Chuck and Bill Van Riper were identical twins (until Bill got a haircut and shaved off his mustache!) Playing together since they were children, The Other Brothers have entertained through out the United States and Virgin Islands.  Performing with such notables as Larry Coryell, Dizzy Guillespie, Al DiMeola, Stanley Turrentine, Arlo Guthrie, The Band, The Marshal Tucker band, Jim Thackery, their styles encompass a wide variety of musical genres showing influences by jazz, blues, folk, country, ragtime, and classical, as well as music from around the globe.  Their versatility, improvisational abilities and stunning fingerstyle techniques have earned them a reputation as world-class performers.

    The Other Brothers stage performance is unpredictably varied and always fun. Their talented and humorous show is surpassed by few. You can be listening to their arrangement of the jazz classic “Bluesette” one minute and then Taj Mahal’s “Aint Nobody’s Business” the next. They have been known to start off a set by improvising a tune using a phone number from somebody in the audience as the framework of the chord structure.  Fellow musician and casual listener alike are impressed with their mastery.  Whatever kind of music you are into, The Other Brothers will touch a piece of your heart.

    Sometimes, when Chuck and Bill Van Riper are trading solos, its hard to tell where one stops and the other starts.  Their vocal harmonies sound like one voice being overdubbed!  Its a twin thing, they say. It’s as if they’ve been doing this together their whole lives. Oh, yea, guess they have for the past 37 years, anyway!

    Chuck Van Riper has recently published “New Perspectives In Music Theory”, an easy to understand book on music theory and is about to publish another on fingerstyle guitar. His latest CD, “Point of View” is a collection of various finger picking styles including ragtime, blues, classical, jazz and Spanish pieces. Before that, he released “There is a Lady Sweet and Kind”, a collection of lute pieces from the Renaissance. Bill Van Riper’s latest CD, “String Theory”, is a combination of smooth-jazz and world-beat. Chuck and Bill Van Riper can currently be heard on radio stations from Florida to New York and their CDs can be purchased from Barnes and Noble. Chuck and Bill Van Riper teach and perform in and around the Melbourne, Florida area, where they both live.