Raya Brass Band

In Eastern Europe, it is the custom for the wedding band to accompany the wedding party from their homes to the church and then onto the reception. Sometimes these celebrations go on for two or three days! We bring these old customs and traditions to the new world and make them come alive for you and your family and friends in spontaneous, joyful and unexpected ways.

Consecrate your most important day with unforgettable brass band music from Eastern Europe and beyond. By turns, passionate and playful, solemn and magnificent, this music exists for bold proclamations. With influences ranging from New Orleans and Serbian brass bands, klezmer and the folk music of Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey, there is no better group to call it out for the world to hear than New York City’s own Raya Brass Band.

We are Raya Brass Band and we have played all kinds of underground events in NYC City, from the elevator room at the top of an abandoned building in Chelsea to the subway tunnel under the Hudson from Williamsburg to Manhattan to the crypts of Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn. We have performed and toured extensively around the country and have had the pleasure and honor of playing at 40+ weddings in our 9 years of existence.

We are portable, can be acoustic and/or amplified, and love playing for folks who are looking for something different, unusual and highly danceable for their weddings. No top 40 hits from us, but rather, a direct connection to the wedding traditions of Eastern Europe, playing this music as it's meant to be played, for celebration!

Our years of experience performing for weddings and other celebrations have sharpened our instinct for just the right moment to sound the fanfare or spark the party. With our portable instrumentation of sax, trumpet, accordion, percussion and tuba, we can bring the music anywhere: as escort for processional, recessional or public parade; serenading the wedding couple at their dinner table; or energizing the guests on the dance floor.