Yuri Turchyn, a world-class Latin Jazz violinist whose international flair crisscrossed cultures that blended Gypsy Jazz, Afro-Cuban, and Latin Beat into fusion symmetry and string swing, died on April 14, 2024. He was 73.
He has had a highly visible career as a featured premier performer on guitar and five-string electric violin. A singer and songwriter who composed and arranged original music was known for his distinctive voice and smooth, melodic vocals and harmonies. His intertwining instrumentals and original compositions elicited seductive melodies that captivated audiences worldwide.
A founding member of Kinderhook, arguably one of the best country-rock bands in the 1970s, he performed before thousands along the East Coast while anchored at the Jersey Shore. After a decade of contributing to a definitive Jersey music scene, he evolved and expanded his career as a featured premier performing artist. Over the past four decades, he has contributed to countless musicians as a session and guest player and was recognized and respected as a musician who lived and breathed his craft. He has played at world-class jazz festivals, regional concerts, and A-list clubs throughout the NY/NJ metropolitan area and internationally.
Yuri played Irish folk tunes with Mike O’Brien and Chris King of Trinity II, Bombay, Rude Awakening, Soul Purpose with Danny Petraitus, Tony Guadagno, and American soul singer Delores Holmes. Growing as a substantial contributor to the compositions of Gunter Ford’salternativeprogressivemusic sounds of TheWorld before forming his seven-piece band, Now Voyager. They played the circuit headlining at Philadelphia’s Blue Moon Jazz Club and New York’s The Bitter End. Hiscritically acclaimed CD Currents comprises original compositions drawing poetic inspiration from genres including classical, jazz, folk music, and World music.
Through the integrations of Latin, Jazz, and World Music-based rhythms, seductive melodies and interweaving instrumentals became the standard of excellence for the smooth jazz quintet Yuri Turchyn+GRUPO YURI. They performed at world-class jazz festivals, regional concerts, and A-list clubs throughout the NY/NJ metropolitan area, including Red Bank Jazz and Blues Festival, Point Pleasant Jazz Festival, Sweet Sounds of Downtown Jazz Series, Westfield; Roselle Summer Concert Series; Shanghai Jazz, Madison; Trumpets, Montclair; SOPAC; Burgdorff Cultural Center, Maplewood; Galeria West Art Gallery, Westfield; Tim McLoone’s Supper Club, Asbury Park; Downtown Cafe, Red Bank; Giamano’s Jazz and Blues Club, Bradley Beach, Chico’s House of Jazz, Asbury Park.
As a producer for recording studio Wheatsheaf Studio Productions, he remastered a compilation CD for a Spanish/Hispanic and Latin music ensemble, Juntamente. He produced and audio engineered and was a string arranger–violinist, lead, and bass guitar, and performed strings and vocals for the compilation CD release Juntamente and Vida Y Amor with Joanne Martinez and Paulo Pinho, Teatro Si Productions. In Italy, he was invited to the Umbria Folk Festival in Orvieto, where he performed with the renowned acoustic trio BARTENDER. They played to the Gypsy jazz swing of Django Rheinhardt and their original arrangements, calling up sounds of Stephane Grapelli, Afro-Cuban, Mediterranean, and Bruce Springsteen Euro style.
For the past sixteen years, he performed in an annual musical tribute to Bob Dylan’s birthday, Bobfest, with Pat Guadagno & Tired Horses, and worked on NJ Material CD with New Jersey musicians. As part of the NJ Superstars, he performed at benefits for the victims of Hurricane Sandy in 2013 at Sandy Hook and the Garden State Arts Center, Holmdel, NJ. Also known as the “Professor,” Yuri discovered the Bluegrass/Jamgrass sound, taking New Country and Minor Swing tunes from their Gypsy Jazz beginnings into a rocking Jamgrass favorite at the Jersey Shore.
In 2019, he performed with jazz guitarists Butch Campbell, Ruben Austin, and Richard Cantor, Mostly Jazz Trio+1 Milford, PA, before he was immunocompromised in 2021 from the second COVID-19 shot and continued in his recovery from severe anaphylaxis attacks. He and his wife, Christina, moved from New Jersey to Chestertown and Rock Hall, Maryland, in 2023, searching for a slower pace within the artist community. His final illness was caused by agrochemical industrial pollution on the Eastern Shore, Kent County, Maryland.
A lifelong working musician, Yuri Turchyn excelled in various roles as a singer-songwriter, arranger, session player, recording producer, and sound sculptor and was well versed in the ways of Steely Dan, Pat Metheny, and Jean Luc Ponty, crisscrossing cultures that blended Gypsy Jazz, Afro-Cuban, and Latin Beat with Urban Country and String Swing playing a noteworthy role to American music history for music lovers and the music makers’ community, Yuri’s contributions to the music history along the Jersey Shore and beyond will leave a lasting impression on the diverse and ever-changing music scene. He will be missed.
Memorial contributions may be made in Yuri Turchyn’s name to the Bruce Springsteen Archives at the Center for American Music at Monmouth University at https://springsteenarchives.org/give/