One of the most active drummers on the Hungarian jazz scene, István Baló founded his own band more than a decade ago. The Baló Project consists of like-minded musicians working as a community and performing a colorful repertoire drawing on multiple genres in varying lineups. W69, which focuses on the power of rock, also falls partly under the umbrella of the Project. "Just as the profound energies emanating from the music of the John Coltrane Quartet touched and defined my entire musical thinking decades ago, I am refreshed and recharged with similar feelings and energies from the music of the fearlessly rebellious and protesting bands of the 1960s and 1970s. The pieces and concerts of the W69 Rock band are shaped by these energies, without which I believe it is not worth performing on stage, more than four decades of musical experience, and my commitment to freedom and free music – together with the active participation of my fellow musicians, for which I am truly grateful," said István Baló.

Elephant is a quartet led by the Brooklyn-born-and-bred composer Adam O’Farrill, featuring Yvonne Rogers on piano, prepared piano, and synthesizer, Walter Stinson on double bass, Russell Holzman on drums, and O’Farrill on trumpet and electronics. Drawing influence from 20th century classical music and minimalism, as well as the beat music of the subsequent drum machine era, Elephant strikes an impressive balance between the freedom and small-group intimacy of the jazz quartet tradition, the patience and emotional scale of Reich, Sakamoto, and Britten, and the urgency and excitement of contemporary dance music. The band's dynamic is further informed by their individual collaborations with the likes of Hiromi, Caroline Polachek, Mary Halvorson, Ingrid Laubrock, Vijay Iyer, and Mulatu Astatke.  

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 with unbroken creative enthusiasm.

The Andy Middleton Quartet featuring Piotr Wyleżoł, Alan Jones and Tomáš Baroš reflects a decades-long partnership between the bandleader and Jones. As Middleton says, “This band allows me to pursue the depths of my creativity as a composer and the heights of improvisational group interplay. With the harmonic and orchestrational skills of Wyleżoł, whose background in both the classical and jazz worlds has given him an immense vocabulary, I am able to paint with a palette of color evoking any shade of emotion I can imagine. The instrumental prowess and forward motion that Tomáš brings to the band adds another voice to my tunes while generating the heartbeat of the band. American drummer Alan is one of the most profound and talented jazz musicians I’ve ever met and is the drummer forever in my imagination, the indefatigable source of swing and interplay who brings me to my most creative and inspired moments as a musician. With this band my music comes to life as with no other group, growing and deepening with every concert. I am attracted to lyricism, authenticity, breadth of emotional expressiveness, thematic development and tonal color. The European character that Piotr and Tomáš bring enriches and supports my own experience living in Europe as an American for 20 years and in New York City for 19 years before that. We play a ballad in every set, when the core of my jazz feeling expresses itself most clearly. We play forms that open rooms of free play where we spontaneously create structure anew over the already composed architecture of my pieces. We play fast, we move so slowly the flow can seem gone, we play loudly, we drop to a whisper, we breathe together in every moment. We swing hard, we pull the time straight out over mixed meter, we open our hearts to each other and to the audience as we explore where each piece leads us.”

Intergeese attempted to shift its initial energetic, fresh, and clear style of performance toward a more experimental, layered sound through conscious collaboration. This new approach ultimately prompted the founders to create an alternative band: Intergeese SE, a quintet featuring Dániel Cseke and Dominik Kosztolánszki, gave its first concert in November 2024. Their musical world is a bold reflection of the thoughts and souls of people socialized in the postmodern era. The songs, inspired by personal stories, are organized under the umbrella of a general search for meaning. Genre boundaries are blurred, and any stylistic element, from contemporary European free jazz to Midwest emo, can be a valid and valuable part of the music. Powerful emotional images dominate the songs, alternating between melancholic beauty, hope, and confusion. Many themes return in completely different contexts, as if we were viewing the same idea through a different emotional lens.  

