Have a blast with Balkan music

Astrid Kuljanić and musicians of the Transatlantic Exploration Company will rock the Milford Theatre on Saturday, Dec. 14, with music and song of the Balkans and western Europe, American jazz, Brazilian samba, holiday-related tunes, and more.

After the concert, attendees will be welcomed to a wine and cheese reception with Kuljanić and the band. Children under 15 will get free admission to this performance.

Kuljanić is a singer, songwriter, and, arranger from Croatia, a place where Slavs and Italians have interacted for centuries.

"The strange and new quickly ceases to be exotic and simply becomes 'our music,'" she said.

No surprise, then, that she has added jazz standards, bossa nova, klezmer, Caribbean music, and other far-reaching styles to her background in traditional Croatian songs. It helps, too, that her Transatlantic Exploration Club bandmates are from three different parts of this hemisphere: bass player Mat Muntz hails from Seattle, percussionist Rogerio Boccato from Brazil, and accordionist Benjamin Rosenblum from New York.

Kuljanić's quartet has recorded on One Trick Dog Records, and she has performed in venues as different as Carnegie Hall and the Jazz Standard, not to mention the Kennedy Center in the nation's capital and a long list of international jazz and world music festivals. Critics refer to her "behemoth personality with matching voice and talent," someone who has "a transcendant way of connecting with her audience." Adds World Music Central, "Astrid and her players sound like they’re having a blast, and the music is hard to classify, but the whole thing is head-spinning good."