Intergeese was founded by three young musicians in February 2023. The members all come from different musical backgrounds but have in common that they are active participants in the emerging music scene. The trio line-up gives them the necessary freedom, but also an important assignment in making music together. Their musical inspiration comes from a complex source: they are influenced by the great masters of post-bop and avant-garde jazz, contemporary jazz musicians, late 20th century pop and hip-hop artists, as well as authentic Hungarian folk music. Using all of these, they strive to create unique sounds that are unusual on their instruments, mixing genres and pushing boundaries. In their concerts they play their own compositions, searching for new musical paths on the borderland of written and improvised music. They were awarded at the Müpa Jazz Showcase 2024. For this evening, they invited Dominik Kosztolánszki, aka Dom Beats, a young representative of the Hungarian underground and jazz scene, as their guest.

Sokkal Másabb (Much More Different) started out as a duo, and in the last two years it has expanded and to become complete as a quartet. The band's unusual line-up – two wind instruments, bass and drums – is perhaps partly a fortunate coincidence, but the energy they transmit through their instruments is not: it is entirely the result of the musicians' personalities and the songs they play. At their concerts, the band performs their own compositions, which not only allow for improvisation, but also for ecstatic moods that are not at all alien to the jazz genre. They have recently performed with many of the best jazz musicians in Hungary, and have also appeared in the national clubs. In the near future, they plan to release an album, as well as to showcase their sound and playing style at as many festivals as possible, both at home and abroad, also including at events not focused on jazz.

Otis Sandsjö – initiator and mastermind behind the band Y-Otis – settled in Berlin via Sweden and brings his own special genre-bending, forward-looking liquid jazz sounds. After his esteemed self-titled debut album in 2018, he came back in 2020 with Y-Otis 2, and in 2024 with Y-Otis Tre, also released by the respected We Jazz Records in Helsinki and produced by Koma Saxo's multi-talent Petter Eldh. Otis's sound is described as an “audio mosaic” fusing together a selection of micro moods, inspired as much by hip-hop and electronica as by jazz. The hypnotising saxophone riffs and fragmented jazz style manage to bring strong melodies and funk beats whilst remaining fluid.  

Taking risks only works if you’re willing to fail, and Taupe share an understanding that there’s no wrong way to play. A decade of friendship has conjured a spooky telekinesis that anchors the band, even when their improvisations teeter on the edge of total collapse. The three-piece are an explosive live band, veering from taut metronomic precision into intentionally turbulent, unchartered territory. A DIY ethos feeds their wonky compositions, colliding sour scatter-skronk with sludgy, doom-inspired riffs. Anarchic, joyful debut album Fill Up Your Lungs and Bellow (2017) was best described by All About Jazz as “a chain of chemical reactions”, and their 2019 EP Get The Keys is a wild joyride through the night their car was almost stolen - with their instruments, Mike and Adam still inside it. Not Blue Light (released April 7th 2020) is their boldest record yet. Picking up the story from where the EP left off, it rattles from shit-your-pants fear to adrenaline, relief and total bafflement. It’s no surprise that their exhilarating sense of discovery has won them support from the likes of BBC 6 Music’s Freak Zone and BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction and Freeness, as well as support slots with acts such as Deerhoof, Richard Dawson & Circle and Melt Banana. Fizzing with ideas, Taupe are a non-jazz band that prizes surprise over any specific sound.   Not Blue Light by taupe

Founded 40 years ago and led by composer and lyricist Zoltán Krulik, the legendary band Makám has been a key player in the Hungarian world music scene for decades. They started playing world music at a time when the term was just being born. They wrote modern music with knowledge of and respect for tradition, songs that are still known and sung by generations. Their work is also testified by two dozen albums; their 2019 release, Budapest Night Speaks, was a tribute to Endre Ady, whose poetry turned Zoltán Krulik's attention to new genres. In this unique concert, Makám will evoke the full 40 years of its history: in the first set, the band takes us back to its instrumental era, then, joined by Bori Magyar, immerses in their rich collection of vocal songs.

“If we wanted an Austrian Billy Jenkins, who better than Christian Kühn and his Kuhn Fu combo.” (Jazzwise) Not only the band name is martial. In their “Jazz Rock Psychedelia”, the band Kuhn Fu of guitarist, composer and master of ceremonies, Christian Kühn, turns everything through the improvisational wolf. Zappa meets cabaret, surf sounds and metal riffs ride the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, while Shakespeare, Brecht and Monty Python are the godfathers. Since 2012, the band around German guitarist/composer Christian Kühn has developed a unique and very idiosyncratic form of jazz rock (or rock jazz), somewhere between parody and great seriousness, with which they allude to musical blinders. Kühn's international ensemble plays the melodies and compositional pieces with great panache. The comedy that is always present in Kuhn Fu's music does not take away from its intensity. Kuhn Fu has played over four hundred concerts in twenty three countries throughout Europe and the Middle East since its existence. They played numerous festivals and were nominated for the German Jazz Prize 2023 Best Composition. In 2023 they released their sixth studio album Katastrofik Kink Machine.  

