Ensemble Classes

Mark Levy

Mark Levy created the first week-long Balkan Music & Dance Workshop in 1974, and co-founded the East European Folklife Center in the early 1980s. He recently retired from the faculty of the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, where he taught courses in ethnomusicology, coordinated a world music concert series, and directed the UO East European Folk Music Ensemble.  

Mark has made numerous trips to the Balkans (especially Bulgaria and Macedonia), and has performed clarinet; Thracian, Rhodope, Macedonian, and Serbian gajda; and other aerophones with Aman, Pitu Guli, The Balkantones, Slavej, and Kef.  

Mark lives in Eugene, Oregon.  He is very much looking forward to teaching the Romani and Bulgarian Modern Instrument Ensemble and playing Macedonian village music with Staro Selo at Balkanalia 2024!

David Bilides

David Bilides’ initial encounters with Balkan folk music were the weddings and dances of the New Haven, Connecticut, Asia Minor Greek community in which he grew up. After hearing other Balkan music while attending international folk dancing in high school, he took the first of several trips to the Balkans in 1974, visiting Romania, Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Turkey. He learned dances, made field recordings, and collected instruments. On returning to the United States he taught himself the music and instruments, formed groups, organized festivals and other music events, and performed and taught music and dance from the region.

David has been lucky to study with many wonderful teachers of traditional music and dance from the Balkans. He continues to play, teach, and perform music on a variety of traditional instruments, and has appeared as a guest with different groups and at traditional folk music and dance events in the US and Canada. Currently he is collaborating with Macedonian singer and Radio Skopje recording artist Dragi Spasovski, and plays tapan and kaval in the group Osem i Devet, with Michael Lawson.

Tung Pham

Tung hails from Boston, Massachusetts where he cultivated his love of music at the Boston Arts Academy and University of Massachusetts Lowell. Upon moving to Colorado, he pursued his lifelong dream of becoming a music teacher by completing his master’s degree in Music Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. Today, Tung is an instrumental music teacher at Denver East High School, where he teaches adapted music and leads bands, orchestra, and mariachi.

Tung founded Gora Gora Orkestar in 2009 and since has participated in many local, regional, and nationwide festivals. He is also an active sideman for Colorado-based groups and has appeared with The Widow’s Bane (folk), Mile High Brass Band (New Orleans), Dizzy with a Dame (swing), Rampart Street Stompers (traditional jazz), The Dollhouse Thieves (rock), and Mariachi 303 (Mariachi).