Adrian Jost

       Jost started down his musical path because he liked to push buttons. “It’s funny,” he concedes, “but at first it wasn’t really the music. When I was a kid, I drove everyone crazy switching switches and pushing buttons. My uncle was a pilot. He’d take me on flights. The cockpit had so many buttons – I was in heaven. One day my family visited a neighbor and he was playing the accordion. I saw all those buttons and thought, ‘This is what I want to do!’” His parents had other ideas. “It was not the kind of instrument you’d play in a symphony; it wasn’t a ‘respectable’ instrument,” Jost says. “My mother wanted me to play the violin, the piano … I tried them all very politely and at the end of every class, I said, ‘I want to play the accordion.’”  

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Adrian Jost studied music in Switzerland.  As a young boy, he won the gold medal of the ARMA at age 11 after which studied the Bayan with Fritz Tschannen and Stephane Chapuis. He completed a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Yverdon, won a 1996 Landis&Gyr contest, that sent him to Chicago where he discovered Tango and completed a Master’s degree at Northwestern University where he started the transition to the iconic bandoneón.  In 2001,  he co-founded Trio Garufa, a popular San Francisco based tango group that that enthralled audiences throughout the West Coast, Argentina, Colombia, Canada and at various Tango festivals. 

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His influences include Leopoldo Frederico, Salgan's Nuevo Quinteto Real, Aníbal Troilo and Julio Pane.  He has appeared as soloist with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra and performed alongside tango singer María Volonté, tango pianist Pépé Motta, San Francisco's Jazz Bassist Marcus Shelby and in duo with tango pianist Pablo Estigarribia. 

His discography includes Tango en el Mate, La Segunda Tradición and El Rumor de tus tangos by Trio Garufa, Revirado  of Tango Pacifico, a five-piece tango group based in Portland, Oregon, playing the music of Astor Piazzolla, and eXtraordinary Rendition with Rupa and the April Fishes.