City of the Sun at club Pave in Sofia on September 24 - the New York trio that started in subway stations and ended up on the Billboard chart

City of the Sun, the New York instrumental trio, play Sofia's club Pave on September 24, 2026. The group is guitarists John Pita and Avi Snow plus percussionist Zach Para, and there is not a single sung word in their music.

The three of them started as street musicians. They played in parks, in the echo of New York subway stations and anywhere they could hold a crowd, which is a literal rather than romanticised band biography. Wider attention only came after they performed at a TED conference in 2013.

In 2015 they signed to Chesky Records, and the debut album "to the sun and all the cities in between" came out in March 2016 and entered Billboard's jazz chart at number twelve. Their sound ranges from broad post-rock dynamics to syncopation borrowed from gypsy jazz, with a strong Latin presence and African rhythms under the acoustic guitars.

An instrumental band with no vocalist rarely fills a room unless it has something specific to offer. In their case it is the fact that three instruments in their hands sound like far more, and the audience follows a story with no lyrics to guide it. Club Pave in Sofia holds a few hundred people, favourable acoustics for an acoustic group.

Tickets cost eighteen euros, roughly 1,110 denars, through bilet.bg. Doors at 20:00. This is a rare chance to see an American band of this profile four hours from Skopje.