Oktopus at the 2019 Mission Folk Festival

The instrumental creature known as Oktopus extends its creative tentacles across the landscape of East European music with an effervescent concoction of new and reinvented elements of the repertoire. Their exuberant harmony of bows, keys, valves, and mouths strikes a chord in music lovers’ hearts (and feet), bringing pure joy to audiences. In 2017, Oktopus released their second album, Hapax, which was nominated for a Juno and Canadian Folk Music Award.

An Oktopus performance whisks audiences away on a vibrant journey, following the trail of the klezmorim across Europe, then eastward to the moving sands and sound of the Maghreb, and as far east as the Urals, where the group’s soulful renditions of the oral traditions of the Balkans echo the tears of the dispossessed. Seeing Oktopus perform live will transport you, transform you, entrance you, and enhance your desire to dance on and on. Their European melodies blended with classical masterpieces, and a sprinkling of Québec song for good measure, take on a sort of classical balkanized klezmer, that is, in a word, spectacular