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, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, 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 Martin Listabarth Trio presents its new program In Her Footsteps as part of their 2026 album release tour, released on the German label o-tone music. The album traces the extraordinary life of Viennese world traveler Ida Pfeiffer, brought to life through compositions inspired by key moments of her journeys. The music blends modern jazz with influences from classical music and pop – somewhere between Tigran Hamasyan, Brahms, and Radiohead – with a strong emphasis on storytelling and melody. Viennese jazz pianist Martin Listabarth, recently nominated for the 2025 Austrian Jazz Award (Best Newcomer), has built a reputation as a distinctive voice in Austrian jazz through concerts and festival appearances across Europe. Together with Gidi Kalchhauser (bass) and Sebastian Simsa (drums), the trio creates a direct, narrative sound that shifts effortlessly between lyrical introspection and powerful, driving passages. In Her Footsteps is the trio’s third album, following Postcards (2023) and Live in Vienna (2025), and forms the core of their 2026 album release tour.  

Four renowned composer-improvisers tangle with Ches Smith’s newest compositions. Two highly individualistic guitarists swirl, echo and double-take, squaring off with a bass and drums team that anchors and unhinges through doubling sounds – drum machines and acoustic drums, low-end analog synth and acoustic bass, digital samples and repeated fragments performed in real time. In a dance of coherence and chaos, the four musicians plunge headlong into the feedback loop of composition and improvisation armed with chemistry created by their mutual appreciation and enduring friendships.  

Péter Ajtai's long-cherished dream came true when he founded his band dedicated to the music of Charles Mingus. Mingus is clearly a musician who transcends any genre, so it is no coincidence that he is held in such high esteem within and beyond the various jazz scenes. The members of Mingus! Mingus! Mingus! are well-known figures in the Hungarian avant-garde music scene, who do not play Mingus's music note for note, but capture its essence and attempt to shape it in their own image.

With Eyes to the Sun, three distinctive musical voices meet in a dialogue of rare sensitivity and depth. Argentine pianist Leo Genovese, Grammy Award winner and long-time sonic explorer joins forces with Argentine saxophonist Camila Nebbia and Austrian drummer Alfred Vogel – both at the forefront of today’s improvisational european scene – to create an album that shimmers between unexpected form and spontaneous discovery. The music unfolds with quiet intensity – a constellation of textures, gestures, and lyrical fragments that seem to hover just beyond definition. Genovese’s piano speaks in shifting light, alternately contemplative and eruptive; Nebbia’s saxophone moves between whisper and cry, tracing lines of vulnerability and resistance; Vogel’s drumming breathes space into the ensemble, grounding and ungrounding the pulse in equal measure. Recorded in an atmosphere of attentive listening and open improvisation in Buenos Aires, December 2023, Eyes to the Sun reflects a shared commitment to presence. The trio’s interplay suggests landscapes – inner and outer – where silence becomes part of the music, and sound becomes a form of conversation. The result is a recording of poetic restraint and luminous freedom – music that invites the listener not to look away, but to look toward: toward warmth, toward awareness, toward the sun.

The backbone of the Szabó Dániel Trio's program consists of compositions by the bandleader. Kaleidoscope, a rapid succession of colorful, swirling changes – this is how one could describe the repertoire, which is nevertheless shaped into a unity by the composer's unique language, reflecting his personality. The pieces are inspired by stories from the past, momentary impressions, fragments of memories, feelings, and sensations. Dániel is just as at home in the intricate structures of African-American rhythms and the complex harmonies of jazz as he is in the language of Central and Eastern European, classical, and folk music. Perhaps it is thanks to his love and interest in literature, theater, and film that his music almost always tells a story, which, whether it runs on one or more threads, is full of tension, resolutions, distinct, almost personified characters, and often atmospheres that evoke visual imagery. The Dániel Szabó Trio will introduce the audience to this rich world on this evening.

Groovy neofolk from Budapest's eighth district, where Hungarian folk instruments have lost their way in the maze of electronic music. Unbridled ecstasy, grooves pulsating with unusual rhythms, melancholic reverie, interspersed with moments of joyful abandon. Zajnal's music is a journey in which the band members take the audience by the hand and lead them through their own slightly strange inner world, so that they don't feel so alone in it. Surprising musical twists, intimate and slightly dissonant atmospheres, ancient dance music: in other words, groovy neofolk. At this concert, Zajnal will present its new single, Hess madár (Shoo Bird). During the three parts of the nearly twenty-minute musical flow, the band delves deeper and deeper into the motifs that weave through the entire trilogy. It is an instrumental story that requires quietness and intimate moments to be told. The evening's guest artist, Olivier Gémin, met the band at an international artists’ camp. The virtuoso French cellist has spent the past few years traveling the world and studying various folk music traditions.  

