Programs
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March19 Tuesday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Bruno Lapin (FR)
20:00 Festival de la Francophonie 2024Festival de la Francophonie 2024Bruno Lapin plays an open music that praises the present moment and an often forgotten social poetry. The trio assume that space is a condition of clarity of discourse and that hustle and bustle only makes sense to underpin the long term and common purpose. Thus, the outline of the arrangement liberates improvisation, and the volubility of the line only intervenes to carry the melodic construction.The impromptu interferes everywhere in the music of the trio and if its character is introspective, it is also collective and not reclusive. Thought of as an ode to “possibles”, Bruno Lapin is a poetic allegory which mocks visions of futures that have already been consumed. Bruno Lapin is the almost inexorable meeting of three free electrons who lay claim to improvised music, urban electronic music, contemporary music or even pop. True unclassifiable musicians who claim to be such. Although these three instrumentalists have known each other for a long time and have crossed paths in different contexts, the trio is formed through fortuitous and very improvised encounters. The form of these encounters is open, but the resulting sound can be contemporary as well as pop, acoustic, or even electric. What matters is that the interaction is fluid and the intentions are clear. This is where the inquiry comes in: how to keep the freedom and spontaneity of these impromptus, while managing to draw a real framework for the listener? How to make the listener perceive the richness and naturalness of their approach instead of complexity? These questions are at the heart of the trio's artistic reflection, making it a modern social allegory, and this is exactly what Bruno Lapin offers.Details -
March20 Wednesday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Coltrane Legacy (HU)
20:00The Coltrane Legacy sextet was founded in 2017, on the 50th anniversary of Coltrane's death, by one of the most sought-after musicians on the Hungarian jazz scene, bassist György Orbán. In the decade and a half from the mid-1950s until his death in 1967, the saxophonist laid new foundations for modern jazz. He created a legacy of music that has influenced generations of musicians ever since, reaching ever more spiritual dimensions. An experienced bassist who has played in many bands, György Orbán thought the best way to honour the saxophonist's legacy was to create a group that would play both original compositions inspired by Coltrane's music and new arrangements of Coltrane’s songs. The compositions, of course, take Coltrane's tradition as their starting point and continue to reflect the abstract spirit and tools of our time, thus continuing the spiritual jazz tradition. The members of the band are outstanding personalities of the Hungarian jazz scene, their progressive way of thinking and unique musicality have enabled them to work together as a team for the fifth year in a row with unbroken creative enthusiasm.Details -
March21 Thursday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Sefardito
20:00Sephardic music is the music of being on the road. Jews fleeing from the Spanish Inquisition, forced to leave the Iberian Peninsula, packed the memories of their former homeland, their personal stories, the bitter experience of exile and the certainty of survival into these songs, like hidden pockets in a coat. But these pockets also contain many of the treasures that came their way: elements of the melodies of North Africa, Southeast Europe and Asia Minor. And this diverse musical culture also allows the performers to draw on their own musical experiences, as Sefardito does when they play these songs inspired by Spanish, Jewish, Turkish and Moorish music.Details -
March22 Friday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Decolonize Your Mind Society (HU)
20:00Inspired by non-European traditional musics, non-standard tuning systems, psychedelic ritual performances and the legendary Jon Hassell's Fourth World music, Budapest based Decolonize Your Mind Society was founded by Nicolas Jaar’s Other People label and Opal Tapes affiliate Bálint Szabó Gosheven as a natural continuation of his creative focus and work. The band has an absolutelyunique sounding thanks to the special instruments they use like the award-winning glissotar wind instrument designed by Dániel Váczi or the refretted just intonation guitar and fretless guitars, not to mention the retunable analog synthesizer that further expands their mindblowing musical planet. They float in a hazy no man’s land between microtonal psychedelic rock, avant-garde, jazz and experimental music. The band was created with the aim of decolonizing the ear, thus raising the question to which extent the inherently infinite world of musical consonance is a cultural construct. And a closely related question: how can an inherently continuous variable like musical pitch be made discrete? If culture conditions us to a significant degree, can the ear ever be freed from its imprisonment? These are the questions that we will seek to answer this evening that will take us from the consonances of the overtone system to the different equal divisions of the octave. Throughout this process we can test the ability of our ear originally accustomed to piano tuning if it can still recreate its innate inherent flexibility.Details -
