João Gilberto in a duo with vocalist Bebel Gilberto. He also toured with David Byrne (“Rei Momo”) as keyboardist and vocalist. Steve has conducted and arranged on Broadway (Chronicle of a Death Foretold) and for many regional and Off-Broadway theatres, including the New York Shakespeare Festival.

Steve has performed improvised electronic multimedia concerts at the Knitting Factory, The Guggenheim Museum, Le Petit Versailles, and the Stone, featuring his unique voice on the breath-controlled Yamaha VL70 synthesizer. These concerts were heavily influenced by his studies of North Indian raga singing.
His latest project is the Steve Sandberg Quartet. SSQ concerts begin with performances from the solo piano repertoire (including original compositions), and continue with the quartet’s soaring improvisations on originals that draw from European, African, Latin, Balkan and Indian traditions. One listener described the experience as listening to “music from a country I’ve never been to but always wanted to visit.”

Zach Brock is a Grammy Award-winning violinist and composer whose music evokes the spirits of John Coltrane, Béla Bartók, and Jimi Hendrix. He has been recognized for his "soaring lyricism, audacious ingenuity, and masterful command of the instrument." Downbeat Magazine named Zach it's 'Rising Star Violinist' of 2013. Besides fronting his own critically acclaimed projects, Zach has recorded and toured all over the world with Snarky Puppy, Stanley Clarke, and Phil Markowitz. Neill Tesser has called him "the pre-eminent improvising violinist of his generation.

This program is free to all and is generously sponsored by the Friends of the Millburn Library. The Millburn Library is located at 200 Glen Ave., Millburn, NJ 07041 and can be reached at 973-376-1006.