Adrian Jost, Bandoneon
Adrian Jost studied music in the French Riviera and his native country, Switzerland. As a young boy , he won the gold medal of the French Association of Accordionists at age 11. This led him to study the Bayan with composer Fritz Tschannen, Switzerland’s teacher of teachers, and later with world-class performer Stephane Chapuis.
Jost started down his musical path because he liked to push buttons. “It’s funny,” he concedes, “but at first it wasn’t really the music. When I was a kid, I drove everyone crazy switching switches and pushing buttons. My uncle was a pilot. He’d take me on flights. The cockpit had so many buttons – I was in heaven. One day my family visited a neighbor and he was playing the accordion. I saw all those buttons and thought, ‘This is what I want to do!’” His parents had other ideas. “It was not the kind of instrument you’d play in a symphony; it wasn’t a ‘respectable’ instrument,” Jost says. “My mother wanted me to play the violin, the piano … I tried them all very politely and at the end of every class, I said, ‘I want to play the accordion.’” He completed a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Yverdon, won the 1996 Landis&Gyr contest , and went to Chicago to work for Siemens. There he discovered Tango while pursuing a Master’s degree in science at Northwestern University, where he started the transition to the iconic bandoneón. The high-tech industry brought Adrian to the Silicon Valley where, in 2001, he co-founded Trio Garufa, a tango group that plays for dancers and concerts throughout the San Francisco area and has also enthralled audiences throughout the West Coast, Argentina, Colombia, Canada and at various Tango festivals. His influences include Leopoldo Frederico, Salgan's Nuevo Quinteto Real, Aníbal Troilo and Julio Pane. He has appeared as soloist with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra and performed alongside tango singer María Volonté, tango pianists Pépé Motta, Seth Asarnow and San Francisco's Jazz Bassist Marcus Shelby. He also performs in duo with Pablo Estigarribia. His discography includes Tango en el Mate, La Segunda Tradición and El Rumor de tus tangos by Trio Garufa, Revirado of Tango Pacifico, a five-piece tango group based in Portland , Oregon, playing the music of Astor Piazzolla, and eXtraordinary Rendition with Rupa and the April Fishes. |