With 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.  

In the early 20th century, his music found its way easily into the affected world of operetta with Das Dreimäderlhaus, and his oeuvre is full of light, casual pieces written for the music lovers of early 19th-century Vienna, yet few in the history of Western art music have gone as far as Franz Schubert in capturing human hopelessness. “All is going shamefully,” he wrote to a friend in the early 1820s, “for in this miserable world it is the fate of almost every sensible man. And what are we to do with happiness when unhappiness is now our only stimulant.” The biographical reasons for this unhappiness (ranging from love disappointment to financial difficulties and fatal illness) are less interesting than how we listeners today, 200 years later, can experience the hopelessness represented in Schubert's music – in this case, in the grand Piano Sonata in A minor composed in 1825. In the first half of the evening, pianist Gábor Csalog and music historian Gergely Fazekas will discuss how the feeling of hopelessness can be expressed in music, using examples from other works too. The language of this conversation is Hungarian.

Dear Guests, We regret to inform you that this concert on 3 March is cancelled due to health reasons.  The concert is postponed to 17 March 7 PM.  Tickets purchased for the concert are still valid for the new date.  In case you would like to ask for a refund,  please contact us at [email protected]. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.Budapest Music Center

Six composers, six pieces, sixty-six years, but nothing diabolical. In fact, several aspects of the season’s only performance to be hosted at the BMC will direct the audience’s gaze skywards towards the heavens. We may rightfully label the evening a contemporary concert, although only one of the pieces on the program, featuring works composed between 1940 and 2006, was written after the turn of the millennium. The BFO’s musicians will present composers, both legendary and lesser-known, who stood up to resistance encountered in their time, stuck to their innovative visions and produced oeuvres which have found their ways to the hearts not only of other professionals, but also audiences. The works incorporate a diverse range of formations, unique sounds and exciting back stories, with themes covering rain, copper, Bach, economizing on musical notes, essentially “anything” and the new year. Water is one of the key motifs in the art of Japanese Tōru Takemitsu, as he interprets the water cycle of the world as a fluid process. Rain Spell, which employs fluid and mysterious music, places the colorful and magical phenomenon of rain at its center, with the help of the sounds and silences of the flute, the clarinet, the harp, the piano and the vibraphone. “My father was a geologist and mining engineer,” Joan Tower has said, describing her attraction to minerals and stones. She has composed music about topaz and silver; and her 2006 piece, Copperwave, spotlights heavy, soft copper – naturally enough, on the brass winds. The Latin motifs of the piece evoke the years Tower spent in Bolivia as a child. Mentored by Shostakovich and blacklisted by the Soviet Union, she was even more driven to be liberated through her art. Sofia Gubaidulina drew inspiration from so many quarters; her main role model was nonetheless Bach. It was shortly before he passed away that Bach worked on the slow choral theme which appears in Gubaidulina’s work, representing the Baroque master’s ascent to heaven using string instruments and the harpsichord. Of the twelve bagatelles he composed earlier for the piano, Ligeti arranged six for a wind quintet in 1953. The movements exude “imaginary folklore” and “limping folk music.” The short, succinct bagatelles, using only few notes, feature dissonant, cool, moving, wild and passionate music, and even funeral music paying tribute to Bartók. John Cage was able to turn literally anything into music. His piece Living Room Music, for four performers, was intended to be performed using any household object, and can thus be played even in the living room. The polyrhythmic first movement is followed by a prose part for the phrase, “once upon a time;” then, after a melodious movement, downright pleasant rhythms serve as the ending. Paris was home to a special New Year’s concert on January 4, 1998, featuring Guillaume Connesson’s sextet in three movements, a truly entertaining and humorous piece. Following the variation movement Dynamique, evoking American repetitive music, a calm nighttime part (Nocturne) follows, featuring a clarinet solo; the piece concludes with a festival atmosphere including fireworks. ***** Did you know? Takemitsu’s piece premiered on January 19, 1983 in Yokohama; Tower’s Copperwave premiered in New York on May 4, 2006; Gubaidulina’s Meditation was first performed on August 25, 1994 in Tokyo; Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles was composed in 1953 (with the premiere taking place on October 6, 1969 in Södertälje); Cage wrote his Living Room Music in 1940; Connesson’s Sextet premiered in Paris on January 4, 1998; the Budapest Festival Orchestra most recently performed Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles on October 16, 2023 in Rome; this will be the BFO’s first performance of the other pieces. Contemporary events: Polish composer Witold Lutosławski’s Symphony No. 3 premiered in Chicago on September 29, 1983 / Canadian author Alice Munro’s collection of stories The View from Castle Rock was published in 2006; the author would later be awarded the Nobel Prize / On April 1, 1994, Hungary submitted its request to join the European Union / American author John Updike’s novel Brazil was published in 1994 / Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher produced his lithograph Relativity in 1953 / Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg’s Violin Concerto premiered in Philadelphia on December 6, 1940 / As part of preparations for Operation Seelöwe (“Sealion”), the German air force began the systematic bombing of England on August 1, 1940 / Spanish painter Salvador Dalí painted his depiction The Face of War in 1940 / English author J. K. Rowling published her novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1998.

Pianist Károly Gáspár is one of the leading figures on the Hungarian jazz scene. He has released five highly successful albums to date: with his trio he recorded The Outsider, Salvation, Philosophy, and, most recently, Tribute to Giants, while as a soloist he has released a solo album entitled Centuries Suite. These recordings predominantly feature Gáspár's own compositions, but also include jazz standards. Their repertoire prepared for this concert will consist of well-known jazz evergreens, performed with excellent saxophonist Bálint Uher-Győrfi as special guest.  

