Here are the crazy people behind Ottawa's Blues Blast!
Claudia Petrilli - Event Director — Claudia organizes and coordinates just about all of Swing Dynamite's events. From logistics to promo, she makes things happen for Blues Blast! She has a deep love of vintage jazz and blues music, and if you're lucky you've heard her DJ at events such as the Canadian Swing Championships or the Canadian Balboa Championships.
Mercedes Deziel-Hupe - Communications — Although a relative newcomer to the blues and swing community, Mercedes is highly addicted! In fact, she's been a dancer most of her life, and she's always loved swing and blues music. In real life, she works as a marketing communications specialist, and the addition of her impressive bilingual talents to the Blues Blast team helped us to get the word out!
Stefan Fuchs — Although he began dancing at the age of 13, Stefan has never felt the level of passion for a dance style as he does for the blues. He was intoduced to it two years ago at Blues Blast and hasn't looked back. The music, the steps, the groove, the soul--Stefan just soaks it all up. Two years ago Stefan went into BluesBlast a blues virgin. He was baptised by fire and now has seen the light! Blues is now his favorite style of dance, hands down. He takes any chance he gets to dance it--he calls himself a blues dancing junkie!
Sander Mommers - Logistics — Sander is a traditional jazz musician himself, and loves to support great live music. His contributions are a little difficult to put all into one category, but let's just say a lot of important parts of Blues Blast depend on his help!
Byron Alley - Producer — Founder of Swing Dynamite, Byron is passionate about the blues music he grew up on, and bringing inspiring blues dancing to Ottawa is important to him.
Contact the team here.