The 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 seventh year in a row with unbroken creative enthusiasm.  

"...A wonderful discovery..." (Citizen Jazz, France) Chamber music artpop is the expression that might best describe the unique genre of Mozes & Kaltenecker, a group formed by singer-pianist Tamara Mózes and keyboardist Zsolt Kaltenecker. This evening they will perform a special pogramme, playing their own compositions as well as some well-known songs in a new arrangement, with a variety of pop and rock elements and modern jazz improvisations. The band's debut album Futurized was released in October 2022 on BMC Records. They are currently working on their second album, and will give a taste of its material too. In recent years, the duo has performed at numerous venues abroad, including the Gaume Jazz Festival in Belgium, the Ljubljana Jazzfest+ in Slovenia, the Jazz u Vinogradu Festival in Croatia, and, last but not least, Jazzahead! in Germany, one of the most prestigious events on the European jazz scene.  

The musical world of the French-Hungarian singer Izabella Caussanel has been unfolding in various dance productions and theatre music, as well as with the bands Ötödik évszak and Ephemere. Opus Jazz Clun has already hosted a concert by Ötödik évszak, which extends Carpathian folk music into improvisational genres, and Ephemere, recreating the atmosphere of early 20th-century bars. However, this time Izabella enchants the audience with her own group, focusing on songs, chansons and original compositions she has never performed before. For this adventure, the young singer has chosen musicians who will accompany her unique voice with world-class playing.

Tamás Berki is one of Hungary's most popular jazz singers, who has achieved great success as a member of countless legendary jazz bands, and as a composer and lyricist in recent decades. He has recorded nearly half a hundred of his own songs, and is just as at home in the world of jazz standards. They have been playing together with the Péter Sárik Trio for a long time, and this year they released their joint album Hintaló. Besides performing their own compositions, the popular Péter Sárik Trio is boldly adventuring between genres: they have recorded four albums arranging songs chosen by their audiences, and often play classical arrangements too. As open, versatile musicians, they are able to appeal to a wide range of audiences with their immediacy and energy. Their performances are full of humour, playfulness and joy.

Mahan Mirarab and András Dés, the founders of Mash, have been playing together regularly since 2019, after Dés moved to Vienna. The Iranian guitarist and the Hungarian percussionist's joyful musical encounters resulted in rhythmically and structurally fresh compositions that pointed in an inspiring direction for both of them. Vincent Pongrácz, the third member of the trio, opened up new perspectives for the band beyond their common musical intersections – the microtonal, metrically uneven compositions and Pongrácz's clarinet playing on the edge between jazz and hip-hop formed a harmonious unity, giving the band new momentum. Mash is the coming together of three pathfinder musicians with a distinctive sound. In many ways they come from different backgrounds, but their openness and common musical language unite them: they provide a basis for bringing their similarities and differences into harmony and creating something new out of their work together. The trio's debut album will be released in autumn 2024.

If, at all, Herbie Hancock has ever made a wrong decision, then it was to give the name V.S.O.P. to one of the fieriest bands he ever had, as this is supposed to be the label for a cognac which paled for at least four years. Miles Davis, on the other hand, could have regretted in hindsight, that he did not honour the invitation of Hancock to play as a guest at the 1976 Newport Jazz Fest. Freddie Hubbard took the trumpet part to join a group of Davis alumni: Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. They played straight-ahead, so to say, but with a vigour that only jazz-rock musicians can display, nothing of paleness there, full power instead. They recorded this album three years later in Japan at an open-air festival, and they are on fire all the way through, displaying huge dynamism and vast perspectives, all five of them breathing as one. They only played originals until the encore, showing compositional bravado, exciting harmonic changes, and intriguing dialogues. They take us along the full scale of emotions from Eyes of the Hurricane to Fragile.   

