Uncle Moon

UNCLE MOON is a wildy-eclectic, "genre diving" band from New York City, creating a sound that maximizes on the potential of guitar, accordion, violin, saxophone and double bass. Their songs incorporate elements of jazz, country, bluegrass, klezmer, Cajun, cabaret, poetry and “art” music. They've been called: "A carnival of sounds, from the carousel to the horror show,” “Kurt Weill at the Grand ‘Ol Opry” and “the closest that performance art music has come to moonshine.”

We perform a great deal of original material and our fans also appreciate our unique arrangements of several well-known tunes. We do a tortured version of “My Heart Belongs To Daddy” that weaves from Sam Shepard poetry to explore the darker side of a father-son relationship. We throw the classic “Thank Heaven For Little Girls” into the meat grinder with Edvard Greig, Tom Waits and a pinch of Fritz Lang’s “M” to form a savory musical sausage. We perform special arrangements of material from diverse artists ranging from Thelonious Monk and Django Reinhardt, to Velvet Underground and The Butthole Surfers. We love spoken-word material and have scored music to works from poets like Edna St. Vincent Millay, Tennessee Williams, Hal Sirowitz and Michael Waters.

Our players are drawn from a number of bands that are or were popular in the New York scene. Our sax player, Fritz Van Orden, played and wrote many of the tunes for The Ordinaires. Violinist Deni Bonet has played with REM, Sarah McLaughlin, Robyn Hitchcock and Cyndi Lauper. Violinist Claudia Chopek performs with Shelby, Cerveris and is a regular in the Loser's Lounge band. Violinist Claudia Mogel plays with the Brooklyn-based country band Oakley Hall. Veteran bassist Scott Selig, has played with Ambulance and Yellow Fin. Trey Kay, guitar and vocals, performed in Meredith Monk’s Mercy at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Accordionist Carl Riehl has performs regularly at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and most recently performed music in the extended Off-Broadway run of Bukowski From Beyond.

In 2003, we headlined an evening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music where we performed the entire Velvet Underground and Nico (Banana) album as a part of the BAMcinematek’s Andy Warhol Film Retrospective. In 2005, we wrote and performed the score to the Off-Broadway show, Architecture or Sight.