Souren Baronian, born in 1930 in New York City of Armenian parentage, grew up in Spanish Harlem surrounded by music, especially the sounds of Middle Eastern music, jazz and Latin genres. Barely a teenager, he would sneak into the jazz clubs on 52nd Street and listen to Bird and Diz and the other great musicians of the day. His greatest early inspiration was the "Prez," Lester Young. He later studied for many years with the legendary jazz teacher Lennie Tristano and was at the same time mentored on the G-clarinet by the extraordinary Turkish master Safet Gundeger, who was then playing in the 8th Avenue clubs in "Greek Town" during the hedyay of New York's Middle Eastern music scene in the… 1950s, another of Souren's main haunts. He would soon be playing in all those clubs himself. Souren is solidly rooted in both Middle Eastern/Balkan idioms and jazz, and may have been the first to create a "fusion" of these two genres in the late 1950s, long before "world music" swept the globe. His subsequent work with his group Taksim from the mid 1970s to the present represents the most sophisticated, compelling, authentic synthesis of these two musical universes to date. He has performed and recorded with countless renowned musicians, including, to mention only a tiny handful: "Cannonball" Adderley, Phil Woods, Joe Beck, Paul Motian, Don Cherry, Paul Winter and Carla Bley on the jazz side; and Oudi Hrant, Mustafa Kandirali, Kadri Sencalar, and Tasos Halkias on the "Mediterranean" side of the equation. A multi-instrumentalist reed player and percusionist and master teacher, his main wind instruments are the G-Clarinet and the Soprano Sax and many traditional flutes, including especially the duduk and kaval . He is especially sought after as a percussion teacher, and he has taught many musicians how to play the dumbek and the tambourine at music camps and privately. Souren is going stronger than ever in his 80s, traveling much of the year to play and teach in the U.S. and in Europe in a wide range of settings, and continues doing gigs with his trio Transition and with the current incarnation of Taksim.