Rick Lazaroff began playing professionally when he was 14 years old. His first professional band was called The Snakes, a blues band that featured keyboard whiz Fred Mandel, who later went on to perform and record with Elton John, Queen, Pink Floyd and Alice Cooper. Still in his teens, Rick began touring Ontario in many different bands playing many different styles. Playing Hard Rock with the David Matthews Band, (no, not the one that's so popular now) or playing Dance and Funk with Dancer, which featured well known Toronto vocalist, Chuck Jackson of Downchild Blues Band. Rick visited the stages of too many bars across the hinterlands of Canada.

At the age of 22, with already eight years in the business, Rick joined with Rick and Mark Santers to form Santers, a power rock trio that produced four albums on the Ready Records label in Canada and several other labels throughout Europe, the U.S. and Japan. Santers toured extensively throughout Canada, the United States and England. Rick has appeared on Lee Aaron's first album and on a jazz album by guitarist Orhan Demir which garnered exceptional reviews from Option magazine (L.A.), Cadence (N.Y.), and Downbeat magazine (N.Y.).

In or around 1988, Rick and partner Darlene Watters put together a straight ahead Toronto styled hard rock band with Pete Swann and Mark Santers. This impressive line-up displaying the awesome guitar talent of Swann with the already polished rhythm section of Lazaroff and M. Santers, topped off with some truly amazing vocals by Ms. Watters, hurricaned through many clubs in southern Ontario. Not able to generate any serious industry interest for such a chop oriented band, all decided to part ways  to pursue other commitments.

In the 80's, when computers began to make the transition from office to music studio, Rick embraced the opportunity to combine music and technology. Using this tool for composition he produced some fine original songs with partner, Darlene Watters which are featured on the independently released recording Dancing Off The Deep End released in the early 90's.

After spending the early part of the 90's working with computers, synths and samplers, Rick and partner Darlene Watters put together a Jazz Combo under the moniker of Time Zone concentrating on Jazz & Blues standards in a mostly acoustic setting. When the mood strikes, Time Zone can still be seen and heard in bars and bistros around southern Ontario.

The new millennium saw the reunion of the Hard Rock trio Santers. Gigs were played, and plans were made to record a new CD. And then blah blah blah they decide to part ways again. Three musicians, three visions of what is and what shall never be.

That parting was a very late wake-up call for bassist Lazaroff. After many years of playing other people's material or playing in cover bands, it was time to do what he wanted to do in the first place; play sublime and mostly improvised music. Well, first step was to actually write some.

With that plan in place, Laz sketched out a couple of dozen ideas from which to expand, expound and extract. And it came to be, 11 vehicles for improvisation rather than typical song compositions. The original plan was to compose tunes that nobody would ever want to hear but what transpired was something that was a bit more conventional, possibly. Odd time signatures galore, whole tone scales, middle eastern scales, some industrial noise thrown in and voila! An album, errr CD, ummm project. With Lazaroff manning the computer mouse, bass guitars, guitars, drum programming and synths along with some help from a few comrades, the CD was complete. Groovistico Ballistico has arrived.

There are no plans for any live performances as of yet but the stage being the favourite platform for bassist Lazaroff, live shows are a very enticing platform for the near future.

Stay tuned and thank you for your patience.