Dejan Rafajlovic hails from Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina. Due to the escalation of war his family relocated to Croatia, where he first got involved in music through local wedding/funeral brass orchestra as a trombone player. His interest eventually shifted to guitar, and he started studying it under the guidance of his sister. His family had to move again, this time to Canada. There he continued his involvement in music throughout high-school, and eventually moved to Montreal to further pursue it. There he joined well established Balkan ethnic ensemble "Les Gitans de Sarajevo", with whom he toured for two years and recorded JUNO nominated album "En Voyage".
A word started spreading about a new jazz program being offered at the University of Manitoba, and Rafajlovic decided to move back to Winnipeg to pursue education. He graduated four years later with a degree in Jazz Performance, with arguably Winnipeg's finest jazz guitarist Larry Roy
Curtis Nowosad has quickly become a first-call drummer in the city of Winnipeg. At twenty-two, he has already performed with some of New York’s finest jazz musicians, including Stefon Harris, Jimmy Greene, George Colligan, Marcus Printup, Ted Nash, Steve Wilson, Miguel Zenón, and his teacher and mentor Steve Kirby. He plays regularly with Kirby and hosts Winnipeg's longest-running jam session, the "Wednesday Night Hang" at the Orbit Room. In addition to having opened for such artists as Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra, The Christian McBride Band, and The Bad Plus, Curtis has also performed at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, Vancouver’s The Cellar, and Edmonton’s Winspear Centre. Nowosad plays periodically with the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, and can be heard on several recordings, such as Keith Price’s "Breakfast of Champions", Marco Castillo’s "Brazilian Season", Michael Peters' "Etherised", as well as Dejan Rafajlovic’s “Balkan Folk Tales”. A student in the University of Manitoba’s Bachelor of Jazz Studies program, Nowosad is a pupil of New York drummer Quincy Davis, and a former student of Terreon Gully. He has received several awards for his playing, including a personal scholarship award donated by Canadian piano legend Oliver Jones. This year he was also a featured presenter at the KoSA Winnipeg DrumTalk Festival. Nowosad is also active as a composer, arranger, private teacher, clinician, and journalist. He plays EPEK drums.
as his mentor.
Dejan has performed with different groups in Winnipeg, particularly with vocalist Heitha Forsyth, and has appeared numerous times at Winnipeg Jazz Festival, both as a sideman and a leader of his own quartet. He now resides in Ottawa.