After his contemporary and jazz projects of recent years, Miklós Lukács, the ambassador of the cimbalom in Hungary and worldwide, has returned to pure beauty on his new solo album Timeless, arranging well-known songs by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Sting, Ennio Morricone, Leonard Bernstein, Keith Jarrett, Harold Arlen, and Rezső Seress. The musical history of the past creeps again and again into his arrangements as a sweet spice, be it in the garb of classical music, jazz, or traditional musical cultures. Nevertheless, he focuses primarily on the present and not on musical precursors, so the singable melodies engage the listener's emotional memory and at the same time give us the pleasure of a first hearing. The arrangements are complemented by an original composition, Aura – Hommage à Péter Eötvös, in which Miklós Lukács creates a new quality by fusing accessible melodicism and experience in contemporary music. He performs the songs on Timeless live for the very first time. Miklós Lukács has brought the cimbalom as a solo instrument to the forefront of contemporary music and jazz both at home and abroad, and has developed a number of techniques beyond the traditional playing style to achieve unique sounds. Composers like Peter Eötvös and Béla Szakcsi Lakatos have written pieces for him, and he has played with musicians and orchestras such as Archie Shepp, Bill Frisell, Chris Potter, Uri Caine, Frank London, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. After his achievements in contemporary music and jazz, it was time to turn his attention to the popular side of the repertoire, where he is once again a pioneer: no other album has been released ever to showcase the diversity and potential of the solo cimbalom by performing well-known songs.  

Austrian musicians Klaus Paier and Gerald Preinfalk as well as Croatian Asja Valcic have formed a fascinating trio as their new creative grounds. Paier has been exploring the nuances of accordion and bandoneon playing, and traveling between jazz, world music and classical elements for decades. His curiosity and thirst for exploring sounds led him to design his own instrument, named “Passion”. Croatian cellist Asja Valcic found a way from classical music to improvisation. She played in chamber ensembles and co-founded the multistylistic radio.string.quartet.vienna. In jazz, she worked in a trio with Joachim Kühn and Prabhu Edouard, as well as in the quartet Fulsome X with Wolfgang Puschnig. Gerald Preinfalk presents contemporary music with the renowned Klangforum Wien and has also performed with the Wiener Philharmoniker. He played jazz in bands with George Garzone, Don Byron, Alegre Corrêa, Django Bates, Christian Muthspiel, Wolfgang Muthspiel, and in big bands such as the Vienna Art Orchestra. All three musicians contribute own compositions to the trio’s repertoire, further developing their creative journey between jazz, contemporary, classical and world music together. Within the written forms, there is ample room for fine tuned improvisation and solo highlights, appealing to the demanding music listener. In terms of its dynamics, virtuosity and fragility, the kaleidoscope of audiophonics devised on their new album Fractal Beauty is a bold blueprint on the path to perfection in sound that offers a balance of freedom and form, complex music and compelling melodies, suspense and release, and above all the purest of poetry.  

Jelena Popržan, the charismatic and vocally nuanced viola player, singer and sound artist from Vojvodina (Serbia), who has injected some vitality into the Austrian music scene, is now setting up a new project and a new team after her highly acclaimed solo program La Folia, with three fixed sizes of the local jazz scene: Christoph Pepe Auer (in this concert substituted by Richie Winkler), Clemens Sainitzer and Lina Neuner. She found the poems of the Polish-Viennese poet Tamar Radzyner (1927–1991) in a booklet published by the Theodor Kramer Society and was deeply impressed. The Polish Jew, who was in the armed resistance and survived the Shoah, found a new home in Vienna and in the German language, worked with Georg Kreisler and Topsy Küppers, and wrote poems full of cheerful pessimism and bitter wit. Jelena Popržan created a musical monument to her with a song cycle. But the larger part of the program is taken up by her brand new instrumental compositions, pieces full of imaginative sound images and melodic stories.  

