How it all began....

ZUM is the brainchild of cellist, Chris Grist. Chris came up with the idea late in 2000 after firstly having been introduced to the genius of Astor Piazzolla (through the music of US guitarist, Al di Meola) and then on hearing a gig at Ronnie Scotts in London of the renowned Hungarian gypsy violinist, Roby Lakatos. Unable to get the two strands out of his head, he came up with the idea of fusing the two to create a completely new genre,
Gypsy Tango.

Chris called up pianist, Dave Gordon, and violinist, Adam Summerhayes to discuss the project with them. He arranged a meeting to which Chris was 2 hours late, Adam didn't show up and Dave said he wouldn't have any time to write the music – it was destined to be a sure-fire hit!

Eventually Dave and Adam did get together, wrote and arranged the music and ZUM was born....or at least a band with no name was born, and it stayed that way for 18 months! After some truly appalling brain-storming sessions trying to find a name, someone suggested ZUM, after a piece by Astor Piazzolla that we particularly enjoyed playing. It seemed to sum up everything about us, so ZUM we are.

It transpired that the project was a natural meeting of musical worlds - both halves of the music originated from poor beginnings; the gypsy from the back streets of Eastern Europe and the tango from the ‘bordellos’ of South America - and both subsequently went on to be embraced by the concert halls of the West, admired for the sheer beauty and soulfulness of the music. Not only did the music all originate long ago from the same place (gypsies who took different routes across Europe, some ending up in eastern Europe, the others heading to Spain where émigrés then took Spanish music to the Americas where it became tango), but these two folk-music styles then grew independently in parallel from opposite sides of the Atlantic, using almost identical instruments.

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