Saturday, 06.08 / 20:00 / Main Stage @Castle
“Igor Prado is a high-class guitarist. No wonder the Brazilian was nominated for a blues-music-award in the United States!” (Rolling Stone magazine)
“Oh yes, Raphael plays a dynamic brand of B-3, his passion commensurate with his technique and his creative intelligence. He’s a high-voltage dynamo but also a musician of surprising delicacy and self-reflection. Call him one of the finest blues/funk/jazz B-3 operators anywhere.” (Downbeat magazine)
Search the world over and you’ll have a hard time finding too more funky musicians than Austria-born keyboard player Raphael Wressnig and Brazilian-born guitarist Igor Prado, and they simply smoke from the jump in this set of high-voltage blues and roots certain to keep you moving and grooving throughout.
A master of the Hammond B-3, Wressnig is a five-time Downbeat magazine nominee for best organ player of the year, delivering his own unique sound – a greasy fusion of soul, New Orleans funk, jazz and blues as leader of The Soul Gift Band. He’s released about 20 albums under his own name and frequently collaborates with top names from the U.S. music scene, including guitarist Alex Schultz and Big Easy talents Jon Cleary, George Porter Jr. and Walter “Wolfman” Washington.
A jump blues stylist who plays the six-string upside down and backwards, like Wressnig, Prado has been a fixture on the international blues scene for the better part of 25 years. Influenced by Albert King, Blind Willie Johnson and Chuck Berry, he divides his time between his homeland and the West Coast, where he’s been a member of the Mannish Boys and recorded with Curtis Salgado, Tia Carroll, Aki Kumar, Lynwood Slim, Whitney Shay and others.
He’s also the first South American to earn a Blues Music Award nomination thanks to his 2015 release, Way Down South, and to hit the No. 1 spot on Living Blues’ radio charts, too. This is his second disc with Wressnig — a follow-up to The Soul Connection, also on the Pepper Cake imprint in 2016.
Raphael Wressnig – Hammond B-3 organ, vocals
Igor Prado – guitars, vocals
Yuri Prado – drums