The Big Fish quartet is the result of a collaboration between the ethereal trio Dancing Birds (Julien Soro, Gabriel Midon, Ariel Tessier) and alto saxophonist Léa Ciechelski; a journey into the imagination of water and air. Originally founded to celebrate the music of the great jazz composers and musicians of the 20th century, such as Paul Motian, Ornette Coleman, and Chris Lightcap, the group quickly took a more personal and original direction: each member adds their compositional touch to create music of depth and lightness. Saxophonists Julien Soro and Léa Ciechelski are the voices that sing, shout, proclaim, and whisper, while the rhythm section of Tessier and Midon holds the helm, supporting and guiding the big fish through the waves. Freedom, whirlwind, weightlessness, playfulness, power, contemplation... these are the words that come to mind when listening to Big Fish. In the Transcendent Triptych trio, three prominent figures of European jazz use early, classical, and folk music to recreate the concept of modern avant-garde jazz. The idea for the collaboration between János Ávéd, David Six, and Tilo Weber was born in 2022 at the most important meeting point for European jazz, the Jazzahead! showcase in Bremen, after which they quietly developed their new compositions. Their repertoire aims to discover transcendent realms beyond the material nature of music, through the extension of fixed and spontaneous musical forms. In addition to their new pieces, the concert will feature material from their first album, to be released in April 2025 on BMC Records.

South-Korean pianist Francesca Han, French double bassist Pierre Fenichel, and drummer Fred Pasqua combine their unique talents and worlds in Wakan. Being Dantès is the first fruit of this collaboration: a repertoire of compositions where obvious, familiar melodic lines navigate complex and unique structures. Inspired by the first part of Alexandre Dumas's novel, while imprisoned in the Château d'If, Edmond Dantès slowly transforms before being reborn as the Count of Monte Cristo. The trio invites us to a musical journey through this initiatory process that unfolds in sound. The pieces in the repertoire, which include a four-movement suite, are conceived as pictures that revisit the decisive moments in the intimate adventure of the walled-up Edmond Dantès. Tomorrow Is Minimalist. Three Independent Motions. Tall, Infinite, Microscopic. Folk songs, improvisation, variations on randomness, memory, and its degradation. Texts that play with the gaze of childhood. The meeting between two Norwegian musicians from the avant-garde for which Sébastien Palis imagined the music. A journey between shadow and light, acoustics and electronics. What becomes of beauty when it disappears? What becomes of memory when the time comes to forget? Karoline Wallace, Inger Hannisdal, Sébastien Palis. At a time when we should be striving for degrowth, faced with the extinction of species and cultures, Tomorrow Is Minimalist.

A companion of several French jazz legends, such as Daniel Humair and Bernard Lubat, Christophe Monniot has made a name for himself through his astonishing mastery of several instruments in the saxophone family (alto, baritone, and sopranino) and his ability to take musical cross-streets where the legacy of the great jazz innovators meets more European ways of improvising music. With this new quartet, which brings together strong personalities – pianist Sophia Domancich, double bassist Felipe Cabrera, and drummer Denis Charolles – he announces his desire to reconnect with certain aspects of the jazz tradition (Keith Jarrett, Cannonball Adderley, and Dave Brubeck are, according to him, in his sights). There is no doubt, however, that Monniot is as keen to play them as he is to game them during the concert. (Vincent Bessières) Pascal Niggenkemper, an adventurous double bassist who spent a decade experimenting and meeting new people on the New York scene, as well as in Aveyron in France, where he honed his sense of space and his relationship with time, presents The Ocean Within Us, a project first performed at the Jazzdor Strasbourg-Berlin festival last June. Blending spoken word, electronic treatments, groove and free improvisation, this band combines the rhythmic intelligence of Mariá Portugal, drummer from Brazil influenced by jazz and Brazilian popular music, the masked textures of Berlin of Berlin keyboardist Liz Kosack, and the saxophone riffs of Athens-based Nicky Kokkoli, transformed with the help of accessories by the leader, the true pivot of this grooving machine that is as improbable as it is dizzying. The Ocean Within Us is a Jazzdor production.