The first sound document of Béla Ágoston's music-navigator journey was published 25 years ago. To mark this anniversary, he is reunited live with his fellow musicians who contributed to the album entitled Lakni, lakni. The history of the group began in Pécs, and their collaborations and shared musical experiences in different groups through many years created the basis for the musical material that the group recorded in 1999 under the title Lakni, lakni. The development of Béla Ágoston's musical career can be followed in Opus ever since, mainly through the performances of two current bands, Ágoston QRtet and the Kerub trio. This special concert will feature some of their earlier free jazz pieces alongside the material from Lakni, lakni.

The blending of Bossa Nova and jazz is a story going back to over half a century and opened up a whole new world way beyond the meeting of the pioneers, Carlos Antonio Jobim, Stan Getz and others. Since then many jazz recordings have been made in the Brazilian rhythm and sound, which is quite different from swing, for instance Soul Bossa by Quincy Jones, to name only a famous big band example. Many arrangers of composers from the MAO camp have come up with such pieces, providing dance rhythms of the bossa nova, samba, rhumba and even the beguine. On the albums of MAO, numbering almost two dozen, many tracks show inspiration from the „Latin” world. Such as We Have Matt, published on Dedications, as well as the composition of Gábor Subicz, called Fountain, but many other composers and arrangers of the band, including orchestra leader Fekete-Kovács Kornél could listed here.

The three Vienna-based musicians Andrej Prozorov, Judith Ferstl and András Dés have known and appreciated each other and their projects for a long time and have now fulfilled their wish to enter in a dialogue deriving from the character of chamber music. Plan A quickly turns into Plan B and develops into Plan C in the very next moment. Their original compositions offer a playground that can be abandoned at any time and in any direction.

Kosmonauci is a boy band with a jazz background that draws on hip-hop, drum & bass and improvisation in its musical language. The instrumentation, which includes saxophone, bass, vibraphone and drums, creates the group's unique style, balancing between emotional melodies and polyrhythmic structures. March 21, 2024 saw the release of their debut album Sorry, nie tu. It was released on U Jazz Me, a sublabel of U Know Me Records. It is the inaugural album of the sublabel. It is worth mentioning that the entire run of the vinyl sold out in preorders even before the release. On June 7th, Kosmonauci won the Sanki award, organized by Gazeta Wyborcza, which highlights the most interesting faces on the Polish music scene.  

Masovian Mantra is an original jazz project by Michał Barański combining elements of Polish and Indian folklore, and featuring top musicians of the Polish and international jazz scene, including Israeli guitarist Shachar Elnatan whose debut album was produced by Avishai Cohen. Jazz at the highest European level, their music combines inspiration from Masovian and Indian folk music, resulting in very melodic and rhythmic sounds. Electric and double bass player Michał Barański is a creative and brave artist of the contemporary Polish jazz scene. His achievements, regardless of concert and educational activities, include several dozen albums, produced alongside leaders representing various, sometimes extreme, regions of the music scene: Bennie Maupin, Dayna Stephens, Dan Tepfer, Tomasz Stanko, Michal Urbaniak, or Zbigniew Namysłowski. Recently, he has been studying Indian Carnatic music and demonstrating Indian vocal percussion (konnakol) in practice. His debut album as a leader, Masovian Mantra won the Fryderyk award (the Polish Grammy) for „Best Jazz Album of the Year” and „Jazz Artist of the Year” in 2023.  

Michał Aftyka Quintet represents the new generation of Polish improvised music. Their music communicates the emotions experienced by modern individuals – ranging from unabashed delight in the present moment, through confusion in unverified theories, to fear associated with the development of cutting-edge technologies. The quintet’s music is inspired by the contemporary German scene (Petter Eldh, Christian Lillinger, Robert Landfermann, Elias Stemeseder) as well as the American scene (Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, Mark Turner). On October 31, 2023, their debut album Frukstrakt was released by Multikulti Project. The album was honored with a Fryderyk award (Polish Grammy) in the “Phonographic Debut of the Year – Jazz” category, and received a nomination for the prestigious Deutscher Jazzpreis in the “Debut Album of The Year – International” category. This fall, they plan to release another studio recording.  