March23 Saturday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Dejan Terzic Quartet ft. Ralph Alessi, Florian Weber, Lukas Traxel (DE/US/CH)
20:00If you had to put a motto for the quartet's music-making, it would probably be the culture of playing. The focus of everyone involved always remains on the whole, and yet every detail, every nuance, no matter how tiny, is intuitively formulated to perfection. The musicians in the quartet are very similar to one another. Four super virtuosos with more individual experiences in their knapsacks than can be listed here, who without exception serve the music with every bit of their self-perception. In this context, the drummer aptly speaks of a shared existential urge. Each song tells its own story, the tension of which is based without exception on a healthy mix of lightness and seriousness. Even though the musicians' homes are thousands of kilometers apart, the quartet is not a singular project, but a solid band. The interlocking of intentions and playing attitudes results in a common habitat within which one can enjoy absolute freedom without limits. The drummer highlights another similarity that at first glance seems like a coincidence, but at second glance it is anything but coincidental given the four personalities. The basic concept of most of the pieces is based on ideas that are based, among other things, on minimal music in the spirit of Steve Reich to Brandt Brauer Frick, but the lived improvisational design carries the individual songs in very different directions, degrees of density and aggregate states. From serenity to anger, from the almost inaudible growing grass to the force of a volcanic eruption, there is room for every feeling in diversified minimalism. This creates a statement about the power of art in a society at its limits, which not only opens perspectives but can manifest itself, strong and unwavering, regardless of all external obstacles.Details -
March27 Wednesday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Chemin Neuf: O ignee spiritus – BMC Records album release concert
20:00Since the beginning of his long career, Gadó has been gradually leaving behind the forms and devices of mainstream jazz, but he is not heading towards free jazz, where most of his contemporaries have arrived: by eliminating the rhythm section, he creates transparent and puritanic chamber music textures, consisting of equal parts. Chemin Neuf's debut EP draws from the repertoire of European church music from the early Middle Ages to the late 19th century, with the Gregorian chant – bound in pitch, free in rhythm and tempo – in its focal point. The disc includes two works each by Hildegard von Bingen and Liszt, and two Gregorian chants. The texts of the movements outline the story of redemption from the conception of Christ to his death on the cross. The 14 strings of the two cellos and the guitar are played at roughly the same pitch, forming a mystical and moving, almost otherworldly beautiful blend with the alto voice, which is also deep and warm in tone. This time, Gadó chose his bandmates according to the specific repertoire combining contemporary and medieval music. Judit Rajk, with her enchanting voice, has for decades been recognised as an expert on early and contemporary music, both in Hungary and abroad. Ditta Rohmann is perhaps best known for her highly unusual Baroque solo sonata recitals with cello and vocal improvisations, while Tamás Zétényi is one of the leading Hungarian stakeholders of the interpretation of contemporary music.Details -
March28 Thursday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Kit Downes – Lauren Kinsella – Robin Fincker: Shadowlands – BMC Records Album Release Concert (UK/IE/F
20:00The new album of Shadowlands, out on BMC Records this March, features traditional songs and contemporary poems. Inspired by a mixture of early music, folk and plainsong as well as the painting of Jackie Berridge, Lauren Kinsella, Robin Fincker, and Kit Downes offer chamber and contemporary music. The three vibrant voices of the European creative music scenes, followers of crossroads between genres, agree to jump together into the unknown, with no other preconceived agenda than their thirst for adventure and their desire to share. The compositions of Kit Downes, a key pianist on the new British scene mingle with those of Anglophile saxophonist and clarinetist Robin Fincker and Irish singer Lauren Kinsella in a common desire to question slowness and the right gesture. The stretched and singing melodies are thus surrounded by a halo of shimmering and moving sound material. Slowly the shadows stretch and blend…Details -