Clément Janinet is one of the most promising French violinists and composers who, although deep into jazz, emerge from it to retain only freedom of play and style. Marked by repetitive music as well as by traditional European and African music, his numerous projects each bear the seal of these interbreedings. In this new European quartet, featuring Arve Henriksen on trumpet, Ambre Vuillermoz on accordion, and Robert Lucaciu on double bass, the violinist builds on the aesthetics of previous projects (Ornette Under the Repetitive Skies, La Litanie des Cimes, Sokou) to unite musicians from diverse cultures. He explores the connections between free improvisation, baroque music, popular and repetitive music. Inspired by the instrumentation of Dave Douglas's album Charms Of The Night Sky, the quartet transcends traditional repertoires. Monteverdi, Buxtehude and Dowland engage with Swedish Nyckelharpa, intense improvisation blends with microtonal music, and contemporary chamber music meets folk dances and songs from the oral tradition. For András Dés, jazz is lived democracy: a collective process built on trust, openness, and deep listening. With his Vienna-based quartet – Martin Eberle (trumpet), Philipp Nykrin (piano), and Kenji Herbert (guitar) – he has found musical partners whose distinct voices, curiosity, and creativity shape a group of remarkable unity and freedom. Following the internationally acclaimed Unimportant Things (BMC Records, 2024), the András Dés Quartet returns in March 2026 with Decisions We Make (BMC Records). Conceived as a 49-minute, unbroken musical arc, the album weaves composed material with open musical spaces, allowing spontaneity, risk, and playful interaction to unfold in real time. As Gabriel Kahane writes in the liner notes, it is “as satisfying to the head as it is to the heart, shot through with hummable tunes, danceable grooves, and a jumbo crayon box’s worth of color. It is as much chamber music as it is jazz, and more than that, it is a formal wonder.”

American multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Zucker (piano, synth, voice) and Hungarian drummer Attila Gyárfás have been making music since they met in 2017 in New York. Living in separate continents, Zucker and Gyárfás have developed the unique synergy of their wide-ranging and ambitious duo project playing in short spans of a week or two at a time on the road. Performing sometimes with a grand piano and a high-fi sound system, but sometimes with a skeletal drum kit, a synthesizer, and a single speaker, the duo is at home within a remarkable range of sounds: passages of complex contrapuntal chamber music are followed by noisy improvised soundscapes, and followed again by Zucker’s plaintive lullabies. In March and April, Zucker and Gyárfás present a series of performances in support of Zucker's record Confession, released in November on Boomslang Records. Jazz Weekly writes of the record: “There are lots of artists that record songs; Gabriel Zucker records musical visions... Bold and brashly reflective.” They are joined by longtime colleague Bam Rodriguez on bass and synthesizer.  

Gil Evans' collaboration with Miles Davis as bandleader and arranger on the 1957 studio album Miles Ahead covered a lot of ground, but there was still room to develop further. Their three albums together – and the earlier Birth of the Cool recordings – are absolute reference points in the history of jazz. Miles Ahead is centered on Davis playing the flugelhorn, with him as the only soloist. Evans took the big band out of its traditional role and, by incorporating symphonic instruments and pieces into the repertoire, created a new, symphonic ideal of beauty in modern jazz, which was immediately embraced by audiences and critics alike. This is also the ideal the Modern Art Orchestra follows: to open up to classical music while standing on the ground of jazz. Although the album cover was later changed at Davis's request, giving it a new title (Miles Davis+19), it had already become legendary, so the title remained the same. The Modern Art Orchestra’s three-part concert series pays tribute to this year’s centenary of a jazz icon through the legendary collaboration of Miles Davis and Gil Evans. The evenings built around three inescapable milestones of jazz history – Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain – are not straightforward reinterpretations of the iconic albums, but rather trace the arc of a shared musical vision: the expansion of the boundaries between jazz and classical music, the redefinition of the big-band sound, and the revolutionary rethinking of the relationship between soloist and orchestra. The series is at once a homage to the 100th anniversary of Miles Davis’s birth and a statement of the Modern Art Orchestra’s artistic credo: starting from the tradition of jazz while remaining open in the search for new sonic ideals. Three concerts, a single musical idea revealed through different faces.

