Garo Tavitjan is an international music artist and award-winning drummer, composer, arranger
and producer. Over the past 25 years, Garo has performed over 500 large concert performances of
his own in the countries of Europe, England, Asia, United States and the Balkans. World renowned
critics from the magazines Jazz Times, All About Jazz, Concerto, New York Spectator, Guardian,
Daily News, and Jazz Corner highly evaluate his music and performance. Garo's musical expression
is a unique blend of several musical genres combined with the expressive elements of jazz. His
musical beginnings are linked with his legendary father, a rock icon who is the founder and most
influential ambassador of the Balkan & Macedonian modern irregular rhythms.
Garo received a scholarship from Berklee in 2001 and at the Wolfgang Jazz Academy in Germany in
2002 and studied elementary and music in high school in Skopje. Garo received many awards as a
percussionist, drummer and producer. He made the first Macedonian snare drum with GS Handcraft
and created the first drum clinic in Macedonia.
In 1996, Garo became a member of the established jazz/fusion/etno band called Paramecium, in
which they recorded several albums and performed more than 100 large concert performances. After
a long period of various performances and collaborations, Garo Tavitjan officially continued his
work in 2002 with his brothers under the name Tavitjan Brothers. The same year, they won the
international competition of the Sony Jazz in London. In 2006, Garo received an award for the
Best Jazz Album for the first time in Macedonian history, and in 2008 an award for Concert of
the Year for his concert at the Universal Hall in Skopje. This is also the first sold out and
award-winning jazz concert in the history of his country. With his band, Garo is the first
Balkan jazz band to ever visit so many countries and world known festivals and sold-out concert
halls. The same band won the Sony Jazz International competition and released music for the same
label. Over the years, Garo has recorded over 25 albums and appeared on more than 100 albums
(over 1 million records sold overall). Garo is known for inventing his unique Balkan rhythms and
polymetric approach (with ostinato) which brought him to worldwide clinics and making a
historical drum album (2008) named Macedonian Rhythms & Improvisations (with irregular time
signature), reviewed with 5 stars in Concerto magazine.
Garo has collaborated with world renowned artists like Mike Stern (Miles Davis), Eric
Marienthal (Chick Corea Elektric band), Rhani Krija (Sting), Oz Noy, Dave Weckl, Morris Pleasure
(Michael Jackson, Earth, Wind & Fire), Clivia Tanisi, the legendary Grammy-nominated vocal
Roseanna Vitro, Jazz Ambassadors (founded by Miles Davis and D. Gillespie), Fernando Saunders
(Lou Reed), The Hollywood star Rade Serbedzija (Mission Impossible, Lord of the Rings), John
Marshall, James East and many others. He has shared the stage with artists such as Joe Zawinul,
Gary Burton, Branford Marsalis, Raul Midon, Erik Trufaz, The Blues Brothers, Gato Barbieri,
Phillip Catherine, Antonio Sanchez and others. As a jazz marketing inventor, Garo believed in
ideology that avant-garde music should be broadcasted in mainstream media, and he appeared on
more than 250 TV interviews and 160 magazines worldwide. He became Ford cars' brand ambassador
which makes him the first drummer in its history.
In his potent concert agenda, Garo has sold out concerts with the Tavitjan brothers at the
world`s most prestigious venues, such as the legendary Blue Note (2 concerts sold in NYC) and
the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York (as the only jazz musician from the Balkans to ever
achieve that with his brother Diran), Nublu (NY), Hot House (Germany), Drummer's Collective, the
concert hall Aram Khachaturian in Armenia, the Jazz Festival in London, the Symphony Halls in
Sofia, Armenia, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Norway, Sava Center in Belgrade, Cankarjev Dom in
Slovenia, as well as numerous concerts in Germany, England, Switzerland, Norway, France, Italy,
Brazil, Ireland, Denmark, Russia, Romania, Portugal, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, Greece and other
countries of EU.
Garo appeared in the world's No.1 drum magazine Modern Drummer and Drum Talk TV (USA), and also
signed for the Mezzo label, Croatia Records, City Records, Alliance records, Vertical Jazz
Records, etc.
Garo is also established as an award-winning composer/producer/arranger, who collaborated with
high profile Balkan and world stars such as the Hollywood actor/singer Rade Serbedzija, Goran
Bregovic, Zeljko Bebek (Bijelo Dugme), Josipa Lisac, Teresa Kesovija, Oliver Dragojevic, Aki
Rahimovski (Parni Valjak), Oliver Mandic, Nina Badric, Massimo Savic, Zeljko Joksimovic, Goran
Karan, Jelena Tomasevic, Sergej Cetkovic, Sead Lipovaca, Esma Redzepova and many others. He's
written over 400 compositions, productions and arrangements.
With his brother, Garo has two #1 best-selling albums (200,000 CDs) of the decade in
consecutive periods from 2008 to 2014, and performed the largest concert in history held at the
Skopje stadium in front of more than 70,000 people. He performed at the same sold-out stadium
three times.
In 2014, Garo created the Tavitjan Play Classics project with Diran, where their focus is on
the most famous compositions by great classical composers such as Bach, Mozart and Chopin,
combining them with modern musical styles, irregular rhythms, rich harmonic solutions and
virtuosic improvisations in new arrangements. In addition to the piano trio, they later
developed the same project for a large symphony and small ensemble orchestra, followed by a tour
across Europe.
Garo received the title "European Ambassador of Jazz in Armenia" from the Yerevan
government and received a golden plate in Mezzo's Hall of Fame, along with celebrities Charles
Aznavour, Alain Delon, Dmitry Hvorostovsky, Krzyztof Penderecki, Evgeny Kissin, Gonzalo
Rubalcaba, Flavio Briatore, and Derek Sherinian, to name a few.