Jazz Fest Budapest 2024
Jazz Fest Budapest
April 27 to May 15
Review by Ken Waxman
Photos by Susan O’Connor
In only its third year, Jazz Fest Budapest (JFB) is already experiencing a growth spurt. With more than 80 concerts scheduled between April 27 and May 15, the idea for JFB, which presented concerts in various locations in Hungary’s architecturally ornate fin de siècle capital, is to reach multiple audiences.
Dedicated to showcasing the diversity of the Hungarian jazz scene, JFB is by no means Magyar-centric. This year’s edition also featured musicians from Cyprus, Norway, Czechia, the Netherlands, Italy, the UK and the US. Additional sonic spices were added to the Hungarian goulash with configurations mixing local and international performers several times between April 29 to May 5, when Jazzword.com was in attendance.
Probably the best illustration of this local/international admixture took place on May 1, with a series of concerts at the Trafó Arts Center in Pest. During the all-day program in the facility’s upstairs concert space, the audience experienced one set from a Dutch trio that created a new soundtrack to a classic silent film; a salute to a John Coltrane milestone recording by a sextet of the city’s top younger improvisers; a recital of mainstream jazz performed by a trio from Cyprus; and the climax which brought together a sometimes working band made up of an American drummer, an Italian vibraphonist and three accomplished Hungarian musicians.
Showing sophistication, innovation and interpretation, Coltrane Legacy was based around the solid accompaniment skills of leader, bassist György Orbán, hard comping from versatile pianist Krisztián Oláh, and press rolls and ruffs from drummer András Lakatos Pecek.
With this foundation, soprano saxophonist Kálmán Oláh, alto saxophonist Sándor Soso Lakatos and tenor saxophonist Sándor Molnár based their variation on Coltrane’s 1965 classic “A Love Supreme”. Building on the Trane architecture with soprano saxophone squeaks, split tones from the altoist and overblowing from the tenor saxophonist, the trio often united in three-part harmony to recapitulate the familiar head.
Interjections to the exposition, driven by the reed players’ trills and glissandi, came from pianist Oláh, whose carefully emphasized notes added to the ongoing sound consolidation, and Orbán, whose up and down arco slices or woody plucked bass ostinatos were dramatic on their own, but didn’t disrupt the ongoing narrative.
Soprano saxophonist Kálmán Oláh was also featured in a couple of numbers played by a Cypriot group during the subsequent set. Consisting of pianist Marios Toumbas, guitarist Demetris Moraitis, drummer Ioannis Vafeas and bassist Michael Messios, the quartet’s arrangements of standards and originals were obviously influenced by the free-flowing mainstream jazz that reached its zenith in the mid-1960s. Professional in execution, the result was no less powerful despite its self-imposed limitations.
Guitar interjections were fleet, light-fingered and supple; the walking bass line was perfectly in sync; drum breaks were appropriately mixed, with Vafeas bringing the same consideration to splashy full kit displays as hi-hat time-keeping and a martial drum-top emphasis.
Propelled by the pianist’s key slides or emphasized chording, the four were comfortable playing in many tempos with bedrock swing as a guide. When joined by the saxophonist there were few variations; however, drum press rolls, reed peeps and flowing pianism created a distinct variation on the Jazz Messengers’ version of “That Old Feeling” via a Toumbas arrangement.
A more contemporary variant of Jazz improvisation was offered by the Dutch Sunrise trio of drummer Jonas Nieuwenbroek, pianist Martijn Hak and bassist Jurriaan de Kok, which began a series of concerts at the Trafó. Named that way because the Dutch players provided the music for a screening of F.W. Murneau’s Oscar-winning 1927 romantic drama of the same name, the three turned out inventive sounds while dealing with the strictures of improvising a film score that reflected the on-screen action.
Remarkably restrained in their playing, considering the melodramatic theme and the exaggerated gestures and actions of the actors in this silent film, the trio sometimes mirrored the plot with dramatic thematic projections, gentle interludes, or the equivalent of musical character development pegged to each of the protagonists. Impressive for what it was, the Sunrise trio members are creative enough to be showcased in their own concert, without flickering film distractions.
The climax of the day’s events at Trafó was a set by American drummer Hamid Drake, a frequent Budapest visitor, and globally one of the most in-demand percussionists. His band was filled out by Italian vibraphonist Pasquale Mirra and two locals: bassist György Orbán, who earlier on had piloted Coltrane Legacy, and saxophonist Viktor Tóth. Guesting that evening was local guitarist Péter Cseh.
