Beirut

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on February 13th 1986, Condon spent his adolescence in Newport News, Virginia and Santa Fe. It was around this time that he played trumpet in a jazz band. He dropped out of Santa Fe High School at 17 to pursue music, and stumbled across Mexican music such as mariachi. When he worked in a cinema, where he would show international films, he had his first experience of Balkan music. It was when he enrolled at the University of New Mexico, where he studied Portuguese and photography that Condon recorded most of “Gulag Orkestar” in his bedroom and then finished it with the help of Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost who became a part of the band. Despite everything coming together, beginning to take off, gaining critical acclaim for the debut album it was his first official music video was for the song “Elephant Gun” that launched him to success, which has amassed 10.5 million views. It is also the opening track of the “Lon Gisland” EP.

When Beirut released “The Flying Club Cup” full-length album on October 9th 2007, it reached number 69 in the UK. It was a step in a new direction experimenting with instrument that Condon hadn’t played before. The sound was of a classical pop music sort of variety. In the program notes that were handed out to patrons during Beirut’s performance at The Society for Ethical Culture in New York on September 24th 2007, each song on the album is written to evoke a different French city despite that fact that Guaymas is a Mexican city.

When Beirut perform live, their line up consists of Condon himself on trumpet, flugelhorn and ukelele, and then a band behind him made up of accordion, cello, drums, melodica, electric bass, double bass, trombone, sousaphone and glockenspiel. He insists on using the musicians who have played on the original recordings.