About

I moved to New York in 2000, where a chance encounter with Cuban son and salsa music pulled me toward the violin and, eventually, into New York’s jazz world. In 2008 I moved to Berlin, where I spent nearly a decade touring Europe with the gypsy jazz band Django Lassi, founded the political, groove-driven trio Tolyqyn in 2017, and in 2025 launched both RSQ, a modern jazz quartet built around the violin, and my solo project, for violin, voice, and harmonizer. I work between improvisation and songwriting, drawing on a wide range of musical traditions, and writing new music that offers a political, humorous, from-the-heart perspective on everything that’s happening around us.

My solo project explores the violin as a complete musical world, carrying melody, harmony, rhythm, and storytelling. Combining violin, voice, and a self-developed harmonizer, I create music that expands the instrument’s possibilities while remaining intimate, vulnerable, and rooted in the spontaneity of live performance. The repertoire brings together new arrangements of jazz standards, original instrumental compositions, and original songs rooted in the folk tradition of storytelling and political response.

RSQ is my contemporary jazz quartet, built around original compositions that place the violin at the center of a modern jazz language. Rather than treating the violin as a substitute for a horn, the music embraces its own voice and character within the ensemble. Drawing on influences from composers and improvisers such as Wayne Shorter, Keith Jarrett, and Kurt Rosenwinkel, as well as diverse violin traditions from Eastern Europe and the Americas, the music balances composition and improvisation, creating space for lyrical melodies and open, collective improvisation.

Tolyqyn is a Berlin-based three-piece alternative rock band founded in 2017. The band brings together Roland Satterwhite’s vocals and invented “plucked viola” style with a wide range of influences, from jazz and African rhythms to rock and other musical traditions. Their music moves between focused songwriting and extended improvisation, creating a space where grooves, melodies, and experimentation meet. Tolyqyn has released two albums and toured extensively across Europe.