Fortuitously the guitarist periodically found a place for his hearty strums and frails within the program, especially when the expositions encouraged a Blues base. This is a working group after all, with most pieces focused by Drake’s cymbal claps and back beat, and Orbán’s thick string strokes or woody stops.
Typically wielding four mallets, Mirra added to his commanding rhythmic pops with tremolo theme elaborations and delicately brushed decorations on the aluminium bars. Sustained vibraphone-ringing often alternated with Mirra shaking a bell-tree, and his pressurized thumps on other idiophones.
Projecting tough alto saxophone bites, honks and slurs at points, Tóth sometimes deflected to lighter tones, interacted with pre-recorded voices, constructed an exquisite a capella reed showcase, snuck in a quote from “Ol’ Man River”, and told a couple of shaggy dog stories in Hungarian.
When Drake moved from behind his kit onto a stool to vocally chant and vibrate a frame drum in the midst of the program, Tóth joined him playing wispy wooden flute lines to create a variant of transcendental meditation.
Despite his fame, Drake never dominated the proceedings, giving each player sufficient solo space as he advanced skillful drumbeats. More varied than constant, Drake’s cadences touched on reggae and R&B inflections as often as swing and pure improv while keeping the program tight and flowing.
Both bassist Orbán and pianist Krisztián Oláh were also part of an all-star Hungarian group led by respected mainstream saxophonist Mihály Borbély that provided the climax to an evening of sounds presented by JFB April 30 on a stage in Városháza Park near one of Budapest’s main streets in downtown Pest.
Creating the excitement engendered by the band in its penultimate set were guitarist Bálint Gyémánt, drummer László Csízi, Kornél Mogyoró playing Latin American percussion, and added for a couple of features, vocalist Mónika Lakatos who energized the performance with her unique Olah Romani singing.
Enlivening the accompaniment with specific rhythms that ranged from montuno to Magyar, Mogyoró’s raps, ruffs and ripostes from maracas, congas, cowbell and other drums blended Afro-Cuban tinges to move the tunes away from the expected.
Also contributing were chiming comping from Oláh that sometimes turned to exaggerated glissandi, and Gyémánt’s extended frails. Switching between soprano and alto saxophones, Borbély displayed his familiarity with multiphonics and overblowing. But overall, the sextet’s tunes remained in an undulating groove, cleanly affiliated with good taste and based on careful harmony among saxophone, guitar and piano.
The unbridled freedom that periodically surfaced during the band’s instrumental outbursts was brought to a finer point by vocalist Lakatos. With bass string slaps and soprano saxophone accompaniment prominent, her singing/story telling was unique in itself, since her highly rhythmical intonation and expression seemed to draw on folkloric currents from Csárdás, Klezmer and strands of gypsy music. Nevertheless, this blend was still liberated enough to intersect with intense Jazz improvisation.
More free-form interpretations were offered by two groups that played in a small book-lined room set aside for concerts at Lumen, a funky restaurant-bar in Pest.
May 4 featured a duet between veteran alto saxophonist/clarinetist István Grencsó and double bassist Attila Lőrinszky. Their set extended the Free Music concepts both had initially played with György Szabados (1939-2011), who created a distinct Hungarian sound in Jazz and contemporary music.
Building up from an introduction of quiet, modulated clarinet trills and sul tasto bass string slices, Grencsó brought out a mini plastic flute to create contrasting peeps to Lőrinszky’s darkening double bass tones. Soon these pied piper-like lines were replaced by broken octave notes from the clarinet that caused the bassist to thump out a string response whose pitch moved higher and higher, almost reaching the instrument’s scroll. Sharp reed bites and honks eventually were transformed to affiliated long tones when Grencsó turned to his alto sax to project altissimo shrills and tongue stops.
Oddly a repetition of Lőrinszky’s string-climbing and Grencsó’s blended clarinet peeps climaxed with a dual pivot towards melody. Still this turn to the lyric didn’t preclude the bassist from interjecting spiccato jabs, or the saxophonist from outputting splintered and stopped breaths, until reed vibrations and string stops reached a final agreement.
Two nights earlier at Lumen, bassist Péter Ajtai, who worked in more mainstream configurations elsewhere during the festival, headed up Peter Problem, an exemplary quintet whose free-form music would be a standout anywhere. The much younger members of the Peter Problem quintet were a notable surprise since they created mesmerizing free music with few antecedents.