The experimental music project Kada ad Libitum, founded in 2005, uses mostly broad structures and sets of rules instead of songs, and creates new content in each concert and recording situation based on their possibilities. Its members come from different musical cultures, so the ensemble cannot really have genres or typical styles – instead, each person plays in the way that is authentic to him or her and inspired by the musical process in creation. In January 2025, the band releases their second album, a sonic imprint of a project consisting of 3 concerts and 2 studio sessions. One of the concerts took place at Opus in May 2024. During the evening, however, the six musicians will also play in different lineups than on the album. On the one side of the vinyl album, the keyboardist is Máté Pozsár, while on the other it is György Bartók. Both of them will now take to the stage in a joint live production that is sure to impress fans of progressive contemporary jazz and experimental music.  

Lucks, Schlichting und Marien are a miniature brass band, juggling shifting rolls, toggling between rhythm and melody as they traverse a beguiling landscape of free jazz, funk, punk rock, and New Orleans brass band traditions. Collectively, they have been spending an increasing amount of time pushing and stretching their original tunes with a mixture of improvisational brio and body-moving funk. Since 2017, the trio has been on the road with numerous concerts in jazz clubs and at festivals, has received several grants from the Musikfonds and Berlin Senate, and has recently released their third CD on Tiger Moon Records. In 2023, the Insomnia Brass Band was awarded the German Jazz Prize as „Band of the Year”.

The fruitful collaboration of French-born saxophonist-clarinetist Robin Fincker and British pianist Kit Downes goes back decades. Their life paths have taken them from London to two different countries in Europe, and they met again three years ago when they teamed up with Irish singer Lauren Kinsella to set traditional songs and contemporary poetry to music. After their first album Ombres, released on BMC Records in March 2024, they are now presenting their newest project Many Moons, also to be recorded before the concert. With Many Moons, Shadowlands continues its journey between old and new music, shedding light on the unheard corners of past songs whilst unfolding its own version of contemporary folk music. For this new repertoire, the trio has refined its language and has developed a free yet dazzlingly clear way of floating between songs. In this space, traditional Sean Os songs, poems by Emily Dickinson and Yeats and a Sainte by Maurice Ravel cohabit with original compositions. Through the flicking light, the voice of Lauren Kinsella hovers like a planet around which the saxophone and keyboards gravitate and circle, thus creating music of a timeless revolution.  

László Kéringer and László Borbély present a captivating cross-section of Romantic song literature: the backbone of the programme consists of works by Franz Schubert, the king of songwriters, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, whose songs are far less well-known than they would deserve. Their compositional world is complemented by pieces of French composers Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Fauré, and Richard Wagner. “This programme is a selection of my personal favourites. Singing them is a great pleasure. They all revolve around dreams: from the dreams of childhood through the reveries of adulthood to the final years following the dreams that never came true. Turning with gratitude to those that were realized, with acceptance and resignation to those that remain unrealized. For me, it was a great discovery that these romantic songs, if not considered from the point of view of the performing tradition, can be sang with the same simplicity as the music of earlier periods, Viennese Classicism or the Baroque. In time, these composers worked at a much shorter distance from each other than it seems looking back from 2025. By performing these songs, I want to convey this simplicity, and also the love of singing”, summed up László Kéringer. Photo credit: Lenke Szilágyi, Norbert Balog

Not just the members of the quartet, this album is a legend in itself. Two originals have become standards from it. By 1965, the self-taught Montgomery received many invitations, including one from New York’s Half-Note. The rhythm section, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, had accompanied Miles Davis for four years. For some reason, only No Blues and If I Could See Me Now have made it from the concert onto the first release, the rest were studio recordings three months later. Two tracks with numbered titles, Unit 7 and Four on Six, became standards from this album, but the bluesy, hidden tension of What’s New is also full of excitement. The almost breathless momentum all the way through is impressive, like a hissing steam engine at full speed, and it’s not just the guitar that gives that feeling. It’s the piano and accompaniment throughout as well, as they reveal simple yet nuanced melodies with the endlessly precise interplay of the whole quartet. The first LP release has been followed by numerous analogue and digital discs since 1965, because this material never gets old. The guitarist of MAO, Áron Komjáti, a master of shades depicting any colour of jazz, interprets the classic tracks as a soloist on the podium.

The Chemin Neuf Quintet, formed in 2022, originally plays vocal music with contralto Judit Rajk. Their debut album O ignee spiritus was released in 2024 on BMC Records, drawing on the repertoire of European church music from the early Middle Ages to the late 19th century, with a focus on plainchant. This time they perform a new repertoire in a purely instrumental lineup: the base quartet of two cellos, saxophone and guitar is joined by keyboardist Máté Pozsár. Their programme includes new compositions by Gábor Gadó, as well as arrangements by András Soós and Eric Satie, and reworked Gregorian chants, creating an intimate and meditative sound that combines the worlds of early music, baroque and contemporary music. The group will also record the material for BMC Records this spring.  

