The Sean O'Reilly Band plays Best Video Film & Cultural Center on Fri., Dec. 11. The show starts at 7 PM with fingerstyle guitarist Christian Aja opening. The cover is $10.

Sean O’Reilly is a singer songwriter, harpist, pianist, producer, and mixer from Connecticut. His latest release, the One Thread EP, was entirely produced, mixed and mastered in O’Reilly’s home studio where he crafted a sound that pairs earthy folk-style storytelling with baroque instrumentation and dramatic vocal delivery. Having cut his teeth in pianobars entertaining crowds for grueling multiple hour gigs with nothing more than a piano and a microphone, O’Reilly is a seasoned performer both on his own or working with other musicians and has played many of the most prestigious venues in CT. O’Reilly is a self taught musician and known in particular for being perhaps the only performer to play a harp with one hand, the piano with the other while singing complex lead vocal lines.

Sean will be accompanied by a six piece band of musicians, each with a voices both unique and unexpected: Vocalist Helena Clark, Guitarist and Vocalist Patrick O'Reilly, Drummer Justin Ottaviano, Fingerstyle Guitarist Christian Aja, and Electric Bassoonist Rusty Koenig. Together the band brings forth a sound that fuses virtuosity and raw emotion, and performances that are lush, evocative, and cinematic, with a heart beating to the rhythms of classical rock and roll.

Christian Aja is a fingerstyle guitarist whose playing combines melody, rhythm, and harmony, simultaneously on one instrument. He has been performing music since the age of eight, and holds a music degree from Roger Williams University. He plays intricate arrangements of familiar songs while introducing audiences to the mind bending, yet obscure and esoteric works of fingerstyle masters. His playing incorporates a variety unconventional techniques including but not limited to percussion on the instrument, independent basslines, multiple melodies at once, cascading harmonics, slap harmonics, altered tunings, banjo capos, partial capos and moving capos. All this not to show off, not to be flashy, not even to play the guitar. To play music.