Brad Shepik

Guitarist and composer Brad Shepik is a distinctive voice in New York's creative-music community, known for weaving Balkan, Middle Eastern, and other world traditions into a jazz vocabulary. Raised in Seattle and a graduate of Cornish College and New York University, he moved to New York in 1990 and became a fixture of the downtown scene, playing in Dave Douglas's Tiny Bell Trio, Paul Motian's Electric Bebop Band, and the genre-crossing groups Pachora and Paradox Trio. On guitar and instruments such as the Turkish saz and Bulgarian tambura, he has explored Eastern European folk forms across nine albums and more as a leader, among them records by his organ trio and the Human Activity quintet. He is also a longtime educator, teaching at NYU, the New England Conservatory, and City College. He performs regularly around the city, from Bar Bayeux jam sessions to Bar Lunatico.