“Everything you wanted to know about groove but were afraid to ask.”This year marks thirty-five years of Jim Black traveling around the world teaching, sharing, and speaking about music with other musicians by way private lessons, single day to week-long workshops, and academic classroom courses in the university setting.Jim’s clinics cover a full range of musical topics which are crucial to understand for the modern improvising artist. Along with exploring the elements of composition and improvisation, Jim will be explaining and demonstrating the many ways rhythm can be shaped and sculpted, while improving one’s time feel, swing, and groove.All topics and ideas are up for discussion, investigation, and demonstration. Jim looks forward to the active participation of the students – please bring your questions and your curiosity, and your instrument is also welcome. Drummer, composer, and educator Jim Black has become one of the most in-demand drummers in avant-garde jazz and experimental rock since emerging as a key member of the New York downtown scene during the '90s. He graduated from Berklee College of Music by 1989. During that time Black and his Seattle colleagues Chris Speed and Andrew D’Angelo formed the band Human Feel with guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel.By 1991, Black and the other members of Human Feel had moved to Brooklyn, NY, where they found a home in the Downtown music scene then centered around the Knitting Factory and rapidly became among the city's busiest sidemen. Black's early years in New York saw him take featured roles in some of the most critically acclaimed bands of the time, like Tim Berne's Bloodcount, Ellery Eskelin's trio, Pachora, and Dave Douglas' Tiny Bell Trio. Thus began thirty years of near-constant touring and recording, with the above bands as well as artists like Uri Caine, Dave Liebman, Lee Konitz, Steve Coleman, Tomasz Stanko, Nels Cline, and Laurie Anderson.In 2000, Black started the rock inspired quartet AlasNoAxis, recording six albums of his compositions for the German label Winter & Winter. In 2010 he formed the Jim Black Trio with pianist Elias Stemeseder and Thomas Morgan on bass, recording a total of four albums, their latest award-winning release Reckon is available on the Swiss label Intakt. He currently leads the band Jim Black & The Schrimps, which also records for Intakt and tours around Europe.

In search of new musical challenges, drummer Jim Black gathers some of the most exciting musicians of the young Berlin jazz scene around him: Asger Nissen on alto saxophone, Julius Gawlik on tenor saxophone and bassist Felix Henkelhausen. Together they are Jim & The Schrimps – a rhythmically explosive jazz quartet that captivates its audience with energetic improvisations and irrepressible joy of playing. Inspired by musical role models such as Elliot Smith, Stina Nordenstam, and Ornette Coleman, the four musicians interpret original songs written by Black. They are noticeably influenced by the diverse experiences of the New York drummer but live above all from the energy and individuality of each band member. The result is a raucously energetic sound that challenges both the band itself and its listeners. Michaela Brosi    

Join saxophonist Zoh Amba, bassist Nick Dunston, and drummer Chris Corsano for an immersive workshop on free improvisation. Drawing from their extensive experience in avant-garde jazz and experimental music, these visionary artists will discuss with participants their techniques for deep listening, spontaneous composition, and developing a personal approach to improvisation based on their relationship to the music's history. Through both duo and larger ensemble playing, attendees will investigate ways to create structure and form in the moment, with a strong focus on how to contribute to group dynamics while developing their individual voices. Instrumentalists and singers of various skill levels are welcome. The focus will be on fostering creativity and musical dialogue rather than technical virtuosity. Participants should bring their instruments. Zoh Amba is a composer and instrumentalist from Tennessee residing in New York. Her music blends avant-garde, noise, and devotional hymns. Before studying music at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music, New England Conservatory and studying with David Murray in New York, she spent most of her time writing and practicing saxophone in a remote forest near her home alone where she started to develop her distinct sound and approach. Today, her powerfully unique avant-garde music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, and repeated incantations. Amba released her first two records in 2022. Her debut record O, Sun was produced by John Zorn and released on his prestigious label Tzadik. She has collaborated with a variety of high profile musicians such as Jim White (Dirty Three), legendary bassist William Parker, Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Frank Rosaly or Thomas Morgan. Nick Dunston is an acoustic and electroacoustic composer, improviser, and sound artist. Called an “indispensable player on the New York avant-garde" (New York Times), his performances have spanned a variety of venues and festivals across North America and Europe. His work explores notions of ancestral memory, materiality, embodiment, decolonization, and Afro-surrealism. In 2020 in collaboration with Dogbotic Labs, he co-created “Ear Re-training”, a music composition course focusing on media-bending experimental techniques and concepts. His most recent album, the Afro-surrealist-anti-opera Colla Voce, was released in April 2024 on Out Of Your Head Records. He was nominated for the Deutscher Jazzpreis (German Jazz Prize) in 2023 and 2024, and alongside Cansu Tanrikulu, won the SWR Jazz Prize of 2024. Chris Corsano is a drummer who has been working at the intersections of free improvisation, avant-rock, and experimental music since the late '90s. He's a rim-batterer of choice for some of the greatest contemporary purveyors of “jazz” (Joe McPhee, Paul Flaherty, Mette Rasmussen) and “rock” (Sir Richard Bishop, Bill Orcutt, Jim O'Rourke), as well as artists beyond categorization (Björk for her Volta album and world tour, Michael Flower, Okkyung Lee). Appearing on over 150 albums and touring in an ultra-wide array of collaborations, Corsano has developed a highly personal musical language through ecstatic free improvisation, extended percussion techniques, and an innovative approach to the drum kit that includes resonating drum heads with bowed strings and circular-breathed reeds. He's been called “one of the world's great drummers” by The Guardian, “a peripatetic ace of the avant-garde” by The New York Times, and “arguably the most riotously energetic and creative drummer in contemporary free jazz” by Wire Magazine.

Zoh Amba is a young composer, saxophonist, and flutist from Tennessee. Her music blends avant-garde, noise, and devotional hymns. Before studying music at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music, New England Conservatory and studying with David Murray in New York, she spent most of her time writing and practicing saxophone in the forest near her home. Today, her powerfully unique avant-garde music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, and repeated incantations. Amba released two records in 2022. Her debut record O, Sun was produced by John Zorn and released on the prestigious label Tzadik. Zoh Amba’s second record, Bhakti features Micah Thomas, Tyshawn Sorey, and Matt Hollenberg. She has collaborated with a variety of high profile musicians such as Jim White (Dirty Three), legendary bassist William Parker, Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Frank Rosaly, Thomas Morgan, etc. Amba has also performed at well respected festivals and venues such as Roulette (NY), Ars Nova Workshop (PA), Vision Festival (NY), ReWire Festival (NL), BRDCST Festival (BE), and Angel City Jazz Festival (LA), Big Ears Festival, etc. Bhakti has become the moniker for Amba’s ongoing live and recording ensemble project with ever changing members.  

