From Caterpillar to Quintet: BTTRFLY Spreads Its Wings at Telluride
At the 2025 Telluride Jazz Festival, KUVO's alldaywes caught up with members of the BTTRFLY Quintet — Dominic Lalli, Eric “Benny” Bloom, and Adam Deitch — just before their set. The conversation dove into the origins of the band, born from deep friendships and creative necessity during the pandemic. With roots in jazz but a sound that stretches into funk, electronic, and house, the quintet shared their excitement about performing at the legendary mountain festival and hinted at fresh, unreleased material. Candid, humorous, and heartfelt, the interview highlighted their passion for pushing musical boundaries while staying grounded in community and collaboration.
alldaywes: alldaywes up here at Telluride Jazz Festival 2025, with BTTRFLY Quintet with Dominic Lalli and Eric “Benny” Bloom. Super excited, you guys are about to go on stage in just a bit.
Dominic Lalli: Yep.
alldaywes: So how does it feel to rep for the hometown and be up here at this legendary festival?
Dominic Lalli: Yeah, it feels good. Personally, this is my first time at the festival. I know, I think these guys have been, lettuce has been here before, and some of the other guys. But this is my first time at the festival and always wanted to come up here and play this festival. So super exciting for me to be here. And also with this project, which is super fun for all of us individually in the project. We're all in different groups and different bands and stuff. So fun for us to bring this kind of sound that we have created to this festival.
Eric "Benny" Bloom: Oh Yeah. So fun. The best. You never had more fun like this. Telluride Jazz Fest, most pretty place you're ever going to go to…
Dominic Lalli: Beautiful.
Eric "Benny" Bloom: Besides Chicago… I’m just kidding.
alldaywes: I know my boss is going to be happy to hear that one.
Eric "Benny" Bloom: Chicago is nice. You ever seen those canals? you ever take the architecture tours? It’s beautiful!
alldaywes: I've never been, I'll have to get the recommendations from you.
Eric "Benny" Bloom: That’s right. Anyway, we're the butterfly boys and we're ready. Stoked to be here.
alldaywes: Yeah. So with the BTTRFLY Quintet, where did that name come from?
Eric "Benny" Bloom: Be honest. It's not that crazy, but..
Dominic Lalli: Yeah, go ahead.
Eric "Benny" Bloom: Yeah, this is a pandemic project. We're all very close friends. We've all played music together in a million different iterations and we couldn't play during the Pandemic. Life shut down as we know it, and we started to play together. We played the first gig at Cervantes. We played the actual first live gig. And yeah, we just didn't have a name and it just was classic texting back and forth. Everyone tried to come up with something and it's a cute little name
Dominic Lalli: Butterfly, like Herbie. Butterfly, different, I don't know, something spreading our wings type of a thing.
Eric "Benny" Bloom: And really, you know what? Metamorphosis…
Dominic Lalli: Metamorphosis, actually, that is where it really (came from)
Eric "Benny" Bloom: That's right now (I) recall correctly because coming out of the pandemic and trying to take a situation that was ugly… like a caterpillar.
Dominic Lalli: Don't hate on Caterpillars.
Eric "Benny" Bloom: I know. That's a good point.
Dominic Lalli: No, but no. (laughs) Borahm (piano) is like what are they doing over there?
Eric "Benny" Bloom: Our piano player is saying “Delete all of the Benny talk”
Borahm Lee: Total Fail
Eric “Benny” Bloom: Anyway. Yeah, so I like the name Butterfly and then Quintet because there are five of us. It's a little like, Hey, how are you? We don't love the name. we love the music. We love the friendship. We love the opportunities we get to do, play around the country. But who knows? We'll see. Names are not forever. Who cares? The name don't matter.
alldaywes: The music Is the universal language. That's the language that matters.