April03 Wednesday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Szakcsi Jr. Trio: Stolen Tears – record release concert
20:00The trio has been performing for 15 years. Szakcsi Jr. and Elemér Balázs formed the band as childhood friends, having played together since 1998. As a young talent, they invited Krisztián Pecek Lakatos, who had already burst onto the Hungarian jazz scene a few years earlier, to play bass before their first album Psalms was released in 2008. Their long awaited second album, Easy to Love, released at the end of 2022, contains two original songs and jazz standards, but as Szakcsi Jr. puts it, the theme is just a pretext, the point is the musical conversation, as the trio plays acoustic modern jazz, respecting the traditions of the genre. At this concert, they are presenting their most recent album, Stolen Tears.Details -
April04 Thursday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Ádám Móser – Márton Kovács: Gyimesi | Trio Sordini
20:00In his compositions, Ádám Móser has created a contemporary Gyimesi chamber music, which always evokes the turns of authentic Gyimesi folk music, yet its structure is based on quite different foundations. The music of Zerkula, Halmágyi or the Tímár brothers can be heard in his motifs, but the pieces are sometimes close to free-flowing, improvisatory, and sometimes to repetitive, contemporary chamber music. In the duo, Ádám Móser plays accordion and Márton Kovács plays violin. Both have many years of folk music experience behind them, and both have thrown themselves into the world of improvisational chamber music. Three years ago, three musicians, who were also at home in theater circles, thought that they would call the sounds, rhythms and melodies they played in the plays directed by János Mohácsi to an independent life. They thought that the stringed strings of different origins, tearing apart from the system of a theatrical performance, could also come into contact with each other and tell further stories to both the musicians and even more so to the audience. And over time, more and more new melodies and rhythms emerge in the sometimes seemingly endless sound maze of the Trio Sordini. Composition and improvisation, traveling from everywhere to everywhere: More than an hour and a half of unstoppable sound streams in two parts.Details -
April05 Friday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
György Pataj Quintet
20:00Pianist György Pataj graduated from the jazz department at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in 1997. Over the past fifteen years he has played with such prestigious Hungarian musicians as Aladár Pege, Imre Kőszegi, Gyula Babos or the Cotton Club Singers. Pataj Jazz Quintet, his own band was founded in 2009, and after a few changes, the present solid lineup of prominent musicians of the Budapest jazz scene came to being. The quintet revives the hard-bop genre of the '60s and '70s: their sound reflects the world of groups led by outstanding personalities of the period (Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Cannonball Adderley).Details -
April06 Saturday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
András Dés Quartet: Unimportant Things – BMC Records album premiere (HU/AT/JP)
20:00András Dés is one of the few percussionists who have not only absorbed a whole arsenal of musical styles as a member of various bands, but have also founded their own ensembles. Dés, who has been living in Vienna for five years, has now formed a quartet with three Austrian musicians, Martin Eberle, Kenji Herbert and Philipp Nykrin, to capture the essence of European jazz: diversity, openness and the power of listening to each other. The unusual drum set is joined by trumpet, piano and electric guitar, and the way these three instruments are played often differs from what is customary. The musical components of this album are at least as manifold as the playing of the four musicians. The thinking of András Dés and his fellow musicians is defined just as much by many different trends in American and European jazz of the last few decades, as by earlier and contemporary classical music, the instinctively complex rhythmic structures of traditional musical cultures, or even the influence of various popular music styles, for instance, the elemental energy of rock music. Unimportant Things concludes a trilogy of albums recorded by András Dés in various line-ups for BMC Records. The common feature of the three albums, which are based on very different concepts and moods, is that they all contain a good dose of spontaneity, this time because the bandleader did not insert free improvisational passages into his compositions, but linked them together. The eight compositions thus form a single musical sequence of about three-quarters of an hour, in which we proceed from island to island, from one adventure to the next, like Odysseus on his way home from Troy to Ithaca.Details -
April09 Tuesday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
MAO Legendary Albums | Shorty Rogers: The Swinging Mr. Rogers
