Goran Rista

By Marty Peters

There are several famous scenes in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where our
lovable desperadoes, unable to escape from an unidentified posse, offer up the now famous line,
“who are those guys?” Well folks, that is exactly them same thing we said when we first heard
“Horizant”. Who ARE those guys?
The superlatives are almost embarrassing! World class? Radio ready? Top shelf? You choose.
Superior performances and tones in a beautifully composed piece of music. Oh and by the way,
much of it was done with the help of the internet, as several of the players live on different
continents.
So there it is, friends—the bar has just been raised. If this is the quality of work that can be
accomplished by home recordists, the future of our business looks bright indeed.
Summary: What else can I say? Five Stars! - Recording Magazine

By Mark Robinson

Goran Rista is a young musician, composer, engineer and
producer originally from Serbia who has travelled the world
working with some top musicians in his quest to play his own
music his own way.
On his website Rista says "many times I have been frustrated to play in this or that
way and not have much artistic control over what is going on around me musically"
so for this release Rista completely took control by producing, engineering and
mixing the disc. Six of the nine tracks are composed by Rista, one track is composed
by his father (who was a guitarist) and two tracks were composed by guitarist Boyan
Rista.
That is not to say that Rista plays all instruments himself, far from it, just most of
them. Rista has used several highly respected musicians to great effect throughout
the release. New Zealand based Colin Hemmingsen provides delicate saxophone
lines on three of the tracks. Violinist Pedro Alfonso provides an energetic violin solo
on the wonderful world-jazz track "Have We Met Before", Alex Norris provides very
nice flugelhorn work on "And We'll Dance".
An interesting point about the production was Rista's use of the internet as a
mechanism to pull instrumental parts of the cd together. The saxophone parts were
recorded in Wellington New Zealand, John Field recorded and engineered his parts
in Hollywood, Pedro Alfonso and Luis Mejia in Miami, Boyan in London with the final
mix performed by Rista in his studio in Miami. Indeed it is the extra sound and feel
that these wonderful musicians bring to the whole that makes this such an enjoyable
release. There is an overall feeling of joy and energy that flows from track to track.
One comes away feeling enriched having spent an hour within Rista's World. - George Jazz- George FM Radio