Leonhard Skorupa somehow manages to leave his mark on every band he’s a part of. The Vienna saxophonist and clarinetist has a penchant for surprise and wry humor; he’s anything but a wet blanket. His Sketchbook Quartet is marked by a lively, contemporary sound – rooted in the jazz tradition, to be sure, but the band has no problem integrating influences from musical styles ranging from straight-ahead jazz to surf rock. The music of this refreshingly unconventional quartet could almost pass for chamber jazz – if it weren’t for the strong syncopated rhythms and the undertone of uninhibited rock-and-roll. In any case, the Sketchbook Quartet is partially responsible for the growing self-confidence of the Austrian jazz scene in recent years, as well as for its international mobility and popularity. The band can be counted on to deliver a fresh, vibrating sound, celebrating a quintessentially modern, joyful, prickly eclecticism.  

Tether Trio is the new, genre-exploding project co-led by Grammy-nominated vocalist Theo Bleckmann and internationally renowned saxophonist Timo Vollbrecht (both from New York). Together with Amsterdam-based pianist Harmen Fraanje, they weave together explorative improvisation and melody-driven songs, allowing their music time to breathe, unfold, and claim its required space. The trio creates their highly personal sound by blending the instruments’ natural and acoustic timbres with the discreet and tasteful use of electronic live processing. After a joint performance for the Fajr International Music Festival in Iran in 2021, Bleckmann and Vollbrecht decided to further develop their immediate synergy and work out new music together. The resultant Tether Trio derives its name from the intertwining of musical ideas that these three free-thinking musicians merge into one.

György Szabados organised Christmas concerts in Budapest in the 1980s and early 1990s. After his death in 2015, the Adyton Art Foundation, which aims to keep his legacy alive, took over to organise events continuing his original initiative under the title Adyton Christmas. Szabados' musical world is complex and multifaceted, opening many paths leading in different directions and offering many points of connection. Among his former musical partners, István Grencsó and Szilárd Mezei have built their own musical worlds based mainly on the technique and spirit of free music. Today, both of them have moved quite far away from traditional jazz, and their music could be labelled as improvised contemporary music beyond free jazz. Róbert Benkő is Grencsó's oldest collaborator, who has joined him  in a constant search for new paths and changes of direction, and with whom they have an intuitive understanding of each other. Barnabás Dukay, the hiding icon of contemporary music, comes from a completely different direction. A composer, musicologist and Bach scholar, Dukay believes that in music, you have to improvise everything you can. This could be the motto of his ten-year-old collaboration with Grencsó, during which they have made wonderful recordings very difficult to classify. Three composers and an inspired bassist on the stage. The absence of percussion is no coincidence, as their music is not organized around rhythmic bases. Composing in real time is one of the most risky art forms, with no anchors, no safety net (say, sheet music). It depends on nuances whether it's free-flying or free-falling. They've never ever failed yet, presenting the miracle of creation in deep harmony. Zsolt Németh

Gábor Gadó and Veronika Harcsa are two artists who are known primarily as jazz musicians, yet their work is increasingly shifting towards classical and contemporary music. Another step in this direction was their previous album Shekhinah in 2023, and this year the dialogue between classical and jazz musicians continues in the songs of The Language of Flowers. But while Shekhinah features Gadó's recent compositions with lyrics by Veronika Harcsa, The Language of Flowers brings to life Gadó's compositions from more than two decades ago to lyrics by Eszter Molnár, and revives the brightest era of Hungarian vocal jazz, hallmarked by the name of Gábor Winand. Between 2002 and 2006, Gadó and Winand released four albums (Corners of My Mind, Agent Spirituel, Different Garden, and Opera Budapest), which have taken their careers to new heights. The Gadó – Harcsa Quintet has selected 11 songs from these albums, but their aim is not to replicate, but to approach these pieces as one would the repertoire of jazz standards or classical songs: as melodies and lyrics that anyone can perform, finding their own voice in them. Gábor Gadó has been working with BMC Records for a quarter of a century, releasing an incredible number of 25 albums for BMC Records. He couldn't have found a more suitable vocalist partner for reinterpreting the vocal jazz tradition than Veronika Harcsa, who is justly the most popular Hungarian jazz singer in the country and the most recognized one abroad. In the Gadó – Harcsa Quintet, we find musicians familiar from Shekhinah and Gadó’s other projects: Belgian trumpeter Laurent Blondiau, sound magician saxophonist János Ávéd, and the contemporary scene’s prominent cellist Tamás Zétényi add defining colours to the character of the music.  