Founded in 2018, the Korossy Quartet aims to transmit the famous Hungarian string quartet tradition, and to present the broadest possible repertoire to Hungarian and foreign audiences. In 2021, the ensemble was awarded 5 different special prizes at the international Bartók World Competition, and a year later they were accepted into the class of Günter Pichler, first violinist of the legendary Alban Berg Quartet, at the Reina Sofia School of Music in Madrid. The Korossy Quartet's Bartók series, starting in autumn 2023, includes all of Bartók's string quartets in 6 concerts over 2 years, paired with a selection of works by the greatest composers of music history. Béla Bartók's String Quartet No 5 is perhaps the most outstanding reflection of his genius in the genre. While each movement in the bridge form is an exemplar of musical streamlining, each note captivate the listener with an elemental expressive and magnetic quality. Mozart also shows the very best of his composing abilities in his last String Quartet in F major. Both works are characterised by wise structures, and stunningly perfect and sensuous formal design. The instruments exist both in their individual capacity and in community, so that they can sometimes become instruments of the most intimate confession. This kind of dramatic writing also refers these two works in the highest ranks of string quartet literature. Photo: Andrea Felvégi

Tamás Geröly was inspired by the sound and creativity of his dream band to realize new ideas and reimagine old songs. In the first part of the evening, the Geröly Trio, active since 2009, will reinterpret the ragtime pieces from their album Ronggyá tépett idő with the inspiring contribution of the excellent brass players Árpád Kiss and Zoltán Kiss. In the second part, we will witness the creation of free music, born in the magic of “breathing silence” and intense sound curtains. At the end of the concert, the ensemble has a surprise in store, in the form of a style not heard before during the evening.  

Koncz Kriszta Group's first album, Travel in Time explores a wide range of topics with a distinct musical character: it tells us about childhood, parent-child relationships, the nature of change, moments of creation, the art of letting go, different forms of love, and the passing of time. The singer's own English texts and the songs themselves all reflect her personal experiences and visions. Most members of the group are professional jazz musicians, but classical music, popular music, folk and theatre music also appear among their studies and influences, providing a colourful background to the performance. The repertoire, rooted in jazz, sometimes reminiscent of pop, sometimes of '60s and '70s American folk music, comes to an even brighter life thanks to the orchestration of Ábel Tompa. Kriszta Koncz founded the ensemble in 2023, and they made their debut at the Müpa Budapest Jazz Showcase 2024, winning the Audience Award and the special prize of Veronika Harcsa. The full material of their first album, to be released in February, can be heard live for the first time at this concert.

Supported by National Cultural Fund of Hungary

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”. 

After four concerts in 2023, János Mátyás Stark, Gergely Devich and Fülöp Ránki are announcing a new series at the BMC, now under the name of Trio Haris. The third concert features pieces by Haydn, Mozart, and Mendelssohn. Haydn, as in so many of his works, makes countless subtle jokes in the E major Trio. Even the string pizzicatos at the very beginning of the piece are not out of the ordinary, not to mention the sometimes breakneck modulations, and the long piano solo in the slow movement. Mozart was also among the first to realize that the piano held more potential than previously thought. The Trio in B flat major features a concerto-like, virtuosic piano part. The two tender and playful outer movements encase a dreamlike slow movement of refined beauty. In Mendelssohn's Trio in D minor, a great success already at its premiere, the piano takes flight with virtuoso passages, the cello declares broad melodies in the spirit of Italian opera, and the light-footed fairies of the scherzo challenge the pianist with their exuberancy. Further concerts in this series: 5 October 2024 7 PM Trio Haris (Ránki – Stark – Devich) I. | Haydn, Liszt, Schubert4 January 2025 7 PM Trio Haris (Ránki – Stark – Devich) II. | Takemitsu, Schubert, Shostakovich7 June 2025 7 PM Trio Haris (Ránki – Stark – Devich) IV. | Schumann and Brahms

Eight years after their last studio album, the band Kéknyúl (Blue Rabbit) released a new album in 2023. 2 Much 2 Soon builds on the familiar foundations, but the band, led by Mátyás Premecz and Andrew Hefler, twist the formula. At the same time, there are persisting elements as well: lots of wind instruments, an American voice and a huge Hammond organ – these are the hallmarks of their music. This evening is for all those who love soul and like to dance to funk rhythms.  

Péter Eötvös, one of the most influential composers, conductors and teachers of our time, passed away on 24 March 2024. During his international career, he gave lasting musical inspiration to countless musicians and huge audiences, and was equally  committed to sharing his professional experience with new generations of composers and conductors through the Péter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation, hosted by BMC. On the anniversary of his death, we commemorate his art and personality with an intimate concert featuring works for small chamber ensembles or solo instruments by his colleagues. Between the pieces, actress Tünde Szalontay reads excerpts from Eötvös and Pedro Amaral’s book Parlando – rubato, interviews, and writings about Eötvös.

