The members
Gabor Bolla
Bolla was born on 15 October 1988. At the age of ten he started playing classical music on the clarinet. He was twelve when he won first prize in the National Music Schools' Competition. Towards the end of 2001 he started to show an interest in jazz, influenced mainly by the music to which his jazz-loving parents were listening. He took up the soprano and then the tenor saxophone, and is mainly self-taught on those instruments. He received the Hans Koller Prize as the Talent of the Year in Austria in 2004.
After playing the saxophone for only six months, he was picked out to play at the Getxo Jazz Festival in Bilbao. Since then he has been playing with the leading jazzmen in his own country. During the summer of 2003 Gábor was the only Hungarian and the only teenager who qualified for the semi-finals of the World Saxophone Competition held at the Montreux Jazz Festival. He brought the house down when he played, but failed to make the finals. He was also well received at the Yatra Jazz Festival in India and at the Bucharest Jazz Festival in Romania.
Bolla has performed with David Murray, Guy Barker, Art Themen, John Critchinson, Bryan Spring, Benny Golson, Johnny Griffin, Roy Hargrove, Joey Alexander and John Engels.
Robert Szakcsi Lakatos
Lakatos is equally at home as a classical or a jazz pianist. He won both the Best Soloist and Best Pianist prizes at the 1995 Krakow International Jazz Festival, and then a year later took first prize at the Bach Piano Competition organized by Radio Basel in Switzerland. He won first prize at the Piano Competition of the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2001, and the Best Soloist title at the 2005 Avignon Jazz Festival. Lakatos comes from a long line of Gypsy musicians.
Gyorgy Orban
Orban plays double bass. He was studying classical guitar from the age of six until he turned eighteen. He took up the double bass after that as he felt he could best express himself on that instrument. In 2003 he came third at the National Jazz Bass Competition organised by Hungarian Radio. He's played at several important jazz festivals and is a member of the famous New Gypsy Jazz outfit led by pianist Bela Szakcsi Lakatos and can also be heard on their riveting album as well as on records by the world-famous tenor-sax player Tony Lakatos.
Andras Mohay
Mohay is the band's drummer, as well as playing with four other Hungarian bands.
A musical ensemble, also known as a music group or musical group, is a group of people who perform instrumental and/or vocal music, with the ensemble typically known by a distinct name. Some music ensembles consist solely of instrumentalists, such as the jazz quartet or the orchestra. Other music ensembles consist solely of singers, such as choirs and doo-wop groups. In both popular music and classical music, there are ensembles in which both instrumentalists and singers perform, such as the rock band or the Baroque chamber group for basso continuo and one or more singers. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles. Some ensembles blend the sounds of a variety of instrument families, such as the orchestra, which uses a string section, brass instruments, woodwinds, and percussion instruments, or the concert band, which uses brass, woodwinds, and percussion. In jazz ensembles or combos, the instruments typically include wind instruments, one or two chordal "comping" instruments, a bass instrument, and a drummer or percussionist. Jazz ensembles may be solely instrumental, or they may consist of a group of instruments accompanying one or more singers. In rock and pop ensembles, usually called rock bands or pop bands, there are usually guitars and keyboards, one or more singers, and a rhythm section made up of a bass guitar and drum kit.
Thomas William Ellis Smith is a Scottish jazz saxophonist, composer, and educator.
Nikoletta Szőke is a Hungarian jazz vocalist who won international acclaim as winner of the 2005 Shure Montreux Jazz Voice Competition. Since then, she has been pursuing an increasingly successful performing career.
Yitzhak Yedid is an Israeli-Australian composer of contemporary classical music. He is also a pianist and an educator.
A saxophone quartet is a musical ensemble composed of four saxophones, typically soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones. Different saxophone family members are employed to provide a larger range and a variety of tone colours. Other arrangements of instruments also exist, but are rarer. A piece of music composed for such an ensemble can also itself be referred to as a saxophone quartet.
Rick Margitza is an American jazz tenor saxophonist.
Enlightenment is a live album by jazz pianist McCoy Tyner released on the Milestone label. It was recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland on July 7, 1973 and features Tyner in performance with Azar Lawrence, Joony Booth and Alphonse Mouzon.
John Serry Jr. is an American jazz pianist and composer, as well as a composer of contemporary classical music works that feature percussion, on which he also doubles. He is a son of the accordionist and composer John Serry. His debut solo album was 'Exhibition', for which he received a Grammy Nomination for his composition, 'Sabotage'.
David Satian is Armenian contemporary composer, jazz pianist, media producer and entrepreneur.
Ági Szalóki is a Hungarian folk singer. She has toured worldwide with world music and folk revival bands such as Besh o droM and Ökrös.
Marc Demuth is a Luxembourg jazz musician who has founded different jazz bands. He is also a composer and he plays double bass and electric bass.
Patrick Zimmerli is an American saxophonist, composer, arranger, and record producer.
Espen Berg is a Norwegian jazz musician, arranger and composer from Trondheim, known for his collaborations with musicians such as trumpeter Per Jørgensen, saxophonist Marius Neset and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra.
Martin Uherek, is a jazz saxophonist from Slovakia.
Timothy M. Ries is an American saxophonist, composer, arranger, band leader, and music educator at the collegiate/conservatory level. Ries is in his eighteenth year as a professor of jazz studies at the University of Toronto. His universe of work as composer, arranger, and instrumentalist ranges from rock to jazz to classical to experimental to ethno to fusions of respective genres thereof. His notable works with wide popularity include The Rolling Stones Project, a culmination of jazz arrangements of music by the Rolling Stones produced on two albums, the first in 2005 and the second in 2008.
Viktor Tóth, alto saxophonist, composer and orchestra leader, has been awarded Jazz Musician of the Year several times. One of the top figures of the young generation of the contemporary Hungarian jazz scene, his performance style bridges styles, is improvisation-centred, "soaring" and filled with spirituality.
Melissa Aldana is a Chilean tenor saxophone player, who performs both as a soloist and with her band Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio.
Bram De Looze is a Belgian jazz pianist who trained at the Lemmensinstituut and at the New School For Jazz and Contemporary Music, under the tutelage of Uri Caine, Marc Copland, and Reggie Workman.
Gyula Babos was a Hungarian jazz guitarist.
Béla Szakcsi Lakatos, also known by the mononyms Szakcsi or Sa-Chi, was a Hungarian jazz pianist, keyboardist, arranger and composer.