Among the local players featured were drummer Áron Porteleki, trumpeter Vito Szelevényi, tenor saxophonist Dániel Cseke, plus veteran Ákos Szelevényi playing baritone, soprano and tenor saxophones, and a tableful of percussion implements that he smacked, tapped, rattled and otherwise manipulated throughout.
Alongside portamento trumpet smears that sometimes took on bugling tendencies, and stark tenor saxophone shrieks, Szelevényi yelled through his soprano’s body tube without fingering the keys. He also concentrated on harsh overblowing from the tenor and mined basement tones from his baritone, while roaming back and forth from his table of little instruments, to add a polyphonic overlay of pings, splatters, whirls and resonations to the proceedings.
When Cseke too, began propelling multiphonics and Szelevényi attained Donald Ayler-like squalls, the ongoing sound resembled classic energy music. So did those points when Porteleki eschewed timekeeping and worked up to a display of quick paradiddles and ruffs using brushes and mallets, then detached one cymbal for directed scratches and investigated the undersides of his drums for new textures.
Tempering the tempo from the others, Ajtai sometimes pivoted to string rattles and strums, yet maintained the horizontal flow with solid pacing, especially when the horns united to blow in unison.
After it appeared that Szelevényi couldn’t discover any other timbres to ratchet from his idiophones, and the horn players downshifted their screams and split tones, an agitated marching band-like duple beat from the drummer and bassist melded the sound strands, and with mellow sax breaths bought the music back to its original statement.
If Ajtai were most concerned with timbral exploration with his own band, then he brought his thick pulse to Pest’s always-packed Jedermann jazz club the next night as a member of long-time Budapest Jazz drummer István Baló’s sextet.
Filled out by Sámuel Baló on keyboard electronics, Máté Pozsár playing electric keyboard, with contributions from veteran film composer/songwriter László Dés playing soprano saxophone and the younger Krisztián Ördög moving between tenor saxophone and flute, the performance included contemporary currents with Bop and modal affiliations, so the electronics were more decorative than defining.
Paced by the elder Baló’s solid but unobtrusive drum patterns, emphasis was on fluency and individual solos. Ajtai created a brief concerto of half-step string ascension plus thick strokes that fit comfortably within the combo’s ongoing context. Smearing, honking and almost screaming on tenor saxophone, backed by electric piano wiggles, Ördög touched on free playing while not breaching the band’s designated strictures.
As for Dés, his soprano saxophone forays were flowing, emphasized and free of soundtrack prettiness. Except for a few brays, he too avoided extending improvisations past the point-of-no return freedom.
Coincidentally, two ensembles that were able to successfully balance the ecstatic and the even, and in one case throw in some folkloric interpolations from two countries, involved visiting Italian musicians.
Vibraphonist Pasquale Mirra, whose inventive stylings were part of Hamid Drake’s set at Trafó, was joined by countryman trombonist Gianluca Petrella two days later at the small theatre affiliated with Pest’s Premier Kultcafé, a relaxed restaurant.
Mirra utilized the same extended techniques as he did with Drake, and added electronics to his multi-mallet improvisations and idiophone skills. Meanwhile, Petrella roamed around the raised stage as he linked his trombone stylings to synthesized and pre-programmed electronics. Initially using voltage oscillations and aluminum-bar resonations as coloration, the vibist allowed the trombonist to huff, puff and spew syncopated brass patterns with a stop-time bluesy feel.
The result suggested an Italian version of Country Blues, an impression shattered only by an unexpected splash of multi-mallet vibrations. Petrella’s response to that wrapped high-pitched smears and slick portamento ripples into a more Europeanized melody.
During his feature, the trombonist surprised by finally attaining a mellow conclusion by emphasizing electronically amplified yelps and circular-breathed valve expressions at the beginning. His tailgate-style triplets and extended screams then brought out an aggressive response from Mirra, who slammed the vibes with a wooden ruler.
Demonstrating his expressive abilities past creating speedy triplets and half-valve trombone slurs, Petrella finally retreated to the piano that was set up at the back of the stage and comped reflectively as Mirra demonstrated exquisite acoustic vibe empathy.
Empathy was also on show May 5, when local Áron Horváth ’s distinctively Magyar strokes were integrated into the Ava Trio’s Mediterranean improv concept.
During one of the few concerts in Buda, Giuseppe Doronzo brought the Great Green Tour to the auditorium of this club, usually given over to the presentation of Hungarian folk music. Playing baritone saxophone, Iranian bagpipe and mini flutes, Doronzo was joined by trio members Pino Basile, an expert manipulator of traditional Italian percussion instruments like tamburello, cupafon and bendir, and Turkish bassist and percussionist Esat Ekincioglu. Guesting with this working group was Horváth, who enhanced the mix with strains from the traditional Hungarian cimbalom or hammered dulcimer.