The music of Kéknyúl (Blue Rabbit, founded in 2008) is rooted in the soul and funk music of the 70s, mixed with urban dance music. The sound is defined by two members basically: Mátyás Premecz (keys) and Andy Hefler (vocals). Mátyás Premecz is a well-known organ player in Hungarian pop culture, with such bands as The Qualitons or Barabás Lőrinc Eklektric, but his name is always mentioned together with his trademark Hammond organ, and that’s exactly why Kéknyúl was founded: to be able to fully exploit the possibilities of the instrument. Andy Hefler was born in Los Angeles and has moved to Hungary in 1993. He’s an outstanding figure in the Hungarian cultural scene being a renowned actor, director and singer.  

The Budapest Afro Ska Orchestra is made up of young musicians whose playing is inspired by the pulsating rhythms of Africa and the playfulness of improvisation. At their concerts, they seek and convey a kind of lightheartedness that makes listeners smile and dance carefree, while also providing space for deep immersion and introspection. Their sound is built on tradition, yet strives for freshness, seeking to appeal to all open-minded generations in addition to their own age group.

A fresh, elemental energy surges from this album, whose introduction itself is legendary: "We have something special down here in Birdland this evening," announces Pee Wee Marquette into the microphone. And it truly was something very special. This very announcement was famously sampled by US3 on their track "Cantaloop". Art Blakey was at least as fantastic a bandleader as he was a drummer, although his stick work was groundbreaking in its own right, with his storm-raising solos built on enormous crescendos. Pianist Horace Silver was still a member of the Blakey Quintet here, though they would later co-found the legendary Jazz Messengers. The sonic ideal strongly associated with Blue Note was primarily born through Blakey and his band, becoming the basic formula for jazz worldwide for decades, and remains just as fresh today as it was in 1953.

Zita Gereben’s recently released fourth album, Catch the Feeling, lets inspiration fly freely and honestly: the songs were shaped in the moment without any genre restrictions. The result is a diverse, joyful musical world that blends elements of R&B, jazz, blues, rock, pop, and neo-soul, while each song retains the singer’s unique voice and personal style of performance. Behind the varied soundscape is the collective energy of the band, which flows lively in the studio as well as on stage. Catch the Feeling is not just an album, but vibrant, heartfelt music of joy: every listener can find their own moment in it and “catch the feeling”. The extremely versatile singer-songwriter founded her own band in 2009. Following their first jazz album (Ready for the Sun), the more popular sound of their second album, Our Places, expanded the band's fan base, while their third album, Az én fesztiválom (My Festival), surprised audiences with Hungarian-language songs. The band gathers renowned and talented musicians from the Hungarian scene. The fully united group boldly tackles a wide variety of musical styles, creating a unique sound, and the freedom of improvisation also plays a major role in their lively, entertaining concerts.  

With their sixth album, What We Are Made Of (ACT, March 2026), Shalosh turns inward while sounding more expansive than ever. The record is a deep dive into the trio’s musical DNA, tracing the influences, instincts, and emotional forces that have shaped their shared language over years of close collaboration and relentless touring. Blending original compositions with boldly reimagined cover versions, the album moves fluidly between raw groove, lyrical introspection, and moments of unrestrained intensity. Jazz is present not as a genre boundary but as an attitude – open, physical, and constantly in motion – allowing elements of rock, classical music, and popular song to coexist naturally within the trio’s highly focused sound. Recorded with the immediacy and risk-taking that define Shalosh’s live performances, What We Are Made Of captures the band at its most direct and personal. On stage, the material becomes a living organism: elastic, volatile, and deeply communicative, driven by the rare chemistry of three musicians who think, react, and breathe as one. Shalosh presents this new chapter as a powerful live experience that blurs the line between concert and collective release.  