20:00Modern Art Orchestra’s Legendary Albums series presents the most important and unique albums of jazz history. By learning and playing these compositions and arrangements, the musicians are paying tribute to the jazz legends and are undergoing an intense process of musical improvement. The band absorbs the material of the original recordings, sticking to the arrangements, forms and compositional features. As improvisation is at the heart of jazz, solos are invented by the players at the moment. Due to the respect shown towards the original conceptions of the legendary composers and the level of craftsmanship known from Modern Art Orchestra, the Legendary Albums series both brings you the essence of jazz tradition and guarantees a fresh musical experience.Details -
April10 Wednesday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Trio Fröx, guest: Jenő Lisztes
20:00The collaboration of the trio and Jenő Lisztes was the brainchild of the bandleader, Gábor Weisz, who was deeply moved by the cimbalom player's music. Their music is characterised by a melodic, rhythmic and motivic construction based on simple but inventive forms, full of vibrancy, drive and power. Their style incorporates elements of swing, groove, blues and folk, sometimes mixed with the illusion of monotonous tribal music. In addition to their own compositions, their repertoire includes a variety of arrangements, which they adapt to their personalities and enrich with new colours, leaving ample room for individual and collective improvisation. The instrumentation is sometimes light, sometimes quite abstract, sometimes experimental, and occasionally with a touch of grotesque humour. Kalács Apó · Trio Fröx feat. Lisztes Jenő Live at Opus Jazz Club - PassinThruDetails -
April11 Thursday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Day of Hungarian Poetry | JaMese (HU)
20:00JaMese is an English-Hungarian acronym that says it all about the band: jam - freedom, creativity; tale - stories, the transmission of thoughts; Emese - it is the singer Emese Molnár who unites these two concepts. JaMese's concerts feature elementary storytelling, with elements of folk and jazz, with lyrics that tend towards poetry. The essence of their music is always personal, regardless of whether the song frames a poem or their own lyrics. Their albums are characterised by a constant mix of styles. It is possible to turn poems into songs with a more popular structure, and folk songs into psychedelic improvisations with loops. Compositions written exclusively for vocals also pop up in the repertoire from time to time. All this is mainly due to the singer's belief that the lyrics and the message always come first. On the Day of Hungarian Poetry, the focus will be on their arrangements of poems by János Lackfi, Anna T. Szabó and Péter Kántor, and last year's three-song Petőfi single will also be heard.Details -
April12 Friday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
András Párniczky Quartet: Mikrotheosz (HU)
20:00In January 2023, the Párniczky Quartet presented its repertoire at the Hungarian House of Music, summing up the 22 years of work of the band Nigun, and the process of creating the album Bartók Electrified (BMC Records, 2018). "A sovereign European improvisational musical language, integrating elements of modern chamber jazz, contemporary and folk music" – the words of János Gonda are exactly fitting for the material of the new album Mikrotheos, presented at Opus Jazz Club on the birthday of bandleader András Párniczky. The band members – Péter Bede (tárogató, alto saxophone) and Péter Ajtai (bass) – have been Párniczky's partners in more than 300 concerts, both in Europe and overseas. They are joined by drummer Ágoston Szabó-Sipos, who played the folk violin before studying jazz at the Budapest Academy of Music and the Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław. András Párniczky, the quartet's leader, was awarded a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in 1999, and in the same year he won the Hungarian State Eötvös Scholarship. In 2014, he became an official artist of Collings Guitars and Mandolins in the US. Having published numerous papers at home and abroad, he obtained his doctorate at the Liszt Academy of Music in 2022. His dissertation on the inspirational power of Béla Bartók's music in jazz will also be published in book form in 2024.Details -
April13 Saturday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Joel Ross Good Vibes (US)
