Dean Brown

Dean Brown has been playing Balkan music for longer then he likes to admit. It was his idea (ahem - "artistic vision") to start Rakiya, so he got stuck doing the work to make it happen. Now he gets to be a drummer and play with musicians, which keeps him happy and out of trouble. Dean also plays with the bands Cambridge Folk Orchestra, Zdravets, Zornitsa, and Shining Moon.

Colin Ferguson

Surrounded by music and musicians since early childhood, Colin became immersed in the international folk music scene in 1991 when he joined the Mandala Folk Dance Ensemble Orchestra. Since then he has played in practically every international recreational folk dance band in the Boston area. Recordings on which he appears include From Our Garden (with Zdravets), Rags to Racenicas (with the Flying Tomatoes), and Passport to the World of Music and Dance (with the Bicoastal Band). Colin plays accordion, keyboard, and dumbek with Rakiya. He is also a member of Boston-based band Shining Moon.

Dave Golber

Dave Golber began to play clarinet in the grammar school band in Chicago. In college he discovered Balkan music was more fun than Sousa or Schubert. In Los Angeles he played in the orchestra of the music and dance ensemble AMAN, playing clarinet and folk winds. He is particularly fond of the music of Macedonia (the slavic country just north of the Greek border, not the Greek province of the same name). He speaks some Macedonian; in the AMAN Macedonian suite, he played clarinet, gajda (bagpipe), kaval (end-blown flute) and zurla (double-reed), one after the other. In Rakiya, he usually plays C clarinet: the sound has more of a nasty bite than the usual Bb instrument.

Heather Lee

Heather Lee began playing and singing Balkan music with the Mandala Folk Dance Ensemble in 1999. Since then, she has performed with several Boston area groups. Heather is currently a member of Divi Zheni, a Bulgarian women's choir, and Shining Moon, an international folk dance band. Heather studies voice with internationally acclaimed singer Tatiana Sarbinska.

Alan Mattes

Alan Mattes was classically trained on trumpet but his performance background has been primarily in jazz and jazz-rock, playing mostly in the Chicago area. He has since added tenor and soprano sax to his arsenal. He attended Berklee College of Music in the late 70's studying performance and audio, and has been a professional recording engineer for the last 25 years. He's currently a staff engineer at WGBH radio in Boston and in his spare time also records and produces a variety of CD projects. During the past few years, he has recorded a number of ethnic CD's and been drawn to ethnic music, primarily that of the Balkans and the Middle East. In addition to bringing his saxes and flugelhorn to Rakiya, he also plays flugelhorn with the Poludaktulos Orchestra, a Boston-based Greek-Macedonian Brass Band

Tim McNerney

Tim McNerney has been playing bass guitar in jazz and folk rock bands since 1983. In the late '80s, he discovered the wonderful rhythms of Balkan folk music, first as a dancer, and now in Rakiya as a dance musician. By day, Tim works as an engineer, designing electronics and software for biometric cameras. Tim has a bachelor's degree in music in computer science from Union College and a master's degree in media arts and sciences from MIT.

Patrick Yacono

Patrick Yacono, who has been tootling away on various Bulgarian wind instruments since the late 80's, jumped at the chance to be in a band where he had to bring only one instrument (clarinet) to rehearsals. He has performed at numerous festivals and folk music events throughout the Northeastern US, Canada, and Bulgaria. Besides playing and singing with Rakiya, he plays with several other folk music groups (Zdravets, Zornitsa, the Cambridge Folk Orchestra and the Pinewoods Band) and juggles his folk music activity with a career as a concert pianist and his work as a part-time researcher at the Harvard Medical School.

Tev Stevig

Guitarist/Composer Tev Stevig was born in 1973 and raised on the Central Coast of California. After graduating from UC Santa Barbara, he enrolled at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. While at Berklee, he had the opportunity to study with many great musicians, including Mick Goodrick, Hal Crook, Dave Santoro, John Damien, Rick Peckham, Bret Willmott, and Bruce Bartlett. After concluding his studies, Tev began experimenting with several Middle Eastern and Balkan instruments, including cumbus (pronounced joom-bush), Bulgarian and Macedonian tambura, Turkish oud, tambur, and baglama saz. His interest in the rhythms and melodies of Eastern European and Middle Eastern music eventually led him to find performance and compositional outlets that would incorporate his jazz/improvisation background with his multi-instrumentalist capabilities. Tev currently lives in the Boston area, where he is busy performing, composing, and teaching music. In addition to his own original music projects, Tev's compositions are featured in his performances as a founding member of the original world/jazz collaborative group Bajuco. His other current projects include the Balkan/Gypsy music octet Rakiya, the traditional Bulgarian band Zdravets, Balkanski Motivi - a group performing original music inspired by the rhythms of the Balkans, Balmus - a group dedicated to creating new sounds that fuse Balkan, Byzantine and Middle Eastern music, Jeni Jol (New Path) - a quartet that performs Greek music and Turkish influenced Macedonian urban music called calgija (pronounced chal-gya), the Poludaktulos Orchestra - Tev's new Northern Greek brass band, the David Andrew Moore (DAM) Band which focuses on original compositions for jazz quartet, and a collaboration with vocalist/guitarist Jennifer Matthews - an original music project with influences from North Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.