Among the pillars of StEFREM's broad repertoire are works for male choir by Hungarian composers, primarily Liszt, Bartók and Kodály, as well as compositions dedicated to the ensemble by contemporary Hungarian masters. They have released several albums of these works on BMC Records. The series A Genius Is Born is a tribute to the male choir works by the three greatest Hungarian masters of music, so it is no coincidence that the concerts are taking place on the composers' birthdays. A special feature of the concert programme is that StEFREM's personal selection of works by the classical composers is complemented by outstanding and interesting pieces by their "heirs", the Hungarian composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. StEFREM is a Budapest-based vocal ensemble with a unique sound. The multi award-winning ensemble regularly performs throughout Europe, from London to Bucharest, and has also performed in Africa, India and South America. They have worked with renowned artists such as Abeer Nehme, Victor Solomon, and the King's Singers, and have released 18 albums since 2002. Their rich and varied repertoire includes Byzantine and classical pieces, crossover arrangements and acapella pop songs. Béla Bartók was born 143 years ago on one of the most important Christian feasts: the Feast of the Assumption, also known as the Feast of the Annunciation, on 25 March. Bartók's unique, pure art has quickly become particularly influential for the whole music culture, and continues to be so even 80 years after his death. Out of the Hungarian geniuses, Liszt wrote more than sixty male choir works, Kodály twenty, Bartók only six, but these are true gems of the genre, and span his entire oeuvre. In particular, the Songs from Olden Times and the Székely Folk Songs are seminal in the literature of men's choral music. In the final episode of the three-part concert series A Genius is Born, Bartók's works will be accompanied by compositions and transcriptions by six contemporary Hungarian composers. Further concerts in this series: 22 October 2024 19:00 St.EFREM: A Genius is Born I. | Franz Liszt and his Musical Heritage16 December 2024 19:00 St.EFREM: A Genius is Born II. | Zoltán Kodály and his Musical Heritage

More than 20 years after their debut as a duo, after Porridge Days, Butter in my brain (qualified as a masterpiece in Le Monde, 4 f in Télérama, nominated for the Victoires du Jazz 2018), and Room Service, Claudia Solal and Benjamin Moussay are back again with Punk Moon, a flaming new repertoire. The album will be released this spring on the Jazzdor series’ record company. For this completely original program, Claudia wrote ten poems in English, partly inspired by the post-war American movement called confessional poetry, including the work of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, or W.D. Snodgrass. The duo creates a unique sound that is as much obvious and fluid as elaborate and moving, mixing piano, modular synth, voice, and mastered effects. The whole project gives birth to lunar, magnetic and chimeric orchestral pop songs. Arthouse songs for borderless free music. After Characters on a wall (ECM Records), Louis Sclavis decided to create a new program with the same musicians with the addition of Olivier Laisney. He called this new opus India, in reference to the title of his first album as band leader, recorded in the early 1980s, Chine. India’s music is made up of melodies and atmospheres, underpinned by persistent beats and rhythms, as well as suggested dances. “I have distant, vague memories of a theater on the docks of Calcutta, of a long train in the countryside, of a night at Kali temple, of a marching brass band during Ganesh festivals, and others. These impressions are sometimes present in my compositions; I wish to offer sounds from a faraway land, more imaginary than real. The music is about Indies, not necessarily ‘galantes’ – see Les Indes galantes by Jean-Philippe Rameau –, but always baroque”, said Sclavis.  

After having played in many free, pop and especially world music formations, Gergő Kováts felt that the time had come to explore the endless fields between folk music and jazz with his fellow musicians. The aim of Kovász, assembled for this scientific-fantastic expedition, is nothing less than to gradually replace its material, starting from the world of jazz and retaining its achievements, with elements of Carpathian Basin folk music culture. Máté Pozsár and Attila Gyárfás are inescapable figures of the free jazz scene, while Ábel Dénes has a well-established international reputation as a bilingual musician, having achieved major international successes with the Nagy Emma Quintet and Söndörgő. The group's first album will be released in February on BMC Records. A wind from a fantasised Mexico blows and fans the flames of the quartet created by cellist Valentin Ceccaldi. Inspired by the taste of lemons and the mystical atmosphere of Dia de los Muertos, a brightly coloured, tangy and spicy music is played, shaken, shaped and triturated by Luís Lopes's guitar, Fulco Ottervanger's keyboards and Etienne Ziemniak's drums. Exploring our relationship with our ancestors as much as the explosiveness of the present, the four partners invite us to a pagan feast that celebrates contrasts, from caresses to uppercuts, from chaos to hugs, for a moment that's both sensitive and furious.    

A duet in the simplest device – a voice and a guitar – where poetry and matter blend, setting fire on the powder of highly seductive chemistry. With his acoustic guitar in open tuning, Mathieu Sourisseau deploys sonorous landscapes, navigates between blues, noise-folk, rock or improvised music. A monochromatic canvas that makes fun of its own nuances, on which Mike Ladd gives life to his texts. Chanson, rap or scansion, the poetry in English grazes auto-biography, delivers some keys to the lost lovers, grand-mother Rose left for North Carolina, some of the craziest days spent in the Bronx or in Paris, or even revolt and the emancipating role of Afro-American literature. We are simply passing through the earth, all experiencing the same migration, from dust to dust. Music itself is a vector of migration, from within to beyond. We are also living in a time where living beings are and will be increasingly forced to migrate, from their primary habitat to a potentially better adapted elsewhere. This music, sprinkled with emblematic texts by Martin Luther King, Marie José Mondzain, Abbé Pierre among others, is an invitation to the acceptance of others, in their common points, as much as in their differences, an invitation to welcome, to hospitality, to kindness. Six Migrant Pieces are 6 people from varied origins, all formidable internationally recognized musicians, met at one point of their different migrations in the cosmopolitan city of Paris. Tasty and subtle combination mixing France, of course, but also Italy, Belgium, Brazil, Ukraine, Scandinavia, the 6 compositions of Christophe Monniot, written precisely for these 6 musicians, are nourished by the mixture of their own cultures, as well as particular tastes of the composer for certain illustrious elders who have left a lasting mark on the history of music. We will cite Olivier Messiaen, Weather Report, Leonard Bernstein, Wynton Marsalis, Allan Holdsworth. Music conceived as a permanent journey, a perpetual migratory flow.    

