Mike Vlahopol – guitarist
Guitarist, band leader, producer, song writer, radio and TV personality, session musician, Michael Vlahopol – half Greek – is well known as Mike or “Sharky”.
Member of UCMR-ADA (Romanian Union Of Composers and Musicians) and CREDIDAM (author rights union)
Mike started to play guitar at the age of 15 when his father brought home a 7 string Russian guitar instead of a drums set. He started to learn on his own due to the lack of books and teaching materials. After a year or so he started to make good friends between some of the best musicians in Romania when he was encouraged by them to start a band.
He started to play in the first band during high school. First Hard Rock and later on, he evolved to Heavy Metal and Progressive Rock.
Only late in 1996 “he got to The Crossroads and met with the blues” when he was invited to jam with some bands due to Christmas and the New Year’s Eve gigs.
Mike is an imposing man with remarkable stage presence, at 187 cm (6.2 feet) with a cool American look on stage. Due to his craziness on stage Mike is able to make people most of the times to stand up dance, jump on tables and feel good.
Having technical possibilities on rock, blues, and funk performances helped him over the years to become a regular fixture on Romanian television, radio and news papers as a figure of national celebrity.
His collaborations took him to some of the biggest TV shows, Rock Festivals, featuring on newspapers and radio shows in Romania & not only.
He made it to the IMDB.com website as a session musician and producer playing guitar along with The Crossroads in a movie called NAMELESS, done in co-production with CASTEL FILM
. http://labs.imdb.com/name/nm6787632/
http://labs.imdb.com/title/tt3255154/?ref_=nm_knf_t1
He has appeared in featured articles, not only in the music press, but in the biggest news papers Romania has such as: “Romania Libera”, “Evenimentul zilei”, “Evenimentul Muzical”, “National”, “Libertatea”, “Cotidianul”, “V.I.P. – magazin”, “Capital”, “Vox Pop Rock”, “Coffee Break”, “7 Plus“, “Bravo“, “La Strada“, “ Nine o’clock,”, “National”, “Metro Bus”, “Adesmeftos – Cyprus”, “The New Creation Magazine” (U.S.A.), “The Indianapolis Star“ (American weekly newspaper), and many others.
One of his early projects took of in no time back in 1993 (…Of The Lord!…) and has debuted as a support band in the Manic Depression Tour for Schnitt Acht and Garden of Eden.
Later on he becomes a member of the Union of Romanian Composers (UCMR-ADA – Romania) & Credidam-Romania.
In 2006 he was encouraged by Steve Vai (Alcatraz, Whitesnake) & Jennifer Batten (Michael Jackson), on their Official My Space Pages. Since then, Mike worked three times with Steve Vai.
He has multiple concerts in profiled clubs, private & corporate parties, in & out of the country: all over Romania and also in Cyprus, Germany, France & USA.
Over the last 30+ years Mike Vlahopol played with different bands and artists, and in the mean time he got so passionate about show biz & music production so much that he started to work as a Stage Manager along with other companies to bring in Romania artists like: Michael Jackson, Julio Iglesias, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Whitesnake, Steve Vai, Scorpions and many others.
Right after the Romanian revolution while he started some other bigger projects sounds and frequencies captures his attention and due to his good English he managed to be the Stage Manager and Coordinator for most of the shows in Romania when a foreign artist toured Romania.
1993: Backstage Coordinator for THE SCORPIONS
1994 Backstage Coordinator for Uriah Heep
1995 Backstage Coordinator for Deep Purple
1996 Backstage Coordinator for MICHAEL JACKSON “History ‘96 World Tour”
1997: Backstage Coordinator for WHITESNAKE ‘97 “Restless Heart Tour”
1999: Backstage Coordinator for JULIO IGLESIAS
2000: Backstage Coordinator for STEVE VAI – “THE ULTRA ZONE – tour”
Enrique Iglesias, Garden of Eden, Schicht Acht, Tiamat, and the list goes on.
Probably the most happy moments were when he personally met and spent personal time with Jennifer Batten (guitar player of Michael Jackson), David Cloverdale (Whitesnake), Steve Vai, Mike Kenelly, Mike Mangini, Dean Wiliams, Herman Rarebell (The Scorpions), Paul Reed Smith, Steve Clark, Mike Terrana (Yngwie Malmsteen, Taria), Ralph Salmins (Madonna), Gianluca Palmieri (Greg Howe), Horacio Hernandez (Santana), Garry Grainger (Dennis Chambers), Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Mark Cross, and few others.
Jennifer and Steve have encouraged Mike to keep up the good work he even had time to get some guitar technical input from two of them.
Even more Steve took time to sign Mike’s Ibanez guitar with a screw driver (Steve really enjoyed doing that)
He appeared in all the national best shows from national and private channels – TV stations like:
Pro-Tv, Antena 1, Prima Tv, B1-Tv, Kanal D, TVR 1, TVR2, TVR International, National, Realitatea, Paphos Tv Cyprus, Magic TV Cyprus, CNN and many radio stations.
Becoming well known Mike had an opportunity to have once a week his own radio show for over a year on the best radio of that time Radio Total and later on a daily show in Cosmos Fm in Cyprus.
INTERNATIONAL WORK:
Starting with 2003 he is collaborating with artists from U.S.A., Canada and Cyprus:
Mike has worked in the studio or collaborated for a number of national or international artists and here are most but not all of them:
International Artists:
Lionness | – USA |
Stacy Quenny | – Canada |
Brad Vee Jonshon | – Usa – Ex. Bonnie M |
Robert Thomas | – USA |
Jessie Dixon | – USA |
Terry Lee Burns | – USA |
Resolut | – Germany |
Thomas Pfeller | – Austria |
Under The Number | – Cyprus |
Here is a list with some of the most important bands he worked with or recorded for since he started to play as a session musician or producer:
REQUIEM, Hold-Up, Petre Magdin, Marius Vilan, Vitamina C, AQUILA, OF THE LORD, FOISORUL DE FOC, SPLIT BLUES BAND, KARISMA, CONTRAST, Teamsters, TZ’S COTTON BLUES BAND, Harvest of Soul, PHILADELPHIA, ANIMAL X, 3 SE, CRISTIANA RADUTA, N & D, BAMBI, ADRIANA BALINT, AIDA, Mihai Traistariu, Raku, Zale.
The Crossroads – 1996 – 2022
More details and discography on www.vlahopol.com