20:00On 9 February, Joel Ross released his remarkable fourth Blue Note album nublues, a collection of ballads and blues as seen through the lens of one of the most creative modern jazz groups of our time featuring Immanuel Wilkins on alto saxophone, Jeremy Corren on piano, Kano Mendenhall on bass, and Jeremy Dutton on drums, as well as special guest Gabrielle Garo on flute. The genesis of nublues dates back to 2020 when, during the Covid pandemic as live performances were shut down, Ross went back to the New School to finish his degree. One of his classes was taught by the alto saxophonist Darius Jones, who nudged students to dig into the history of the blues. That led Ross down a rabbit hole of what the blues can be; it isn’t just a 12-bar form. He realized it was a feeling. “Sort of a spirit or an energy,” Ross says. “It’s emotion, it’s expression. But I also want to stay true to the rhythmic ideations that we’ve already been developing. I don’t really tell the band how to play anything. What I do tell them is to stay connected and make everything we do related to each other. And play the blues, however that comes off.” In that way, nublues is a vast record with various entry points, an invitation to choose your own adventure. When asked what he wants to convey with this LP, Ross hesitates. “I don't want my personal experience to be what people are thinking about when they're experiencing it,” he says. “I generally want people to be able to come in and hear the music and interpret it through their own lens.” “I enjoyed the journey of diving into learning about the blues and understanding the history of the blues, really focusing on developing this band’s sound and band structure,” he says. “For me, it was just about the journey that came from getting into all of the information and figuring out what it was going to be. It’s a constant continuing. It's a snapshot into how we've continued to do the same thing we've been doing and how it's been shifting.” Vibraphone master and songwriter Joel Ross has adopted an entire ethos dependent on truthful, ongoing communication. A Blue Note artist of critically acclaimed releases KingMaker (2019), Who Are You? (2020) and The Parable of the Poet, he regularly tops the DownBeat and Jazz Journalists Association Critics Polls for his work in the broad lineage of Black music that pulls from jazz, hip hop, church and Chicago improvised music. Now based in Brooklyn, the Chicago-born artist performs across the globe, collaborating with Makaya McCraven, Maria Grand, Kassa Overall, Nicole Mitchell, Gerald Clayton, Melissa Aldana, Walter Smith III, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Wynton Marsalis, Rajna Swaminathan, Marcus Gilmore, Brandee Younger and Marquis Hill.Details -
April17 Wednesday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Luciano Biondini – Michel Godard – Lucas Niggli Trio (IT/FR/CH)
20:00The trio formed by Luciano Biondini, Michel Godard and Lucas Niggli is unusual in various senses. Firstly the musicians’ nationalities: Biondini (born 1971) comes from Spoleto in the Italian province of Perugia, Michel Godard (born 1960) comes from Héricourt near Belfort in the Franche-Comté in France, and Lucas Niggli (born 1968) is Swiss, a native of the Zürich Oberland who spent the first seven years of his life in Cameroon. So this is a meeting of various cultures and languages. A further particularity of the trio is its instrumental make-up. Biondini plays the accordion, Niggli the drums and all manner of percussion instruments; Michel Godard plays the tuba and the serpent – an ancient, serpentine wind instrument with a mouthpiece like a brass instrument but side holes like a woodwind instrument. Sometimes Godard also takes up the bass guitar. Thanks to this highly individual and fascinating instrumental arsenal the trio has a truly spectral palette of sounds at their disposal. The music of Biondini, Godard and Niggli thrives on its poetry, the beauty of its sounds, the depth of its ideas, and also on its tension. This is generated by the weave between composition and improvisation. Which is how they succeed in making that connection between form and freedom which constitutes the core of jazz. On their album Mavì, released on Intakt Records, we hear music which seems to emanate from the spheres while remaining wholly worldly, emotional and sensual.Details -
April18 Thursday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Bálint Gyémánt & Krisztián Oláh
20:00Bálint Gyémánt, one of Hungary's most distinguished jazz guitarists, has always been enriching diverse and exciting bands with his playing, which, in addition to carrying the characteristics of jazz and contemporary improvisation, is also able to appeal to pop music lovers. Pianist Krisztián Oláh builds his distinctive, dynamic music by organically combining classical musical elements and compositional techniques with the improvisational drift and abstract rhythms of contemporary jazz. Their joint project approaches the guitar and piano duo, with its limitless possibilities, from the artistic side of jazz. The backbone of their programme is formed by their own compositions and arrangements composed especially for this project, but even more importantly by the constant musical interaction and dialogue that is one of the duo's main characteristics.Details -
April19 Friday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Yonglee & the DOLTANG (KR)