A podium conversation with music therapists. Music Therapy Club is an open meeting-place of music therapists, medical, educational and social workers, as well as of anybody interested in music therapy. (In Hungarian) 

Traces originates in the meeting, in the search for common sound territories or the construction of new spaces between the Palestinian singer and oud player Kamilya Jubran and Sylvain Cathala's French trio. Since 2015, Cathala's contemporary composition and Jubran's modern orality have been intermixing to create their own music based on oral scores and a controlled discourse dramaturgy and musical time. Their music carries the listener into a unique poetic adventure. Endowed with a singular instrumentation (voice, oud, saxophone, double bass and drums), this band also distinguishes itself by its great artistic standards, a curiosity and a strong desire for total collaboration. For 10 years, the oral and score compositions, as well as the forms and orchestrations have been re-examined and changed to benefit musical expressiveness and lyricism. The group extends their work with the creation of a new programme called About. The music of Tariqa is an organic and unique fusion where Moroccan Gnawa and Hungarian folk music meet to reveal a new musical domain. Saïd Tichiti, a native of the Moroccan Sahara, brings the pulsating rhythms of gnawa trance rituals, the mystical melodies of Arabic maqam, and the invigorating energy of chaabi. Péter Bede and Ferenc Kovács, masters of jazz and Hungarian folk music, contribute their rich styles to this musical alchemy. Ádám Mészáros and András Halmos, seasoned musicians from various formations and adept practitioners of afrobeat and improvisation, add even more colors to this musical kaleidoscope. Tariqa's immersive concerts are ritual experiences where the audience becomes a participant, not just a listener. In today's isolation, there is a growing need for such transcendent communal experiences that can bring collective healing. No concerts are alike; each performance is a new and unrepeatable journey. As William Burroughs put it, Gnawa is "the world's oldest, 4000-year-old rock 'n' roll," and this tradition is reborn in a new form through Tariqa's art.  

Details soon...

“Elmo Nero is beautifully exploring what's possible in a guitar trio setting, finding many ways to express honesty, joy and beauty in this classic format.” (Gilad Hekselman) Elmo Nero was founded in 2022 by Gina Schwarz and Christoph Helm. The following  year, the exceptional bassist, composer & Hans Koller Award winner and the guitarist, who virtuously combines a multitude of popular music styles in his playing, released their eponymous debut album together with drummer Max Plattner. It was enthusiastically received by critics and audiences alike. Since summer 2024 Mareike Wiening has been playing drums in the band. The German Jazz Award nominee, who's been dividing her time between NYC, Cologne and Vienna over the past years, enriches the trio with her multi-faceted playing and allows the compositions and improvisations, which are fed by a wide variety of musical influences, to shine in completely new colors.  

Born five hundred years ago, the Italian master of Renaissance vocal polyphony, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the "saviour of sacred music", is still a major figure in choral culture, and the study of his clear style is compulsory in composition courses. The multi-award-winning Italian conductor and composer Lorenzo Donati, who was also a student of Ennio Morricone, will conduct the Kodály Choir Debrecen, mixing Palestrina's works with his own compositions and pieces by his Italian contemporaries to show that Palestrina's star still shines brightly after half a millennium.

Details soon...

Under the lens of music understood as intercultural dialogue, this program proposes a musical journey from north to south across Europe and America, framed within the 20th century. It is a voyage that explores the diverse outcomes of musical composition during those decades, shaped by the different sensibilities and characteristics of the various latitudes of both continents. The program is divided into two parts: Europe (starting point of the north-to-south musical dialogue) and the Americas (second half of the journey and the musical dialogue between continents and styles). The Cuarteto Matrice was born in 2016 in Madrid, the city where the musicians met and are currently based and developing their career with the ensemble, always having the objective of communicating with the audience through the different languages of music and performance. The name of the quartet itself comes from the ancient name of the city of Madrid, Matrice, an Arabic term for "mother of waters". The members of the quartet have studied at some of the main musical institutions in Europe, such as the Royal Academy of Music of London, Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía, the Royal Conservatory of Madrid or Katarina Gurska Centre in Madrid. They have attended several masterclasses with the Kopelman Quartet’s violist Igor Sulyga. The Quartet have recently performed at some festivals across Spain as the RESIS Festival in A Coruña, Clásicos en Verano in Madrid, Sulayr Festival in Granada and FIAS Festival (Sacred Art Madrid Music Festival), where they performed the world premier of the Cuarteto nº2 by Hugo Gómez-Chao, a piece dedicated to the quartet, having great reviews from both musical press and media. The four musicians of Cuarteto Matrice have also been selected for the Musae Program promoted by the National Cultural Ministry, a project where they performed at the Sorolla National Museum and brought them a Spanish music concert series residency with the sponsorship of CNP Partners. Cuarteto Matrice have recently performed at many cities all around Spain, such as Barcelona, Bilbao and Sevilla, including remarkable venues and music halls like, Teatro Fernando de Rojas, Círculo de Bellas Artes and Athenaeum in Madrid and also Moncloa Palace, house of the Spanish Government, where they performed in 2021 as part of an homage act holded by the Spanish Arts Ministry. They have been selected as part of the MERITA platform 2023 organized by Le Dimore del Quartetto, a program that will take them to an artistic residence in Florence in 2024 as well several concerts across Europe during the current season 2024-2025. The centre of the MERITA project is the 38 quartets, selected from 61 applications received from 27 different countries. These early-career musicians represent a new generation of string quartets, and through MERITA, they will break new ground in European classical music. MERITA, coordinated by Le Dimore del Quartetto, brings together 17 leading musical and cultural organizations from 12 European countries. Each offers a unique perspective on and approach to classical music in the modern world, linked by their commitment to supporting new musicians while keeping alive music’s precious heritage. By connecting emerging talent with experts in performance with impact, MERITA aims to forge a vital and sustainable future for European classical music.