The cimbalom’s advantage is that at points Horváth could manipulate the string set so the resulting chording took on keyboard-like qualities, joining thick double-bass slaps which determined the tempo, especially during those few times Basile output a regular beat, which transformed the three into a Jazz rhythm section.
Ekincioglu’s technique was so sophisticated that he could maintain a measured momentum even when the needed resonation was the result of his col legno wood strokes. Crucially though, while the bassist’s near-faultless string pulse was the rhythmic base on which the quartet functioned, expansive space was available for the other players’ expressions.
Pummelling the strings more aggressively, as he did during the final foot-stomping tune and subsequent encores, Horváth could otherwise transform the cimbalom into a rhythm instrument that added pressurized beats to the idiosyncratic hand-drumming and cadences Basile extracted from his percussion instruments.
Doronzo’s rugged baritone saxophone overblowing, which often matched thick double bass thumps at top speed, was frequently replaced by his turns on the bagpipe or flute. With the bagpipe looking rather like an inflated pig, its tremolo whine was most effective when Doronzo created elongated vibrations that followed the noises projected by Basile as he emphasized one or another of his ethnic percussion collection by smacking and throbbing hand drums, splattering cymbal colors and lobbing snare-drum-like beats. In moments of respite, Doronzo tooted a rustic-looking wooden flute. Still, the majority of his playing fastened on basement-level honks or altissimo brays from the baritone saxophone.
No matter what speed or pressure was attained separately by the quartet members, connective melodies and a sinuous beat were maintained throughout. With the band encompassing rhythmical looseness and accessible lyricism, it’s possible the mostly folkloric-oriented audience members didn’t notice the worldly improvisational command which was part of the program.
Musicians from elsewhere also played during this tranche of JFB. A Czech quartet led by pianist Nikol Bóková was featured on the Várpsháza Park’s outdoor stage before Mihály Borbély’s all-star Hungarian ensemble, while Bóková’s group followed pianist Kjetil Mulelid’s Norwegian trio.
Based on compositions by Bóková, which include science fiction themes as well as more down to earth emotional ones, the Czech band included guitarist David Dorůžka, bassist Martin Kocián and drummer Michał Wierzgoń. Inhabiting the sphere that united the pianist’s leanings towards expansive formalist notation, the rhythm section’s sometime adherence to Rock-like beats, and the guitarist’s shaking and responsive string frails, the music was all-encompassing and expressive. In this case though, it seems as if more emotion, syncopation and an agreement to stretch boundaries past the expected would have elevated the thoroughly professional performance.
A no-rehearsal meeting such as Horváth’s with the Green Trio, young local veteran saxophonist Kristóf Bacsó’s match-up with the equally established Norwegian trio of pianist Mulelid, bassist Rune Nergaard and drummer Andreas Winther at the established and usually crowded Jedermann club went well, but not without rough edges.
It appeared that the Hungarian’s light tone and infrequent turns to split tones fit well within the trio’s orbit that included the bassist’s positioned strums and the pianist’s ability to coalesce and extend floating vibrations. Building up to faster tempos, pivots to sax double-tonguing and inner piano string plucks never disrupted the basic swing affiliations, even as the bassist expressed jagged vibrations and the drummer’s beats thickened.
A few days later, with his own trio of electric and acoustic pianist Áron Tálas and drummer Márton Juhász on the Premier Kultcafé stage, Bacsó maintained the same sort of straight-ahead, foot-tapping harmony
While the pianist came up with some unexpected and speedy guitar-like flanges from the Fender Rhodes, the drummer contributed hearty but carefully measured backbeats, the saxophonist’s innovations included not only swift reed bites, but also interludes where live processing allowed him to work out improvisations that took into account secondary textures from his pre-recorded self. In spite of this, an overall resistance to sometimes color outside the lines made the performance comfortably obvious rather than obstreperous and revealing.
This review is just a snapshot of some of the many concerts and musicians who participated in the first week of the 19-day JFB. Like many other festivals there were undoubtedly many high points and some disappointments. But that’s the aim of an undertaking like the JFB: to expose people to a cross-section of the best and most interesting improvised music locally and from other countries, and to see what the audience appreciates and discovers. The breadth of this year’s edition shows that the young festival is moving from baby steps to giant steps and evolving as it should.
Please visit the individual Artist pages for more photos, and Reviews for the latest CDs; alphabetical list in both sections.