20:00Five natives of different parts of South Korea, DOLTANG is a collective represented with improvised music and unconventional compositions with the influences of jazz rock, progressive rock, and 21st century classical music. Although their musical journey takes place in where it’s culturally and geographically furthest from the western music scene, their music is distant from Korean ethnicity. If anything, complexity of modern society is captured in their music as of multi-layered complex rhythms underneath the verbally singable melodies, and unfiltered expressions of emotions and creativity. Their distinctiveness comes from extended improvisational concepts, and versatile sound elements across acoustic and electric sounds. Working as a band over years enabled them to feel natural towards their music and to pull out their rationality and emotionality in a timely manner, and to pursue a common interest; to be completely genuine and to stay at the highest creativity level during the intricacy. Together, they are constantly exploring the new territories of improvised music and jazz. Yonglee and his band DOLTANG recorded “Surface of Time” and released in Dec. 2021. Currently they are working on another recording called “Invisible Worker”, which will be released early 2024.Details -
April20 Saturday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
j(A)zz! | David Six – Tilo Weber – János Ávéd: Transcendent Triptych (AT/DE/HU)
20:00The idea for the triptych was born in 2022 during the Jazzahead! showcase festival in Bremen, one of the most important strongholds and meeting points of European jazz. The band will make its debut this evening, unveiling completely new material at the Opus Jazz Club. For the concert, all three members will create compositions in which they aim to explore transcendental content beyond the material nature of music, through the extension of fixed or spontaneous musical forms. The overall picture is made up of the world of three prominent European jazz artists: János Ávéd on saxophone, who expands his individual musical language in a variety of ensembles; David Six on piano, who is equally at home in Indian, classical and pop music; and Tilo Weber, a restless explorer on drums. In terms of musical concepts, anything from epic rubatos to Indian rhythms, from flexible metrics to emphatic silences, the concert is expected to be a richly evocative experience, with associations that may stimulate all the senses of the listener: from incense to santal, from purple to silver, a rich world will be revealed.Details -
April24 Wednesday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
À la MAO | MAO plays the Roots feat. Borbély Mihály
20:00Akár a bop, akár a népzene, akár a blues a kiindulópontja a Modern Art Orchestra darabjainak, a végén mindig ugyanoda érkeznek: rá lehet ismerni a zenekar saját hangjára a különböző stílusokban. A MAO számára a műfaji nyitottság és a különleges hangszerösszeállítás olyan alap, ami már a névadással elkezdődött a 18 évvel ezelőtti indulás idején. Azóta kicsiszolták a csak rájuk jellemző nagyzenekari hangzást koncertek százain, lemezek tucatjain és rengeteg ősbemutatón. Ezek keresztmetszete szólal most meg a tavaszi bérlet koncertjein, amely nem egy-egy szerzőre koncentrál, hanem egy stílusideál, egy jazzhagyomány ihlető erejére. Ősbemutató is lesz a tavaszi sorozatban, a darabok nagy része viszont már elhangzott, de általában csak egyszer, viszont a mostani elrendezésben új asszociációkat, új összefüggéseket fognak tudni általuk megmutatni. MAO plays the Roots feat. Borbély Mihály Mondhatjuk, hogy a jazz eleve népzenei gyökerekből sarjadt ki, de mint nyitott zenei megközelítés, újra és újra táplálta erejét a népzenei anyag befogadásával. A MAO repertoárja többszörösen merített a Kárpát-medencei népek kulturális örökségéből. Közvetlenül éppen úgy, mint a magyar zeneszerzőóriások előtt tisztelgő műsoraiban, Bartók, Kodály, Ligeti és más szerzők népdalfeldolgozásain keresztül. A koncert kiemelt szólistája és ősbemutatójának zeneszerzője Borbély Mihály, a Kossuth-díjat a Vujicsics együttesben kiérdemelt muzsikus, a jazz fafúvósok tanára a Zeneakadémián, izgalmas etno-jazz zenekarok vezetője. Új darabja mellett a közönség keresztmetszetet kaphat a MAO óriási repertoárjának abból a széles sávjából, amelynek mélyén a népdal mint inspiráció rejlik, például Cseke Gábor zongorista és a zenekar állandó szerzőinek munkáiból.Details -
April25 Thursday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Flanders On The Move | Laughing Bastards: Fetish – BMC Records & W.E.R.F album release concert (BE)
20:00Born of the countless, turbulent and illegitimate love affairs that jazz had with all the music in the world: Laughing Bastards. Bastard music as a manifesto, the lyrical as a common denominator, interwoven interplay as a starting point. Laughing Bastards is the alchemy of the youngest generation from the booming Ghent jazz and improv scene and the experience and hunger for innovation of an old hand in the field. Together they profess their love for the jazz tradition, with a quirky twist. Founded as a trio in 2012, Laughing Bastards has been operating as a quintet since 2018. Their new album Fetish is released this month jointly by BMC Records and W.E.R.F. Laughing Bastards prove they are a quintessential Belgian band with an international appeal – soaking up sounds and influences from all over the place while maintaining a tight unity. Combining jazz and chamber music with ideas from pop music and multi-colored strains does not only give their music an iridescent edge, but also keeps the interplay fresh and inspired.Details -
