The family of musicians on this page appears in the various bands that Joe has assembled. Each is a musician in his/her own right and performs in other venues as well. Please give them a warm welcome when you see then performing with Alpiners U S A, Capricio Dance Band or Café Vienna.
JOE DOMITROWICH As a serious student of the accordion in his youth, and with formal training in technique, Joe mastered the art of playing the traditional acoustic accordion at an early age. More recently, the advent of digital technology has awakened Joe's interest in diverse genres of music and inspired him to arrange and perform an unusually broad repertoire, meticulously blending the familiar timbre and sound of reeds and bellows of the traditional acoustic accordion together with digital samples of other instruments. Joe is known for delivering live music that is both entertaining and technically challenging to perform.
Joe's ethnic roots are in Burgenland, Austria at the cross-roads of Eastern and Western Europe with strong cultural influences from Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia. With a youth steeped in a culture of European immigrants, it is no wonder that Joe's repertoire often reflects his heritage.
Over the years, Joe has formed several bands and has played a wide variety of venues in Pennsylvania (see www.musikfest.org), Las Vegas, Arizona, Oregon and California, including the International Accordion Convention, Gilroy Garlic Festival, and Oktoberfests in Campbell and Monterey and the Great America Theme Park. Joe particularly enjoys performing technically challenging pieces where audiences are populated with serious accordion aficionados and in intimate settings with appreciative listening audiences.
MATTHEW MEDEIROS is a highly skilled and versatile musician whose abilities on drums are a rarity among bands playing the European ethnic circuit. He began learning drums in 1976, and studied Jazz and Latin rhythms for 5 years with Daniel Sabanovich in San Jose. In the late 70s he played the rhythm & blues scene throughout the South SFO Bay area. Matthew cites many different music types as influential to his playing, and has a keen interest in European ethnic music, having traveled many times to Europe to experience first-hand German ethnic music and the German language. Mathews technical expertise and diverse abilities on drums provide a solid backbone for the great variety of music played by Alpiners U S A. Matthew is a full-time realtor in San Benito county www.matthewmedeiros.com.
FRED McCARTY is a musicians musician. A veteran of many musical genres, Freds background includes composition and performance experience in Jazz, Classical, Rock, Bluegrass and Country. He studied Classical Guitar with Stanley Watson at the Hochstein School of Music for Young Musicians in Rochester, NY, Jazz theory under Chuck Mangione, and is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, MA. Fred has won numerous Local, State and National awards as a Singer, Songwriter, and Band Leader of Fred McCarty and Company and The Contenders. He has recorded and released numerous CDs in various genres, including country, classical guitar, standards and American folk rock, including many of his own compositions. His warm, rich vocals and expressive fluid guitar work are a welcome complement to the already wide variety in repertoire of Alpiners U S A.
MARGOT TURRELL is an accomplished entertainer and recording artist whose appearances as lead vocalist with Alpiners U S A have become an Oktoberfest tradition in the Bay Area. After immigrating to the US with her parents, she began performing in CA during the days of Joe Smiell's Oktoberfests in Pleasanton. She has also made numerous appearances at Alpine Village and Old World in southern California. Later, she teamed with accordion virtuoso Stas Wisniach in the Bay Area to form the duo International Varieties. Born in Bavaria, Margot sings in authentic Bavarian dialect. Everyone who hears her is amazed when they learn that Margot is entirely self-taught as yodeler. Margot now lives with her husband Bill in Oregon where they moved in 1997.