European jazz is slowly moving away from the American mainstream style, retaining all its important values, yet creating an independent improvisational musical language. The Párniczky Quartet was created in 2016 with the aim to play the reworkings of the bandleader from Béla Bartók’s pieces. The fruit of the joint work and Párniczky’s doctoral dissertation (“Only from a pure source.” Living Béla Bartók's music in jazz – LFZE Doctoral School) is their first album, Bartók electrified, which was released on BMC Records in 2018. The immediate predecessor of Párniczky Quartet was the band Nigun, where three of the current quartet members played modern jazz based on Central and Eastern European folk music traditions. The second album of the quartet is Mikrotheosz. Their current repertoire equally includes elements of chamber jazz, contemporary classical and folk music. The compositions are performed by the members by giving them enormous creative freedom with great energy, yet articulately.  

The Dresch Quartet has been playing in its current lineup for four years, and its founder, the highly acclaimed Mihály Dresch, has been a key figure in etnojazz and in Hungarian music in general since the 1980s. His quartet consistently and confidently treads its own unique path with an individual fusion of Hungarian folk music and African-American jazz, jointly developed by Dresch and the band members. Commitment to the musical concept, respect and humility towards the sources, outstanding musicians, new and evergreen compositions, standards in the Dresch manner – all these combined create the musical experience that strikes the audience again and again with its freshness.  

Daveform Quintet with Krisztián Oláh, Gábor Subicz, Dániel Mester, Ernő Hock and composer Dávid Szegő has been enthralling listeners with their unique and ecstatic music for over a year. After several sold-out concerts, this evening marks the debut of their album Arrival, which the audience can hear live in its entirety for the first and last time. Daveform Quintet is a modern jazz group that combines American, Scandinavian and Balkan musical elements in a unique way, with plenty of room for improvisation. From jazz ballads to contemporary classical music to modern grooves, the quartet showcases a wide range of styles, featuring well-known excellent players of the Hungarian jazz scene. The bandleader is composer and drummer Dávid Szegő, who, together with Krisztián Oláh, Dániel Mester, Gábor Subicz and Ernő Hock, unleashes a force that guarantees to captivate all listeners.  

Károly Binder is a musician of high calibre, who puts his talents at the service of the synthesis of new trends, different musical cultures, compositional techniques and improvisational systems, not forgetting his own musical roots. He is an autonomous composer whose piano playing and compositions cannot be classified by style or genre. Since the late 1970s, Binder has pursued with unrelenting consistency the path he set for himself, a path on which he had no Hungarian predecessors. In his musical development, alongside the immense oeuvre of Béla Bartók, we can clearly trace the influence of the folk music of the Carpathian Basin and the melodic world of the Volga-Kama region, and even the American repetitive school hallmarked by Steve Reich. He has released more than 85 albums to date; this evening, he and his trio will present their latest album, inspired by Béla Bartók's masterful pedagogical miniatures, For Children.

If you’re feeling sacrilegious, call them the contemporary trinity: drawing back the curtain on future sound spheres, The Transcendent Triptych calls on early, classical and folkloric music to redefine modern avant-garde Jazz. Akin to the still-standing architecture of old, this ensemble of storied composer-musicians is built upon a tried-and-true triangular foundation: percussionist Tilo Weber – a force in the Berlin music scene (David Friedman Generations Trio, Y-Otis, Keno, winner of the Deutsche Jazzpreis 2022) – lends his mallets to the drums and vibraphone while Austrian pianist David Six (Bill Frisell, Bryce Dessner, Stargaze) sets himself to the piano and harpsichord. Rounding out the trio with his tenor saxophone, János Ávéd (Randy Brecker, Benny Golson) brings his stratified musical voice, informed by more than a decade at the Budapest Modern Art Orchestra and countless collaborations with icons of the Hungarian and international jazz scene. In this constellation, the star-studded troupe has produced pieces such as “Lound”, the dreamy, intimate embodiment of their name. As if in meditation, all musical streams flow into one whitewater torrent – the avid listener, however, is not thrown off-course by the jutting powerplays. Fickle rhythms, profound structures and nuanced melodies course through the piece with tenderness, ready to cross their own aqueous boundaries at a moment’s notice. Our visionary trio goes on to moonlight as musical time-travellers, lifting the musical veil with “Minta”. Tastefully lyrical, sophisticated and subtle, this piece approaches its audience with open arms from a time yet to come. In 2025, the debut of this all-star trio will be released on renowned Budapest label, BMC Records. Victoriah Szirmai