Frank Rosolino on trombone and Conte Candoli on trumpet are great masters of playing in a polished and exquisite way. They are usually put under the label West Coast, although they have created so many lasting works beyond that. Listening to the recording published under the title Conversation, recorded at a gig in Munich in 1975, we get the feeling that the golden age of jazz has never ended. Utilising their experience of having played together for long decades, they are able to foretell the ideas of the other. The joy of playing can be felt in each moment, and they display humour and wit even in the ballads. Rosolino’s far-reaching arches and smart improvisations are countered with just as much esprit on the trumpet. The balanced mood of the recording is also due to the fact that all the standards they play, except for the opening number, penned by Sonny Rollins, are from the forties, originally Broadway numbers. The members of the Dutch-German rhythm section serve as an equal match to the two American legends. The pianist is Rob Pronk, who later conducted the majestic Metropole Orchest, too.

Guitarist and songwriter Péter Cseh formed his trio in 2019 and released his first album, Plains to See, early last year. The songs on the album, all original compositions, cover a wide range of musical genres, but the creative experimentation and improvisation so characteristic of jazz remains present throughout. Péter Cseh has found true musical partners in bassist Marcell Gyányi and drummer Ambrus Richter, who approach any musical material with an open and sensitive approach. This time, their evening follows a special itinerary: the trio will be joined by saxophonist János Ávéd, and in some parts of the concert, the line-up will be further expanded with a string orchestra. With their contribution, chamber jazz, which was already present in the concept of Plains to See, now will unfold through the brand new compositions of Péter Cseh.  

Sélène Saint-Aimé is an Afro-French contrabassist, singer, poet and composer with Caribbean and West African origins. She studied with internationally acclaimed bassists Ron Carter and Lonnie Plaxico as well as saxophonist, conceptualist Steve Coleman. Sélène lately received a Victoire du Jazz 2021 award in the Rising star category for her highly acclaimed first record Mare Undarum. Her second album, Potomitan (2022) is highly esteemed by the international press. Sometimes, Sélène takes some time off of touring for ongoing research and musical studies. She is currently a composer in residence at Tropiques Atrium in Martinique, and one of the 2022 Villa Albertine laureate in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has also built a non-profit called Afropolis that aims to promote and develop the practice of new forms of traditional music from Martinique.  

Edredon Sensible plays trance music. Minimalist jazz, almost primitive. Explosive. In their world, we find ardour and faith, body and mind. Two relentless polyrhythmic drummers and two tenor and baritone saxophonists take an insane pleasure in stretching out attacks and playing them in infinite loops, refreshing lovers of an elementary but wild jazz, focused on trance, with their roots set in every continent.  

When accidents happen, they are normally over in seconds, sometimes minutes; this one has been going on for 20 years. It has been two decades since the members of Emile Parisien's quartet played a jam session together. At the end, they looked at each other in disbelief. They had not just been hit by a collective musical thunderbolt, they also knew they had just brought... well... something... into being. The common ground between them was jazz, but each had all kinds of seeds to sow in it, from classical music and contemporary sounds to rock, electronica and chanson. These four rip up labels, break down barriers, upset codes, and yet they know exactly where they are headed. There is a shared obsession with narrative. “The central axis of the quartet has always been storytelling,” the saxophonist emphasises. Let Them Cook is like a breath of fresh air, and with a band sound now firmly and unmistakably of 2024 rather than 2004. There was a particular turning point: at a concert in Sweden near the end of their Double Screening album tour, they had taken a chance and tried out a move from an entirely acoustic sound to incorporate some electronics. It worked, so they stayed with it: they found that these electronic punctuations never polluted the band’s DNA, but rather stimulated it. The electronic apparatus was clearly additive to the stories of these compositions, the way it all fitted together was astounding. Which brings us back to the ever-present question: how do you get away from the classic jazz quartet of sax, piano, bass and drums? “We're always trying to find the answer! There's no point in redoing what the John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter groups did, because in many ways you’ll never reach their level.” “There's a certain road in life most people walk on,” Wayne Shorter once said, “because it's familiar, and they can jostle to get in front. I prefer to take a different road that's less crowded, with many forks, where you get a wider view of life. I call it ‘the road less travelled’. That's where I want to be.” In the year which marks its 20th anniversary, Emile Parisien's quartet has never been more in tune with the thinking of one of its main influences. Marc Zisman  

Ephemere was founded by two excellent young singers, Izabella Caussanel and Lilla Orbay. The band unites the new generation of award-winning, internationally acclaimed Hungarian musicians. Their compositions evoke the jazz and chanson world of the first half of the 20th century, spiced with Latin atmosphere, recreating the intimate and cosy atmosphere of bars. The band's repertoire is extremely diverse: in addition to their own songs in Hungarian and French, it includes jazz standards, French chansons and world music influences, all combined with a unique sound. This summer they released their second album. The name Ephemere is derived from the French equivalent of mayfly, but the band has given a new meaning to it: for them it stands for rebirth and living in the moment. The contrast between the improvisational jazz style and the composed musical elements makes the band instantly recognisable.  