Three breathing instruments, three alto ranges: the trio 3grams is a compositional experiment with the sound of an intimate trio of only voice and saxophone. Assembled by saxophonist and composer Luise Volkmann, this constellation is sometimes lyrical, sometimes humorous, and sometimes yearning. Song structures of pop music are combined with free noise improvisation. Thus the new program moves with seamless fluidity between pop songs, new music and improvisation. 3grams is also an unusually mobile trio: they don’t need a stage. The trio performed concerts in the woods, in Gothenburg’s central station, or singing on moving bicycles through the city. In this way, the world finds its way into the intimacy of the trio’s music. 3grams is a jazz trio and sound art performance.

Renowned Catalan clarinetist, singer, and composer Carola Ortiz is a versatile artist who moves effortlessly between traditional music, jazz, and contemporary creation. With a deep, expressive voice and strong instrumental command, Ortiz builds bridges between cultures, aesthetics, and musical languages, shaping a unique identity rooted in the Mediterranean yet open to the world. In her duo with multi-instrumentalist Àlex Guitart, she presents the repertoire from her 2023 album Cantareras – a tribute to Iberian traditional music reimagined through a feminine lens. Traditional narrative songs, frame drum songs, ahechaos and funeral dances are brought to life with a sound that blends Iberian and Eastern instruments, subtle touches of improvisation, electronics, and modal music. With a minimalist and intimate aesthetic, the duo creates a captivating sonic universe that bridges roots and modernity. Cantareras was ranked 34th among the Best World Music Albums in Europe (WMCE 2024) and is currently touring Spain, England, Turkey, and Central Europe. With the support of Institut Ramon Llull and JAZZ I AM within the project of Catalan Jazz On Tour.  

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Miles Ahead brought together a variety of materials, but a year later, Gil Evans adapted Gershwin’s opera, Porgy and Bess into a really mesmerizing concert. The 1958 recordings exude inner tension, even though Evans treats the orchestra with great restraint, using only a fragment of a melody in Summertime, with a repetitive pattern of a total of seven notes in the accompaniment, played at a lively tempo. Meanwhile, the hero represented by the sound of the trumpet believes he can move freely, but the monotony of the accompaniment gives us a sense of foreboding – even as we still dare to revel in the beauty. In I Loves You Porgy, the tension is already enormous, even though there is hardly any movement in the accompaniment, it is almost static. The palpably vulnerable sound of Davis's trumpet demonically draws our attention, whether he is personifying the narrator or one of the title characters. Soloist and orchestra, innovation and tradition, classical and jazz; the complex goals of this legendary album are still exemplary for the Modern Art Orchestra today. The Modern Art Orchestra’s three-part concert series pays tribute to this year’s centenary of a jazz icon through the legendary collaboration of Miles Davis and Gil Evans. The evenings built around three inescapable milestones of jazz history – Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain – are not straightforward reinterpretations of the iconic albums, but rather trace the arc of a shared musical vision: the expansion of the boundaries between jazz and classical music, the redefinition of the big-band sound, and the revolutionary rethinking of the relationship between soloist and orchestra. The series is at once a homage to the 100th anniversary of Miles Davis’s birth and a statement of the Modern Art Orchestra’s artistic credo: starting from the tradition of jazz while remaining open in the search for new sonic ideals. Three concerts, a single musical idea revealed through different faces.

Miles Ahead brought together a variety of materials, but a year later, Gil Evans adapted Gershwin’s opera, Porgy and Bess into a really mesmerizing concert. The 1958 recordings exude inner tension, even though Evans treats the orchestra with great restraint, using only a fragment of a melody in Summertime, with a repetitive pattern of a total of seven notes in the accompaniment, played at a lively tempo. Meanwhile, the hero represented by the sound of the trumpet believes he can move freely, but the monotony of the accompaniment gives us a sense of foreboding – even as we still dare to revel in the beauty. In I Loves You Porgy, the tension is already enormous, even though there is hardly any movement in the accompaniment, it is almost static. The palpably vulnerable sound of Davis's trumpet demonically draws our attention, whether he is personifying the narrator or one of the title characters. Soloist and orchestra, innovation and tradition, classical and jazz; the complex goals of this legendary album are still exemplary for the Modern Art Orchestra today. The Modern Art Orchestra’s three-part concert series pays tribute to this year’s centenary of a jazz icon through the legendary collaboration of Miles Davis and Gil Evans. The evenings built around three inescapable milestones of jazz history – Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain – are not straightforward reinterpretations of the iconic albums, but rather trace the arc of a shared musical vision: the expansion of the boundaries between jazz and classical music, the redefinition of the big-band sound, and the revolutionary rethinking of the relationship between soloist and orchestra. The series is at once a homage to the 100th anniversary of Miles Davis’s birth and a statement of the Modern Art Orchestra’s artistic credo: starting from the tradition of jazz while remaining open in the search for new sonic ideals. Three concerts, a single musical idea revealed through different faces.