This evening actually happened on three nights, recorded during three different studio sessions between April 1954 and August 1955. O’Day was signed by the young Los Angeles producer Norman Granz (Jazz at the Philharmonic), Jimmy Rowles and two lesser-known pianists were engaged, and guitarist Tal Farlow contributed on four tracks. The singer’s straightforward, veiled delivery, which avoids the broader vibrato and is equally captivating when ironical or wistful, has been likened by many to a saxophone. Her performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in a few years is in the annals of jazz history. Here, O’Day makes the standards (The Man I Love, There’ll Never Be Another You) her own, and her original blues track shows why black jazz musicians always said yes right away when Anita O’Day invited them. The internationally renowned singer Júlia Karosi, who is also breaking new ground with her own band, recommended the production to the orchestra and will also take on the role of O’Day. 

The Fusio Group is the most unique fusion jazz band in Hungary, not only thanks to the compositions of Péter Szendőfi, but also as the result of the chemistry between the five musicians, refined over many years. The band was founded in 1992. In the past decades they have released 8 albums, in 2022 presenting their latest, 30th anniversary album XXX. Since 2023 they have been performing with singer Erika Kertész. The backbone of their repertoire is the music from the XXX album, some of which was originally instrumental, but band leader Szendőfi has written English texts for them. Erika's unique voice, clearcut rhythms and performance style perfectly match the band's well established sound, and harmonise marvellously with the often virtuosic, dynamic themes and the large-scale improvisations.

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Incorporating Latin American serenity and sweet melancholy, Cafuné's repertoire is made up of special pieces of traditional South American guitar music. The world of pulsating samba and soft bossa nova is reminiscent of the jazz clubs of the sixties. In its acoustic sound, the band aims to continue the tradition of Dilermando Reis, Augusto Garoto, Baden Powell and Luiz Bonfa. This sound is further enhanced by the voice of Anna Pataki, who interprets this style with rare naturalness in Portuguese and Spanish. In the past two years, they released two albums, Inspiração and Carimbo, containing internationally less-known pieces of Brazilian music, uniting sparkles, elegance, virtuosity, freedom, melancholy and joy.  

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In 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.

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Hans Lüdemann and his French-German octet TransEuropeExpress have started their long-term Pan-European project On the Edges in 2019 and are now presenting the premiere of the fourth edition entitled Oriental Express. This ensemble of outstanding soloists now welcomes the great Ney flutist Burcu Karadağ from Istanbul as their special guest. She is an international soloist with classical orchestras, but also improvises and collaborates with jazz musicians. Hans Lüdemann has spent several longer periods as an artist in residence in Istanbul between 2021 and 2024, and they have been working with Burcu as a duo since then, including performances at CRR Philharmonic Hall and AKM in Istanbul. They developed a program of original music and also made re-interpretations of some pieces of oriental music like Kendim Ettim by Neset Ertas. The Ney flute is the core instrument of oriental and Turkish music, even constituting the names of different scales and tonalities. The character of the Ney is quite different from the Western flute as it requires a lot more air for the sound to be produced. This means that the music needs more space between the notes – and also behind them. The secret of the Ney is to connect us with a different, spiritual level. Hans Lüdemann has created new compositions and arrangements that give room for the special magic of the Ney flute and reflect his experience of Istanbul and the Orient in a poetic way. Hans Lüdemann, the TransEuropeExpress and Burcu Karadağ are also recording the music for a new album to be released on BMC Records. On the Edges is a Pan-European initiative to be realized in 5 different projects and album productions, each of them a creative musical encounter reaching to a border region of Europe and beyond. The idea, originally inspired by Navid Kermani’s book Along the trenches, has been transformed into the creation of a broad mosaic of musical colors within this frame. Each project is developed and realized in cooperation and exchange with guest artists and/or composers from the specific regions. The thread that finally connects all of the projects is a composition by Lüdemann in several parts, coming together to form a complete musical picture. The previous albums in the series were released on BMC Records: the critically acclaimed Maghreb Express with Majid Bekkas, Polar Express with Kalle Kalima and Sofia Jernberg, and, most recently, Roman Express with Rita Marcotulli and Luciano Biondini, which was nominated for the Deutscher Jazzpreis 2024.  