Eric "Benny" Bloom: Yeah. So I'm just stoked to take this project a little further.
alldaywes: Yeah. Well that's really cool. I mean, I know that you all are in different bands and you have so much going on all the time. So was it kind of like a jazz background that brought you guys together? Or was it just like, oh, let's all kind of just do something new?
Dominic Lalli: Yeah, I think it's all of us. All of our side projects aren't this, and we love to play this kind of music. So I think it was our want to really want to do something different outside of what our project, our main projects are doing. And we wrote since we had the Pandemic thing, it was, we had, I believe it was a monthly gig, so it was almost for a year. It was like we started as a cover tunes. One person would write a song and then it was like the next month now we had three cover songs or three original songs. And then we eventually had enough for an album and it was like, cool, let's go in and record the album. And then we just kept being able to do gigs and kept wanting to write music. And we're actually sitting on some really dope music right now that we haven't released. We're going to play some of it tonight for the first time, and excited to get this new music out and record more and kind of keep it rolling.
alldaywes: I heard you guys teasing some Housey vibes, some new stuff like that. So excited to hear some new BTTFLY.
Dominic Lalli: Cause didn’t we do the live show? the KUVO live show?
Eric “Benny” Bloom: We did, yes.
alldaywes: Yeah, you guys were in the studio
Eric "Benny" Bloom: One or two? We did both.
Dominic Lalli: We did a couple of the new ones
Eric "Benny" Bloom: Because when we started originally, we don't love the word jazz. (we know) Jazz is a thing, but we all play a lot of funky and electronic and all these different, more dancey musics. Our bands are kind of more dance oriented. So to do this kind of project where we come from our roots, which we can just kind of do what we want and play a lot more harmony to cool, more intricate rhythms. So I think that's where this thing really started. But now that we're playing, we don't want to disregard our fans that made us or supported us the whole time. So we're trying to bridge that gap of still doing emotionally charged and fun, beautiful pieces. But then also having some dance things too, to have a more complete show that we can play for more different audiences all around the world.
Dominic Lalli: It's like, how can we intertwine some of the stuff that we love with the stuff that we're currently doing and just some of the hipper stuff that's out there. How can we infuse our sound into that and just keep pushing our sound forward a little bit more, I think.
alldaywes: And bridging younger audiences
Dominic Lalli: Yeah. I mean, why not? And being able to do more solos and blowing and more of the traditional jazz aspects of the group playing, but in a fresh sound.
alldaywes: Love that. Well, are you guys excited to host a Jazz After Dark tonight at the Sheridan Opera House? Should be good, the shows they had last night were jumping.
Dominic Lalli: Yeah, it's going to be popping off.
Eric "Benny" Bloom: We excel at those. All musicians I think love playing these small to medium rooms. And of course it just brings a different type of emotion and you play differently. The bigger stage out here in the park is beautiful, but we're just really stoked. Tonight will be dope, but all the gigs is the same for us. We just love to kill it no matter what gig it is, you know what I mean?
alldaywes: Totally. Adam, what's up? Thanks for joining us!
Adam Deitch: How's it going? Just getting the drums set up. How y'all doing?
alldaywes: No worries. Yeah. Sound check going well? or line check?
Adam Deitch: Yeah, everything's perfect.
alldaywes: Well, yeah, thanks. I know you guys are all fans of KUVO, so I really appreciate you taking the time
Adam Deitch: I'm a bigger fan of KUVO than these guys actually. I have a boombox that I bought in Brooklyn. It's a boombox, I still have it. And it's tuned to KUVO. It's on all day.
Eric "Benny" Bloom: It is, it’s at his house. I see it. It's on
Adam Deitch: It’s on all the time. And I am always Shazam-ing. I'm just learning tunes and then I send them around. So shout out to all the DJs on KUVO.
Dominic Lalli: The tape player doesn't work on the boombox, neither does the CD player.
Eric “Benny” Bloom: But the radio is kickin!
