Orkestar Bez Ime (OBI)

Orkestar Bez Ime [or-KESS-tar behz EE-meh], meaning “orchestra without a name” in Bulgarian, was formed in 2002 to recreate the sounds of the village with a presentation as festive as the music itself. Focusing on Eastern Europe and music of the Rom (“Gypsy”) people, OBI’s repertoire reaches from Albania to Ukraine, with plenty of stops in between. Orkestar Bez Ime is a winner of the 2011-2012 McKnight Artist Fellowships for Performing Musicians administered by MacPhail Center for Music and a recipient of a 2012 Minnesota Emerging Composers Award from the American Composers Forum.

OBI is: Colleen Bertsch, Scott Keever, Matt Miller, Katrina Mundinger, Natalie Nowytski, and Eric Ray.