April26 Friday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Kőszegi Rhythm & Brass (HU)
20:00Imre Kőszegi belongs to the first generation of musicians in Hungary who were allowed to approach modern jazz as a self-contained genre, independent of entertaining dance music. His playing was most influenced by bebop and free jazz. A self-taught artist, he is one of the most important drummers and teachers in the Hungarian jazz scene, with a career spanning now more than six decades, having played with such Hungarian and foreign stars as Aladár Pege and Dezső Lakatos “Ablakos”, Jenő Balogh “Csibe”, György Vukán, Béla Szakcsi Lakatos, Gusztáv Csík, Frank Zappa, Teddy Wilson, Kenny Wheeler, Art Farmer, Frank Foster, Charlie Mariano, Steve Grossman, Gary Bartz, Lew Tabackin, Trilok Gurtu or Michael “Patches” Stewart. Throughout his career, he has performed in the most important concert halls, festivals and clubs in Europe and Hungary and has received a series of awards. A living legend of Hungarian jazz, he is still very active today, often playing with younger musicians, whom he consciously chooses to renew his formations and pass on his experience. This time, he brings the first band bearing his name.Details -
April27 Saturday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Nikoletta Szőke sings Ella Fitzgerald
20:00Montreux competition winner Nikoletta Szőke is one of the most popular jazz singers in Hungary. In addition to concert halls and festivals in Hungary, she has performed with great success in New York, Tokyo, Brussels, Copenhagen, London and Berlin, singing with Michel Legrand, Bobby McFerrin, Kurt Elling and Gregory Hutchinson, among others. She has released seven solo albums to date, with her latest album Moonglow produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Helik Hadar. Since the beginning of her singing career, Nikoletta Szőke has been a committed advocate of accessible vocal jazz; in 2006, she paid tribute to one of her greatest idols, Ella Fitzgerald, with her first national tour. In this concert, she will perform the standards made famous by Ella, her most iconic songs, with arrangements typical of the golden age of jazz.Details -
May02 Thursday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Balázs Bágyi New Quartet (HU)
20:00Drummer-composer Balázs Bágyi is one of the leading artists of Hungarian jazz. The music of his latest band is dominated by acoustic, contemporary jazz based on post bop elements. His partners are a prominent representative of the middle generation of Hungarian jazz: the saxophonist Soso Lakatos Sándor, the Junior Prima Prize-winning pianist Dezső Oláh, and one of the greatest bassists in Central Europe, Péter Oláh. The band has played at a number of European jazz festivals in recent years, as well as performing regularly in China - their collaboration with trumpet player Li Xiaochuan in Shanghai has been going on for several years. In 2016, their album Homage To Shakespeare with singer Kriszta Pocsai, was awarded the Gramophone Prize by the international professional jury. The repertoire of the formation is based on the compositions of the bandleader, Balázs Bágyi, who became the composer of the year in 2016. As in the previous years, they play some of the older compositions, as well as presenting their recent music in Opus Jazz Club.Details -
May04 Saturday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Sofia Jernberg & Alexander Hawkins: Musho (SE/UK)
20:00Sofia Jernberg and Alexander Hawkins first performed together at Amsterdam's Bimhuis in October 2016, under the name Musho – an Amharic word meaning 'Sad Song'. Jernberg's work frequently takes her to the outer edges of vocal technique, including performances in contexts ranging from Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire to Mats Gustafsson's The End. Alexander Hawkins has been described as 'unlike anything else in modern creative music', and alongside his profile as a bandleader and composer, is a frequent collaborator in duo with Tomeka Reid, Nicole Mitchell and Angelika Niescier. In this duo, they draw on their shared affinity for the music of Ethiopia, having both honed their languages in the company of musical elder statesmen from that country: Jernberg with Hailu Mergia, and Hawkins with Mulatu Astatke. Musho moves quietly and seamlessly between abstract exploration and the immediacy of traditional Ethiopian song.Details -
May10 Friday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Mihály Borbély Quartet, guest: Kyle Gregory
