Katy Pfaffl

Light grooves and soaring melodies circle and dive with Latin jazz accents, soul throaty climaxes and soft, sophisticated pop. Fluid flowers of pan-global sensitivity blossom into polysyllabic rivers that dance among the keyboards, guitar, hand percussion and bass. Sounds conjuring wide-open spaces find strange bedfellows in Manhattan - a crowded city of subways and skyscrapers, but that is exactly where Katy Pfaffl found her muse - New York, by way of Amsterdam, Cincinnati and Milwaukee.

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Katy was a Sukuzi violin student, competing as a classical pianist before she entered high school. While she feels lucky to have grown up in Milwaukee, she found the city’s arts scene limited and more concerned with stability than change. “I’ve always had many interests and was always told I had to choose only one and commit to it,” she explains, “I believe that if you have a lot of talents and interests then use them all, explore them all so you can keep growing and expanding.”

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Shinobi Ninja

A ninja is a stealth mercenary agent who is a highly trained assassin and an expert saboteur.  Like their namesake, the six members of Brooklyn’s Shinobi Ninja are professional musicians with a broad set of skills ranging from turntablism, to hard guitar riffs to off-the-cuff street lyrics.  With an innate ability to rock a party and the musical knowledge to pay homage to a variety of influential artists, Shinobi Ninja has already built a fan following that grows each time they take the stage. 

I spoke with Maniac Mike the band’s lead guitar player while the group was rolling to Virginia Beach for a gig. I asked him him which albums he considered Shinobi Ninja’s biggest influences. He rattled off a diverse range of albums, including Pantera’s “Vulgar Display Of Power”, Janet Jackson’s“Control”and “In Utero”Nirvana’s less heralded follow up to ‘Nevermind.’  He also gave props to classic hip-hop albums by The Notorious B.I.G. and Beastie Boys, which came as no surprise.

The band’s MySpace page features three sample tracks that highlight this wide variety of musical influences. In these tracks, one can quickly identify metal, punk, grunge, electronica, hip-hop, dance, rave, reggae, beats, and Rock n’ Roll blended seamlessly together. This eclectic style lends itself equally to both live and studio music but performing in front of an audience seems to be Shinobi Ninja’s favorite medium. “We are fans of music before anything else,” Mike told me, explaining how a group with such diverse tastes can work so well together. “Half of us are producers and we are all cognitive of each other’s style. No egos.”

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