Adam Deitch: The radio works! (laughs)
alldaywes: The only thing that needs to work right? Cool. Awesome. Well, going back into your other projects about with break science, things like that. We have big gigantic over here. There's all these different styles. How do you think that those individual things that you bring from those projects add to that BTTRFLY identity? We were kind of talking about it a little bit earlier, but what do you think, Adam?
Adam Deitch: Yeah, we all love live music, playing our instruments. And we also love producing and making electronic music. So we're trying to bring some of that electronic aesthetic into some acoustic playing. And I feel like that's where it's at now. And that music's been out for years and we've been checking out electronic music for a while and now we kind of incorporated it into our playing. So we're kind of just experimenting with that and seeing where it goes. And we're hype about this new record, very hype.
Eric “Benny” Bloom: Sheeeesh!
alldaywes: What can you tell our listeners about the new record?
Adam Deitch: Yeah, I mean, we got some super fun dancey and housey vibes that are sounding great. So we're going to be coming out the box with some powerful dance music and it just, it's looking good. And Dom's mixing the pants off of the track, so it's going to be sonically in the pocket.
Dominic Lalli: Yeah, some of the stuff is dancey/housey stuff, but some of it's like chill, sort of chill electronic hip hop stuff. We've got a good mix of some stuff, but I think it's sort of a step in a new direction for us that's like we're going to sort of put a imprint of a new sound down that isn't quite out there yet, which is going to be exciting.
alldaywes: Yeah. What do you think the biggest difference is from your coast album?
Adam Deitch: Well, I just think the first album was made during the pandemic and we were saying, let's put together something kind of cool and mellow because people were social distancing at our shows. And so that whole thing was going on. So we had some more, I guess Jazzier not quite as danceable as the new album.
Eric “Benny” Bloom: It wasn’t dense.
alldaywes: Wasn't it at that Cervantes show that you did. It was like sit down?
Adam Deitch: Yeah, it was like that. You weren't allowed to leave your crew and you had to stay with your people. And if you went to another table, you got yelled at.
Eric “Benny” Bloom: And they served pizza! They had pizza!
Adam Deitch: “ThEy hAd PiZzA” (mocking Benny)
Dominic Lalli: People were dancing at their table.
Adam Deitch: Yeah, it was like that. So now that people are allowed to (dance)
alldaywes: Now you can get people moving. Get the crowd moving. Well, I know that Telluride is ready, the crowd's going to be moving for y'all tonight.
Eric “Benny” Bloom: Sheeesh!
Adam Deitch: Yes sir! Telluride Jazz, let's go!
alldaywes: Awesome. Well thanks so much for talking to us here at KUVO and appreciate you always.
Dominic Lalli: Thank you guys.
Adam Deitch: KUVO forever.
Dominic Lalli: Yeah, we love you guys, thanks.
alldaywes: Thank you so much.
Catching up with the BTTRFLY Quintet before their set at Telluride Jazz Fest was like hanging out with a group of old friends who just happen to be insanely talented musicians. From cracking jokes to reflecting on how the project came together during the pandemic, it’s clear these guys are in it for the love of the music — and each other. With their mix of jazz roots, electronic vibes, and dancey energy, they’re pushing their sound in cool new directions while keeping things fun and real. BTTRFLY was more than ready to bring the vibes, and Telluride was rewarded with an exceptional performance on the main stage.
BTTRFLY’s late-night set at the Sheridan Opera House totally delivered. The room had that perfect vibe — intimate, packed, and buzzing with energy. From the jump, the band locked in, blending jazzy solos with funky grooves and some seriously cool electronic vibes. You could tell they were having fun up there, and the crowd felt it. A few tasteful covers made it into the mix, and they hit hard — fresh, and full of personality. The standout being an upbeat version of “Everybody Loves The Sunshine” by Roy Ayers. It was one of those shows where the band and audience were totally in sync. A special night, no doubt — and a reminder of how good live music in a small room can feel.
