Vardos have been serenading audiences around the world for more than a decade.
Vardos have toured to every state in Australia; festivals include Four Winds, National, Port Fairy, Victor Harbour, Illawarra, Cygnet, Cobargo and Fairbridge Folk Festivals, the Bellingen Global Carnival, the Queenscliff Music Festival, the National Multicultural Festival in Canberra, the Alice Desert Festival and the Melbourne Festival where they launched the CD "Entertaining Countess Dracula" to a sell-out crowd at the Famous Spiegeltent. They have even played at the chill out zone "The Village" at the Falls Festival over the new year in Marion Bay, Tasmania Lorne, Victoria.
In Melbourne in 2010 they supported "Besh o Drom" and "Antal Szalai Gypsy Band" (both from Hungary), "Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club" at Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne and the "Gipsy Kings" at the Palais, St Kilda.
Television appearances in Australia include cameos on "Spicks and Specks", ABC TV, "The Footy Show", Channel 9, and Seachange (Series 3) ABC TV . They also feature in Ruth Cullen's documentary on artist Vali Myers, Painted Lady. (see Films)
Vardos have toured internationally to New Zealand, Noumea in New Caledonia, Geneva in Switzerland and around Hungary, have showcased in the United States, and had successful shows at the Famous Spiegeltent in the Edinburgh Fringe and the Nokia /Orange Spiegeltent in the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Vardos were nominated for the 2003 BBC Radio3 World Music Awards (Audience Award) and returned to Edinburgh in 2004 where they received a 4 star review!(see Reviews )
VARDOS performed in 2010 at the West meets East Roma and Traveller Festival (London), Museum of the Bohemian (Amsterdam), Szent Ivan FolkFest (Hungary) and bars in Berlin.
The two most recent VARDOS CD's have been finalists for the Golden Fiddle Awards.
"Violinist Alana Hunt is the live wire in chief, encouraging the audience to clap along - but in and at the right time please - by appearing menacingly at their tables, and regaling them with unlikely tales of drunken clocks, broken curfews and short-sighted shepherds" (Rob Adams, Edinburgh)
Alana formed the band in 1993 in Perth, where Vardos worked professionally for five years, appearing in many festivals including the Fremantle Festival and the Festival of Perth; during this time Alana also made two trips to Hungary to study Hungarian folk music with Beata Salamon (Meta folk music band) and gypsy music with Miklos Konya. Sofia and Alana have made five trips to Eastern Europe together since 1999. (see Travels in Hungary and Romania)Sofia Chapman trained as a classical pianist until discovering and running away with the piano accordion in 1993. It has been said that she "could play Shakespeare's complete works with her eyebrows" (The Herald, Edinburgh).
Sofia played with Xenos Macedonian Gypsy Band for four years in Australia, Britain and Portugal, and has been a guest musician on CD's of Zulya Kamalova and Barb Dwyer. She is also a composer and an award-winning playwright, earning the Melbourne Fringe "Best Emerging Writer" award for her epic "The Four Accordionists of the Apocalypse" which was performed at La Mama Courthouse in 2012.Kirri Buchler
Kirri Buchler is a multi-instrumentalist, sound designer, composer and sound artist who has performed in various ensembles in Melbourne and around Australia and has studied internationally. She has played and improvised music for Sanctum Theatre and Roundangle and has collaborated with Sofia as a sound artist and actor on her plays "The Anorexic Chef" and "The Four Accordionists of the Apocalypse", the short film "The Albino Bride" and the band "The Kurts".