"Daniel's works show great control and versatility on all levels. Being equally at ease with the jazz and symphonic idiom, both his compositions and arrangements show complete awareness of what is relevant in today's orchestral music. His affinity with drama and his gift to encompass this in music make him a natural film composer." - Jurre Haanstra, composer  Daniel Mester travelled around the world to find his own musical universe, which accommodates the melodies of Anatolia, Indonesian scales and imaginary Hungarian folk songs. He began his musical studies as a classical clarinetist, and later started to learn jazz saxophone playing. He graduated at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, and he not only had the opportunity to perform in many parts of the world (South Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, Morocco), but also to learn about musical heritages outside of Western musical traditions. He composed a couple of filmscores, and studying Turkish classical and folk music is another current inspiration for him, the impact of which is echoing in his compositions. His long-cherished dream of founding his own trio came true with the pandemic. He invited two talents of the young Hungarian jazz generation, guitarist Péter Cseh and drummer Tamás Hidász into this musical adventure. This evening, they will also be joined by the virtuosic master of the cimbalom, Kálmán Balogh. www.mesterdaniel.com

Thérapie de couple – we are talking, of course, about the Germany-France couple, the engine of Europe, which now and then finds itself in crisis. Saxophonist and bandleader Daniel Erdmann is the ideal counsellor because he knows the differences, the similarities, the possible misunderstandings, the psychology of these two countries very well. He is particularly pleased to have been invited to put together a new German-French sextet and, in selecting musicians, has opted for a combination of those he already knows very well – and the security that comes with that –, and inviting completely new people who bring with them the desire and magic of uncertainty. Daniel Erdmann has been travelling between Germany and France for over 20 years. German-French and European projects are at the centre of his work, in which he has been supported by Philippe Ochem and the Jazzdor Festival from the very beginning. Jazzdor is once again a partner and sponsor for the new band. Projects over the past 20 years include bands such as Das Kapital and Velvet Revolution, but also quartets, trios and duos with Heinz Sauer, Christophe Marguet, Vincent Courtois, Aki Takase, Henri Texier and many others. Two musicians from France, with whom Erdmann has played a lot in recent years, have agreed to join him in the new project: violinist Théo Ceccaldi, member of the band Velvet Revolution, and cellist Vincent Courtois, with whom Daniel Erdmann has been working in various bands since 2008, first in a quartet with Frank Möbus and Samuel Rohrer, then in Vincent’s trio with Robin Fincker and on the side in various projects with painters, actors, singers. All these common experiences can be a basis for imagining a band sound when composing. Other band members who have accepted the offer of this new collaboration include the young French clarinettist Hélène Duret, who is currently touring all the clubs and festivals in France with her band Suzanne. Her velvety clarinet sound combines wonderfully with the saxophone sound of Daniel Erdmann. The rhythmic basis of this sextet is formed by drummer Eva Klesse and bassist Robert Lucaciu, two now established greats of the German jazz scene, who in turn know each other well from the Leipzig jazz scene. A solid rhythm section that can also go unexpected ways, different generations and individual voices that can also put themselves at the service of the group sound. A German-French couple therapy full of the joy of playing with some of the best musicians of both countries. That is Daniel Erdmann’s idea for this new adventure. Before the concert, they are recording their debut album to be released on BMC Records in the near future.

