Mircea Florian

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Musician and multimedia artist Mircea Florian started his musical career as a folk singer, in the late 1960s. Soon, he developed a fusion between Romanian folklore and Eastern music, adding some Indian flavour on the recordings with the use of sitar (played by Ljubisa Ristic) and tabla played by Arif Djafri. Although psychedelic music was not well seen in '70s Romania, M.F. (guitar, cobză, vocals etc.) - with several guest musicians - realised some remarkable recordings of psych-folk music. In the 80s he began experimenting with electronics and started playing new-wave music, with his band Florian din Transilvania.

Born in Satu Mare on December 5, 1949, he studied cybernetics at the Faculty of Economic Calculations in Bucharest from 1967 to 1972.

His first musical appearance was with Zburătorii, the band he played in while at the Mihai Eminescu highschool. In Bucharest, he played for a while with a bandcalled Lotus.

He was the leader of the Ceata Melopoică, a concept-band, whose members were often changing, among them being Sorin Chifiriuc, Andrei Oiṣteanu, Alexandru Beno, Gabriel (Gabi) Căciulă, Valentin Andronescu, Günther Reininger, Andrei Cristea, Eugen Gondi, Dietrich Krauser, Mihai Creţu, Costin Petrescu, Alexandru Mitaru, Alexe Conta, Mircea Dordoi, Ortansa Păun, Sorin Baroţi, Gheorghe Popescu, Dorin Liviu Zaharia, Doru Zaharia, Mihai Pintilie.

After several times being allowed to visit Western countries with scholarships or for performances, he decided to defect in 1986 while in the United States of America, and later settled down in Germany.

Since the late 1980s he has been combining visual arts with music to create sound sculptures, sound instalations, collages.

Recently he has been performing with the Shukar Collective

He is said to have composed over 130 pieces, and has won 21 distinctions so far for his works in Romania, Germany, Japan, and Great Britain.