What a celebration is in store for Martenitsa, Mara! and friends at Parramatta Riverside theatres in March next year! A grand concert will present some key retrospective works of Martenitsa, Mara! and the combined ensembles, plus an exciting collaboration with with special guests Transylvaniacs and Kengugro dancers will present several new collaborative items - drawing on their Hungarian roots. More details will be announced soon.
Mara! big band takes off in 2021
We are very proud to announce that a dream of ours - the Mara! big band - will become a reality in 2021. With financial assistance from Create NSW and the Australia Council for the Arts, a 12 piece ensemble, based on the Mara! lineup of Mara and Llew Kiek, Paul Cutlan, Sandy Evans and Lloyd Swanton will be expanded with our esteemed friends Andrew Robson (alto and baritone saxes), James Greening (trombone and pocket trumpet), Tunji Beier (percussion), Sam Golding (various brass), Gary Daley (accordion), and the voices of Silvia Entcheva (soprano) and Jarnie Birmingham (alto). You can expect some massive textures covering Anglo/Celtic, Balkan and Middle Eastern sonic worlds.
For more information 
Mara! and Martenitsa new album update
With recording sessions at Megaphon Studios, Unversal Forbes St, and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Mara! and Martenitsa's exciting next CD is currently being edited.
This will be a CD devoted to showcasing a wealth of previously unrecorded works composed and commissioned especially for Martenitsa Choir and the Mara! band.
Composers include Llew and Mara Kiek, Paul Cutlan, Laura Bishop and Sandy Evans in addition to Bulgaria's premier choral composer, the late Ivan Spasov. Librettists include Stephan Kozuharov, Marcia Malinova-Anthony, Silvia Entcheva and Mara Kiek.
Engineers Steve Morley, Chris Doherty and associate producer Guy Dickerson are also contributing their expertise.
Crossroads: work continues on new album
Mara and Llew, with Padrig Sicard from Quimper and Yann Cariou from Concarneau, aim to complete a new album for their group Crossroads next year. Planned to be released in 2020, the project won't be continued until international travel restrictions are eased, enabling Llew and Mara to travel to Britanny for furher recording. We hope this will be possible in mid 2021.
For more news
Tra Parole E Silenzio Mara! and Martenitsa's latest CD
Tra Parole e Silenzio is a celebration of life's most precious and enduring treasures - love, home, family and friends, so exquisitely expressed in the poignantly tender poems of Eduardo Di Giovanni and stunningly interpreted by Mara! Band composers and performers Paul Cutlan, Andrew Robson, Steve Elphick, Llew Kiek, Mara Kiek and Sandy Evans, in collaboration with Silvia Entcheva, Naomi Vaughan and the magnificent Martenitsa choir.
More about Tra Parole e Silenzio.
CD available from our online store.
from Froots (UK) Dec 2012
"The Sydney Morning Herald once referred to Mara! as "the Dom Perignon of (Australia's) World Music Bands", it was perhaps a touch premature, but this collaboration between the group and their Bulgarian-style choir certainly meets that appellation...an unqualified success with its feeling of fresh adventure, sumptuous singing and depth of musical experience."
Read Tra Parole CD review in "The Australian" of April 14, 2012