Pianist 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).

The brilliant and versatile Roy Hargrove summoned this parade 30 years ago, documented on 73+ minutes. Hargrove (1969-2018) created wonders: in addition to his quintet albums, he founded a big band and opened wide doors to hip-hop and R&B. Here, as one of the ambitious young lions, he provides yet another example of positioning his generation in the jazz tradition, while happily savouring every minute of musical encounters. The Cyrus Chestnut-Rodney Whitaker-Gregory Hutchinson rhythm section features saxophonists in their 30s: Ron Blake, Branford Marsalis and Joshua Redman, as well as grand masters Johnny Griffin, Joe Henderson and Stanley Turrentine. Hargrove shines as a bandleader, composer, soloist and host, smiling as he opens the door to the parade of saxophone stars. Kristóf Bacsó, János Ávéd, Árpád Dennert and Balázs Cserta - almost the entire MAO saxophone chorus - take turns interpreting the music of their great predecessors, while Kornél Fekete-Kovács takes the trumpet part.    

The Modern Art Orchestra's À la MAO... series aims to present compositions and adaptations, sometimes originals, by members of the orchestra in a new context. In recordings and concerts, the orchestra has created a repertoire that is unparalleled in the history of Hungarian jazz. Some of these pieces have never been heard before by old or new followers, arranged in a new thematical, stylistic or other way. Additionally, some of them have never been released on disc or digitally. Big bands achieved their greatest popularity during the swing era, and the Modern Art Orchestra, embracing the jazz tradition, is keen to return to its roots. Recently, trombone player Attila Korb's suite Swinging on the Danube was written entirely in this style, in which the composer plays several instruments, including a memorable bass saxophone solo. Not only Korb performs regularly in traditional orchestras, also some other composers are rooted in the swing tradition, whether in rhythm, harmony or the pulsation of the kind that the Ellington and Co’s song says without swing „it don’t mean a thing”. 

The Modern Art Orchestra's À la MAO... series aims to present compositions and adaptations, sometimes originals, by members of the orchestra in a new context. In recordings and concerts, the orchestra has created a repertoire that is unparalleled in the history of Hungarian jazz. Some of these pieces have never been heard before by old or new followers, arranged in a new thematical, stylistic or other way. Additionally, some of them have never been released on disc or digitally. On International Jazz Day, an initiative associated with the name of Herbie Hancock, one of the founding fathers of jazz-rock, it almost goes without saying that the Modern Art Orchestra will be drawing on the extensive repertoire of the jazz-rock genre. Works by the versatile trumpeter-composer Gábor Subicz, pianist Gábor Cseke, saxophone soloist Kristóf Bacsó and bandleader Kornél Fekete-Kovács form the backbone of the programme. A surprise guest will be sitting down into the drum chair.

The Modern Art Orchestra's À la MAO... series aims to present compositions and adaptations, sometimes originals, by members of the orchestra in a new context. In recordings and concerts, the orchestra has created a repertoire that is unparalleled in the history of Hungarian jazz. Some of these pieces have never been heard before by old or new followers, arranged in a new thematical, stylistic or other way. Additionally, some of them have never been released on disc or digitally. The Modern Art Orchestra's last concert of the season might as well bring up Herbie Hancock's name again, because this is the title of the Hancock's sextet album released almost 30 years ago.  They have been instrumentally reworking current pop hits. Of course, ever since jazz emerged, it has been using the hits of the day as a starting point to improvise, and the Great American Songbook was almost exclusively made up of musical, pop and film hits from the 1930s. In the last few decades, the freshness of new styles of pop has inspired some of the most famous foreign artists. The Hungarian jazz repertoire has also included songs by the most successful pop ensembles, while composers such as Gábor Subicz, Kristóf Bacsó and the orchestra leader Kornél Fekete-Kovács have also adapted film or stage music, creating a whole series of new jazz standards.