20:00Mihály Borbély, who is equally at home in the fields of folk and world music, jazz and contemporary music, and who is extremely popular both in Hungary and abroad, is one of the leading figures of Hungarian jazz as a performer and composer. The folk music heritage of the Carpathian Basin and the Balkans is strongly present in his works, organically combined with elements from the various jazz tendencies or even from the music of the twentieth century classics. His playing combines exciting melodic turns with subtly translucent and powerful rhythms, while lyrical phrases enter into dialogue with energetic gestures. They welcome American trumpeter-composer J Kyle Gregory as their guest, who came into contact with the Hungarian jazz scene during his studies in Hungary, and has played several gigs with the Borbély Quartet during his occasional visits to the country. In another joyful encounter, we will witness moments born out of a true musical friendship: lyrical compositions and energetic pulsating pieces, original compositions and jazz evergreens will be on their programme.Details -
May14 Tuesday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
MAO Legendary Albums | Ornette Coleman: Something Else
20:00Modern Art Orchestra’s Legendary Albums series presents the most important and unique albums of jazz history. By learning and playing these compositions and arrangements, the musicians are paying tribute to the jazz legends and are undergoing an intense process of musical improvement. The band absorbs the material of the original recordings, sticking to the arrangements, forms and compositional features. As improvisation is at the heart of jazz, solos are invented by the players at the moment. Due to the respect shown towards the original conceptions of the legendary composers and the level of craftsmanship known from Modern Art Orchestra, the Legendary Albums series both brings you the essence of jazz tradition and guarantees a fresh musical experience.Details -
May24 Friday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
Subtones (HU)
20:00With their outside-of-genres, song-centric compositions, Subtones has become a favourite concert band on the Hungarian jazz-pop scene in just a few years. In order to connect even more directly with the Hungarian audience, their award-winning album Lángolj features only Hungarian-language songs with lyrics written by Mátyás Szepesi and Péter Závada. Subtones, founded in 2019 by trumpeter Gábor Subicz, is one of Hungary's most exciting supergroups. The arrival of vocalists Vera Jónás and Flóra Kiss has pushed the band towards vocal forms. "Right from the beginning, when this line-up was born, it became clear to me that I wasn't driven by a desire to communicate. With Subtones, I want to make music that I enjoy listening to. People often ask whether Subtones plays jazz or something else. For me, jazz is a mindset: you have to leave as many possibilities open as possible, while excluding playing music just out of habit. I love it when I don't know what other people are going to play, and those are my favourite moments when we kick the chair out from under us. There are so many different elements to our music, we play on quite a variety of stages, from TV studios to jazz clubs to festivals, and I feel that our music is relevant everywhere. With Hungarian lyrics we want to get closer to the audience. I feel that in a local context, English lyrics are a bit of a hiding, a mask. In our own mother tongue, the effect is much more instinctive, the song flies directly into the listener's ears", says Gábor Subicz, band leader and mastermind behind Subtones.Details -
May30 Thursday20:00 Opus Jazz Club
À la MAO | MAO plays the Blues
20:00Akár a bop, akár a népzene, akár a blues a kiindulópontja a Modern Art Orchestra darabjainak, a végén mindig ugyanoda érkeznek: rá lehet ismerni a zenekar saját hangjára a különböző stílusokban. A MAO számára a műfaji nyitottság és a különleges hangszerösszeállítás olyan alap, ami már a névadással elkezdődött a 18 évvel ezelőtti indulásidején. Azóta kicsiszolták a csak rájuk jellemző nagyzenekari hangzást koncertek százain, lemezek tucatjain és rengeteg ősbemutatón. Ezek keresztmetszete szólal most meg a tavaszi bérlet koncertjein, amely nem egy-egy szerzőre koncentrál, hanem egy stílusideál, egy jazzhagyomány ihlető erejére. Ősbemutató is lesz a tavaszi sorozatban, a darabok nagy része viszont már elhangzott, de általában csak egyszer, viszont a mostani elrendezésben új asszociációkat, új összefüggéseket fognak tudni általuk megmutatni. MAO plays the Blues Ami a népzenére vonatkozik, amikor a MAO által őrzött és továbbvitt hagyományokról van szó, igaz a bluesra is, akármelyik jelentésére gondolunk ennek a sokértelmű fogalomnak. Kezdjük a végén: ennek az estének a repertoárjából szemezgetve Ávéd János szaxofonos, a zenekar egyik állandó hangszerelője Messiaen ihletéséből komponált blues formát, Cseke Gábor kompozíciója egy Ligeti-darabra épül, de ezt Thelonious Monk világába átplántálva szólaltatja meg. Tehát egészen a kortárs zenéig lehet húzni azt az ívet, amely a bluesból indul ki. A szűkített harmóniák, a kimért ritmika, az életérzés, amely nem csak szomorú, hanem dacos is egyes megszólalásokban, mind olyan viszonyulások, amelyek a MAO jazz-zenekar blues játékában is felbukkannak.Details -
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