Aldo Perez - Guitar, vocals, flutes, nose flute, deer grunter, toys Jonathon Roberts - Keyboard, piano, casio, vocals, toys, bicycle bell, harmonica, toys Jenny Lee Mitchell - Clarinet, vocals, percussion, sound effects, toys Matthew Talmage - Drums, percussion Matt Muszynski - Tuba Richard Ginocchio - Conga, vocals, washboard
Influences
Queen, Spike Jones, Maria Callas, Gypsy Music, Klezmer, Marlene Dietrich, Piaf, Hendrix, Bach, Dowland, Kurt Weill, Sinatra, Elvis, Towns Van Zandt, Coltrane, Charlie Chaplin, Audrey Meadows, The Art Ensemble, Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball, Jan Koetsier, Hugo Wolf, Andy Kaufmann, Victor Borge, Pavarotti, Ravel, Mahler, Einstuertzende Neubauten, Bollywood, The Tiger Lillies
Sounds Like
Opera meets Ricky and Lucy, Sinatra on Acid, Partidge Family meets The Dead Kennedys, Hillbilly Hendrix
"It was so awesome, our heads exploded."Will Forte, Saturday Night Live
"Mr. Perez and his fellow actors seem to fight against laughing at their own shenanigans. Or are they smirking at that rubber chicken that becomes an unlikely object of Renaldo's affection?"The New York Times
New York City rock group The Renaldo The Ensemble are bizarre, compelling, and often compared to Tom Waits and Talking Heads. This classically-trained band of mischief-makers’ inventive songs and comedic live shows are a staple of the downtown scene. The group is set to release their debut album Why Are You? on November 10. It is an immediately-accessible work that melds elements of indie art rock, tango, opera and Spanish-language ballads.
The Renaldo The Ensemble features a tubist, clarinetist, flamenco guitarist, conga drummer, percussionist, toy pianist and an operatic soprano, and each dresses in costume. There’s the sexy French maid, the jealous valet, the priest, the rival bandleader, the scientist and Renaldo The, a buffoonish aristocrat with a pencil-thin mustache played by Perez. Formerly named Renaldo The Great, when the character emigrated to America from his native Moldavia, immigration officials crossed out “Great” on his green card, branding him simply “Renaldo The.”
Something of a miniature orchestra, The Renaldo The Ensemble holds a bi-weekly residency at downtown Manhattan venue The Living Room. Their shows are part rock concert, part absurdist theatre; Perez plays the pennywhistle with his nose, pops water balloons in his pants and molests a rubber chicken.
Perez is The Renaldo The Ensemble’s singer, guitarist and driving creative force. His real-life story sounds like fiction. The son of a priest from Belarus and a teacher from Spain, he was raised in a blue-collar section of northern Westchester County, fleeing for California to regroup after his father died of cancer. He eventually studied under New York composer John Corigliano and Argentine guitarist Jorge Morel, and went on to lead acclaimed New York band Psycho The Clown. After creating the character Renaldo The with Will Eno in 1995, he wrote, designed and acted in numerous stage shows. His 2007 piece The Curse Of The Mystic Renaldo The – performed at downtown Manhattan theater 3 Legged Dog – received critical acclaim from outlets like The New York Times.
His talents compliment The Renaldo The Ensemble group members Jenny Lee Mitchell, a European-trained soprano, drummer Matthew Talmage – a West African Music scholar and ethnomusicologist -- and conga player Richard Ginocchio. Rounding out the group is tubist Matt Muszynski, a master’s student at Manhattan School of Music whose life’s goal is to “make the brass understood,” and classical and jazz composer Jonathan Roberts, who in 2005 created a multimedia theatre piece with his brother and sister about the Apostle Paul and then bought an RV and traveled across the country performing it for two years.
Why Are You? first single “Good Cry” mixes an ecstatic melody with a woeful, cathartic storyline and features Mitchell on clarinet and Roberts on Yamaha keyboard. “All of my songs are based on a heartbreaking moment,” says Perez. “I don’t write to celebrate. I write to reflect on the horror of everyday life. But it’s a pretty uplifting song. It’s about treating your own self as gently as you might treat an unhappy child.”
Other standout tracks on the album include “Moliendo” (“Coffee grinder”), a cover of a leftist Latin American standard traditionally sung by peasant coffee workers. Tango “La Cumparsita” is the cultural anthem of Uruguay, while “Prendi” and “Lagrima” are from Donizetti’s comic opera Elixir of Love. The group’s 16 mm black and white video for original ballad “Sands In The Glass,” meanwhile, has been chosen for film festivals around the world and won the prize for the best musically-inclined film at The Tregor International Film Fest in France. Then there’s “Peacepipe,” which features a “Purple Haze” Hendrix-like guitar solo and an odd request: “Excuse me, while I pan sear this salmon!”
“I know how every one of these songs effects an audience, because I’ve performed them hundreds of times,” Perez says. “The way they meander, the way they move from mood to mood is very close to what a musical set for us is like. They have a sense of ‘anything can happen.’ Even if our music doesn’t seem like it would fit together, the wonderful thing is that it does.”
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How do i love thee...let me count the ways. Did I mention you are ace, amazing, astonishing, astounding, awe-inspiring, awesome, extraordinary, fabulous, glorious, great, prodigious, superhuman, unreal, and wonderful? Yes, yes you are.
Rats! I came to see you guys but like an hour and a half late. I looked for you kind people to say hello but you were no where to be found. Next time i'll learn to read your show time.. Hope you guys had a blast!
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