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Of Miles Davis and Gil Evans’ timeless albums, the Grammy-winning Sketches of Spain was the first to go platinum, but it was also the one they worked on the longest in the studio. Davis was inspired by Iberian music in several ways: his wife took him to a flamenco evening, which had a huge impact on him, but one of the tunes had already appeared on their slightly earlier, epoch-making album Kind of Blue. In addition, Columbia Records had already released authentic Spanish folk music, which Evans studied in depth. The Concerto de Aranjuez, an expanded movement from Rodrigo's guitar concerto, flows majestically at the start of the record, followed by folk song arrangements, a Villa-Lobos theme, and a flamenco paraphrase composed by Evans. Evans’ maximalism brought the desired result, Davis’ reputation skyrocketed. Many even trace the concept of world music to have originated at this point. Davis was completely emotionally exhausted by the end of the long weeks of the recordings, having given his all while not giving up on his extensive touring schedule. He gave only one retrospective performance of his earlier recordings in his lifetime, when, a few months before his death, he played a concert in Montreux with Quincy Jones's band, performing songs from the repertoire he had made with Evans. The Modern Art Orchestra’s three-part concert series pays tribute to this year’s centenary of a jazz icon through the legendary collaboration of Miles Davis and Gil Evans. The evenings built around three inescapable milestones of jazz history – Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain – are not straightforward reinterpretations of the iconic albums, but rather trace the arc of a shared musical vision: the expansion of the boundaries between jazz and classical music, the redefinition of the big-band sound, and the revolutionary rethinking of the relationship between soloist and orchestra. The series is at once a homage to the 100th anniversary of Miles Davis’s birth and a statement of the Modern Art Orchestra’s artistic credo: starting from the tradition of jazz while remaining open in the search for new sonic ideals. Three concerts, a single musical idea revealed through different faces.

Of Miles Davis and Gil Evans’ timeless albums, the Grammy-winning Sketches of Spain was the first to go platinum, but it was also the one they worked on the longest in the studio. Davis was inspired by Iberian music in several ways: his wife took him to a flamenco evening, which had a huge impact on him, but one of the tunes had already appeared on their slightly earlier, epoch-making album Kind of Blue. In addition, Columbia Records had already released authentic Spanish folk music, which Evans studied in depth. The Concerto de Aranjuez, an expanded movement from Rodrigo's guitar concerto, flows majestically at the start of the record, followed by folk song arrangements, a Villa-Lobos theme, and a flamenco paraphrase composed by Evans. Evans’ maximalism brought the desired result, Davis’ reputation skyrocketed. Many even trace the concept of world music to have originated at this point. Davis was completely emotionally exhausted by the end of the long weeks of the recordings, having given his all while not giving up on his extensive touring schedule. He gave only one retrospective performance of his earlier recordings in his lifetime, when, a few months before his death, he played a concert in Montreux with Quincy Jones's band, performing songs from the repertoire he had made with Evans. The Modern Art Orchestra’s three-part concert series pays tribute to this year’s centenary of a jazz icon through the legendary collaboration of Miles Davis and Gil Evans. The evenings built around three inescapable milestones of jazz history – Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain – are not straightforward reinterpretations of the iconic albums, but rather trace the arc of a shared musical vision: the expansion of the boundaries between jazz and classical music, the redefinition of the big-band sound, and the revolutionary rethinking of the relationship between soloist and orchestra. The series is at once a homage to the 100th anniversary of Miles Davis’s birth and a statement of the Modern Art Orchestra’s artistic credo: starting from the tradition of jazz while remaining open in the search for new sonic ideals. Three concerts, a single musical idea revealed through different faces.