Bassist Stanley Clarke’s name is at the top of this studio album cover only because of the alphabetical order: the quintet (with Freddie Hubbard, Lenny White and Chick Corea) was mainly known as the Griffith Park Band. Perhaps the biggest star at the time was saxophone legend Joe Henderson, so he got to play the first solo on most tracks. The band, acoustic throughout, presents a wide cavalcade of moods. The musicians move like big cats, stretching lazily and then rushing to attack. It’s no coincidence that the orchestra has more concert than studio recordings. Only a Steve Swallow composition is featured here, the others are original compositions in which both the highly inspirational interplay and the far-reaching impros are perfectly developed. It’s good to experience the giants of jazz-rock bath together in a hard bop river before crossing it. MAO soloists, on the other hand, can reflect on this album with four decades of accumulated musical knowledge. 

Details soon...

Contemporary – Miho Hazama, U. C. Erkin, Christopher Cerrone, Pavel Fischer Like sports, music also has its 'tools' for performance increase and relaxation. The Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra highlights 'contemporary' in their programme without inhibitions, as with similar compilations, they have garnered great success with the audience several times before. The globally recognised ensembles strike a perfect balance in the effects by spoonfeeding us with alternating more meditative and lax works with quick and ecstatic pieces. During the concert, the audience can experience a refreshing rejuvenation and recharging of their batteries, just like after a good training session.

From dreamer to magician: Wolfgang Haffner, “best” (Die Welt), “coolest” (ARD ttt), even “most important drummer of his generation” (SZ), is going on tour with his Wolfgang Haffner Trio, following the success of his “Dream Band” and his “Magic Band”. The accompanying album is entitled “Life Rhythm”, which was released in fall 2024. Wolfgang Haffner is a musical all-rounder. A leader who loves to accompany. An instrumentalist who loves to compose. A master of nuances on the drums, for whom the audience is important and for whom it is important to play “music for the heart”, as he says himself. Now he is going on tour with the long-standing members of his trio, Simon Oslender on keyboards and Thomas Stieger on bass. When Wolfgang Haffner became a professional musician at the age of 18, he immediately joined the bands of jazz icon Albert Mangelsdorff and singer-songwriter Konstantin Wecker. In the years that followed, he drummed his way into Klaus Doldinger's Passport and Chaka Khan's band. Haffner has also played with Al Jarreau, Pat Metheny, The Brecker Brothers, The Manhattan Transfer, Jan Garbarek, Till Brönner, Nightmares on Wax, Die Fantastischen Vier and the Nils Landgren Funk Unit. Today, the two-time ECHO Jazz Award winner is recognised as the most successful German drummer and is also one of the few German musicians who are successful worldwide. 4000 concerts in over 100 countries, from Japan to Brazil, South Africa to Australia, USA to Scandinavia. Haffner's distinctive beats can now be heard on over 400 album productions. His reputation is also enhanced by how active and agile he is as a producer, for example for Max Mutzke or Mezzoforte. Music, especially live and played by such outstanding musicians, always has something magical about it. Together they create and experience the Haffner sound, that unique and unmistakable combination of driving grooves, beautiful melodies and a deep sense of atmosphere and musical moods.  

Details soon...

Details soon...

Details soon...

Details soon...

Details soon...

Springing off a sound reminiscent of acoustic piano trios of the 50s and 60s, Oùat explores the memory and perspectives of hand crafted, collective music making. Jazz in its most open operative meaning, in which improvisation is a real necessity, stimulates the trio to confront and investigate our times of sounds and movements. Oùat's music is transmitted through consistent listening and risk taking. An inviting work that gesticulates the most obvious as well as surprising in coming together. Being one of many groups made possible due to the venue Au Topsi Pohl (2019-2022) in Berlin, Oùat started off with performing the music of Ellington, Hasaan Ibn Ali, Elmo Hope, Per Henrik Wallin and Sun Ra. Their debut album Elastic Bricks (Umlaut, 2022) is exclusively dedicated to their own material and might evoke a dreamed-up vacation of Hindemith in Alger; sounds and tempos in a curious mixture of recognizable disorder and unrecognizable order. For their second release, The Strange Adventures of Jesper Klint (Umlaut, 2023) Oùat reiterates the trio music of Swedish pianist Per Henrik Wallin which is an escalating and beautiful venture of limits and questioning. Oùat continues to praise the sound and momentum of collective concentrated creativity, making as much as possible out of an idea, a shared place and time. This is most certainly heard in the digital release Trial of Future Animals (2023); an advent calendar overwhelming Christmas itself in twenty-four long and very different song releases. The trio likes to invite guests and expand on uncommon forms. Oùat (Once upon a time) can be heard as storytelling, a chatty trilogy instantaneously finding the sonorous meanings of what, where and when. How this is possible is another question. Simply: listen – it's a good beginning, and end! Oùat's members play momentous roles in the creative music scenes of Europe, from Marseille to Dala-Floda via Berlin. Their individual work is heard in groups such as Monks Casino, [ahmed], and The Art Ensemble of Chicago.    

Details soon...