The music of Uusi Aika has echoes of folk music, Japanese aesthetics, early 20th century art music and jazz traditions. The band's organic music flows with unhurried pace. Soundwise the the core of Uusi Aika consist of mysterious sonorities and strong melodies, not forgetting free improvisation. The band's music could be described as introspective and meditative, but that's only a part of the story. The instrumentation is mostly acoustic and their sound organic to the bone, but the music's slowly unfolding character brings to mind some deep abstract electronic music or experimental dub explorations at times. That is, there's power just under the surface, just beautifully out of focus. Among more “conventional” instrumentation the sound palette of Uusi Aika is from time to time flavoured by instruments such as the Indian sitar and the Japanese shakuhachi flute.  

Ambergris is a grease-like substance of the sperm whale's digestive tract that is used in the finest perfumes. Ambergris was chosen as this quartet's name as a metaphor of the product of the creative process of an artist, who draws from a stock of experiences and emotions, collected throughout life, and create beauty out of it. The compositions performed by the band are a result of that process, they are ambergris themselves, a chaotic mass of stories, digested and reshaped into music. The band members have forged their special artistic and human bond through their long-lasting experience together in several bands active in the Dutch music scene. Their music is a colourful set of original songs made of non-conventional forms, elaborate harmonies often coming from the classical music world, heart-breaking melodies that draw inspiration from Italian popular music – all performed by a revisited version of the most traditional type of ensemble in jazz, a saxophone quartet.  

A „ballad” played by jazz musicians and singers is supposed to be slow and is typically about romantic feelings. What the leader of MAO, Kornél Fekete-Kovács adds regarding their choice of ballads for this program is that so much could be grouped here, anything that is rather introvert  and fits the mood of the season. The repertoire of the big band contains a lot of traditional, and quite many unusual ballads. This time, we’ll be enjoying a set in some way similar to the „Ballad” recordings of Charlie Parker and other groundbreaking players. A typical example could be Under the Waterfalls, penned by the leader of the orchestra, which was first performed by the legendary Benny Golson in concert featured by MAO. Matching the concept of providing a cross section, slow movements will be played on their own from larger suites usually played in their entirety, such as the ones by Attila Korb, Gábor Cseke, Szabolcs Oláh and others.

This atypical orchestra of seven musicians has been offering joyful, unusual, generous, sensual, poetic and pleasantly crazy music for over twenty years. Before becoming Orchestra, Rêve d'éléphant was a dance show. From these origins, it keeps in its genes the love of rhythm and movement. Since its creation in 2000, the group has released five albums. The special sound of the Rêve d'éléphant Orchestra makes the group recognisable from its first notes. Didier Levallet – composer, French double bass player and director of the Jazz en Clunisois festival – talks about it better than we do: “(...) it's an orchestra that comes from Belgium... A title that I find quite appropriate because it's a bit surreal and we know that Belgium is a country that not only for reasons of internal politics, but also for artistic reasons has many links with surrealism. And this relatively large orchestra of seven musicians produces music that is at the same time very exuberant, very generous, very free, but also very rigorous in its writing, very colourful, very joyful. It's music that surprises us in the right sense of the word, very open to many things, many influences, that goes from one thing to another in a completely natural way; I don't find it artificial at all. Today, musicians have the possibility to pick from everywhere, and sometimes it's just pointless editing. It's not world music, it's still jazz, because it's the way of making music that counts, whatever the sources; besides, I don't think there are any literal borrowings from outside music, from world music, but it's an open state of mind.” Rêve d'éléphant now tours in Germany, Austria and Hungary with the support of Wallonie-Bruxelles International.  

The Coltrane Legacy sextet was founded in 2017, on the 50th anniversary of Coltrane's death, by one of the most sought-after musicians on the Hungarian jazz scene, bassist György Orbán. In the decade and a half from the mid-1950s until his death in 1967, the saxophonist laid new foundations for modern jazz. He created a legacy of music that has influenced generations of musicians ever since, reaching ever more spiritual dimensions. An experienced bassist who has played in many bands, György Orbán thought the best way to honour the saxophonist's legacy was to create a group that would play both original compositions inspired by Coltrane's music and new arrangements of Coltrane’s songs. The compositions, of course, take Coltrane's tradition as their starting point and continue to reflect the abstract spirit and tools of our time, thus continuing the spiritual jazz tradition. The members of the band are outstanding personalities of the Hungarian jazz scene, their progressive way of thinking and unique musicality have enabled them to work together as a team for the seventh year in a row with unbroken creative enthusiasm.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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