Caminos is the new project of guitarist Juan Gómez ‘Chicuelo’. It comprises tangos, alegrías, bulerías and granaínas, and with an unusual lineup, it opens new sound pathways in flamenco.The pure touch of ‘Chicuelo’, the delicate drums of David Gómez and the virtuoso double bass of Manel Fortià envelop Karen Lugo’s dancing. Karen, in turn, generates new forms by dancing to the slightest whisper. Without cante, cajón or palmas, Caminos’ repertoire is made up of stories with flamenco rhythms. From a lullaby to a tribute to Django Reinhardt, alegrías are transformed by Fortià’s double bass and bulerías by Gómez’s drums. The show brings together freshness, strength and art, and transmits these characteristics with the same naturalness that connects the four artists on stage.Juan Gómez ‘Chicuelo’ is one of the most important guitarists on the current flamenco scene and, at the same time, one of the most prolific and interesting composers of recent generations. As a guitarist, he has accompanied singers such as Enrique Morente, Miguel Poveda, Duquende, Mayte Martín, Rancapino, Chano Lobato, José Mercé, El Cigala, Potito, and Carmen Linares. He has also worked with jazz musicians such as Chano Domínguez, Carles Benavent, Jorge Pardo, Jordi Bonell, Raynald Colom, etc., and has collaborated with the classical pianist Maria João Pires. The concert is realised in cooperation between the BMC and the Embassy of Spain in Hungary.

Details soon...

A podium conversation with music therapists. Music Therapy Club is an open meeting-place of music therapists, medical, educational and social workers, as well as of anybody interested in music therapy. (In Hungarian) 

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.

Details soon...

Details soon...

Details soon...

Details soon...

Details soon...

Founded in 2018, the Korossy Quartet aims to transmit the famous Hungarian string quartet tradition, and to present the broadest possible repertoire to Hungarian and foreign audiences. In 2021, the ensemble was awarded 5 different special prizes at the international Bartók World Competition, and a year later they were accepted into the class of Günter Pichler, first violinist of the legendary Alban Berg Quartet, at the Reina Sofia School of Music in Madrid. The Korossy Quartet's Bartók series, starting in autumn 2023, includes all of Bartók's string quartets in 6 concerts over 2 years, paired with a selection of works by the greatest composers of music history. The first three movements of Bartók's String Quartet No. 6 are preceded by the same slow introduction, while the fourth movement is the unfolding of this Mesto melody into a movement in its own right. Bartók's original plan was for a life-affirming finale, but the events of the composer's life intervened: the death of his mother and the outbreak of World War II caused the quartet to end with sounds of mourning and resignation. Through the character of the work as a whole, and through the key of D minor, we can also associate Mozart's String Quartet in D minor with themes of death and passing. The concert will begin with Webern's Five movements for string quartet, composed in 1909 and also inspired by the death of the composer's mother. Photo: Andrea Felvégi

This album has been overshadowed by an even more legendary recording, but it has a lot of beauty. Saxophonist Paul Desmond is the only member of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, apart from the bandleader, to become a big name outside that quartet. Desmond recorded the album Time Out with the Dave Brubeck Quartet in August 1959 - one of the most successful jazz albums ever made. In September, guitarist Jim Hall, as well as Percy Heath and Connie Kay of the Modern Jazz Quartet joined Desmond for his second solo outing, producing another example of the golden age of laid-back, cool, elegant, swinging jazz. The quartet consistently and unwaveringly performs the hits of the era, which include MJQ numbers and standards, but the CD reissue also includes a Desmond composition. The alto saxophone is lilting and flattering, seductive and reassuring. That's why it was voted number one again in Playboy magazine that year, as the album title suggests. As many of the series’ regulars will have guessed, Árpád Dennert will evoke the sound of one of the saxophone’s unforgettable masters with the MAO's rhythm section.

Details soon...

Details soon...

Details soon...

Details soon...

Details soon...

The cult of Mary has been a source of inspiration not only in the visual arts, but also in sacred music over the centuries. There are at least 3,000 arrangements of the Latin text of the Hail Mary alone, and of course new works are being composed today that set to music a prayer to the Virgin Mary. The Kodály Choir Debrecen's last concert before the summer, with a programme of contemporary music mixed with Renaissance compositions, proves that although the musical language is constantly changing and renewing, the spiritual depth is eternal.

Details soon...

“These are no longer the happy times when we see the glories of youth around every object, but the fatal realisation of a miserable reality which I try to embellish as much as I can with my imagination (thank God for it).” Franz Schubert wrote these lines in 1824 to his brother Ferdinand. That beauty was central to Schubert's compositional thinking hardly needs to be proved to anyone who have heard even a few minutes of Schubert's music in their lifetime. But it was precisely at the beginning of the 19th century that the concept of “sublime” began to take over the place of “beauty” in musical aesthetics, so the ineffable, unearthly beauty of Schubert's melodies was thus an imprint of an earlier era, that of Mozart and Haydn. The Piano Trio in B flat major (B. 898), which Schubert began to compose in 1827 but only completed next year before his death, offers numerous examples of the musical representation of both the concept of “beauty” and the “sublime”. Before playing the piece, Gábor Csalog, his musician friends and music historian Gergely Fazekas will discuss the change in musical aesthetics and show other examples of Schubert’s concept of beauty. The language of the conversation is Hungarian.

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.

Details soon...

Details soon...

Details soon...

Composer József Sári celebrates his 90th birthday this year. On this occasion, our celebratory concert features his chamber music and solo pieces composed for a variety of instruments, including world premieres, performed by outstanding musicians of the Hungarian contemporary music scene. József Sári is a leading figure of 20th and 21st century Hungarian music, both as a composer and as a teacher. Between the 1980s and the 2000s, his works were frequently performed not only in Hungary but also throughout Europe, especially in Germany. His pedagogical work was just as highly regarded: until his retirement, he taught generations of musicians at the Béla Bartók Secondary School of Music and the Liszt Academy in Budapest, and as a guest professor at master classes. He has received numerous awards at home and abroad.