7 – 8th September 2018 - Dunajská Streda - Slovakia
The aim of the 11th volume of the Are you FREE? festival, as well as its previous volumes, is the introduction of improvised music and contemporary art to its audience. In Slovakia, free jazz and the other forms of improvised music have still not gained their well-deserved space, however, the interest in the progressive forms of music have been rising lately. We invite the best interprets of the genre but we also tend to pay respect to other widely acknowledged musicians, too – e.g. by opening the range of our interest to classical music this year. Our festival with its free atmosphere serves as a forum for both musicians and their audience.
Friday – 7. September 2018
Contemporary Hungarian Gallery
Szabó Gyula street 304/2
18.00 Fekete Tamás & Bertók Tibor (SK)
Tamás Fekete was born in Nové Zámky, Slovakia. He is the undergraduate of the Keyboard Instruments Department at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava under the leadership of prof. Ida Černecká and has attended several piano master classes (learning from teachers like Dina Yoffe, Balázs Szokolay, Eugen Indjič etc.). In 2017, Fekete gained the 1st place on the “Piano Forum” in Wien. In 2018 he got to the final of the music competition, called “Virtuózok” (Virtuoso) organised by the Hungarian television and he also won the solo concert competition organized by the Slovak Philharmonic playing the First piano concert of Prokofiev.
Tibor Bertók is the undergraduate of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, too. He has won several international violin competitions. He gained the main award of the Central European Foundation, as well as the Harmonia award. Despite his young age Bertók has played solo with both Slovak Philharmonics: the Bratislava and Košice Philharmonics.
19.00 Skuta Miklós (SK)
Miklós Skuta is probably Slovakia’s most versatile piano artist. Born is Komárno, Skuta studied at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and also in the class of Claude Helffer in Paris. He gave solo evenings in London, Paris, Budapest (at the Music Academy Hall), in Berlin, Wien as well as in Novosibirsk. His Bach recording was listed in the „1001 classical recordings you must hear before you die”, published in England.
As a jazz pianist he made his career in the 90’s, playing concerts with the best Slovak and Austrian jazz musicians, such as Wolfgang Muthspiel, Thomas Sztanko, Jiří Stivín, Mark Feldman, Didier Lockwood. He wrote music to the CD of Attila Kaszás, composed violin concerto for the Austrian violin virtuoso Benjamin Schmid, wrote music for several Slovak tales as well as for his own jazz albums. On his free jazz recordings he cooperates with Austrian trombonist, Bertl Mütter and the Slovak flutist, Marek Piaček.
As a guitar player, he was the member of the „Gymnasium Hungaricum” rock band in the years 1974-76. He has never given up playing the guitar completely but he has been returning to it more intensively only lately. Skuta performed on the concerts of Palo Hammel, at the Melos Ethos contemporary music festival and on the concert of OENM (a contemporary music group) in Salzburg.
With his wife, Nóra Skuta, they founded the „Skuta Piano Duo” in 1996. They have been giving concerts in many European countries since then.
Skuta has been awarded with Crystal wing and „Frico Kafenda” awards.
Cultural Centre Benedek Csaplár
Béla Bartók walk 788/1
20.30 Moment’s Notice Trio (HU)
Enjoy Hungarian contemporary music with the Gőz-Kurtág-Lukács Trio. The musical style of the trio is the outcome of the meeting of three distinct artistic identities, a complex experiment about the music of today that exists only at a given moment in a given place. John Cage held that contemporary music is the music being created in the very moment the audience is being exposed to it, music that lives its own present and ceases to be contemporary the next minute, in the very moment that is becomes the part of the past.
The three musicians, while distinct in their style and commitments, all rely on 21st century instances of jazz, European classical contemporary and electronic music, languages which they have mastered.
András Dés – percusion, Miklós Lukács – dulcimer Laszlo Gőz – trombone, bass trumpet, sea shell
Saturday – 8. September 2018
NFG club
Béla Bartók walk 788/1
20.00 Sundial – Jachna/Kądziela/Karch (PL)
Sundial is a unique music band which gives opportunity to meet the well-known sensuality of Wojciech Jachna’s trumpet playing with the elegant sound of the most promising young Polish jazz musicians, Marek Kądziela and Albert Karch on stage. Their music has been inspired by classical masters, including Shostakovich, Debussy and Ravel. Their music gets to the bottom of the classical heritage; thanks to their specific knowledge of contemporary styles the experience is real and powerful. The carefully structured compositions are enlivened with audacious improvisations.
Wojciech Jachna – trumpet
Marek Kądziela – guitar
https://www.marekkadziela.com/
Albert Karch – drums
21.00 Erik Truffaz – David Kollár (FRA/SK)
Thanks to his father, who was a saxophone player, Erik Truffaz started early his music career: as a 10-year-old boy he played in his father’s dance music band. At the age of 16 he listened to Miles Davis’s album, the Kind of Blue. This inspired the Swiss-French artist to continue his studies at the conservatory in Geneva. At the beginning, he played classical and jazz music, too, but his attention turned to jazz more and more. After winning the prestigious French jazz award, the Prix Special in 1991, he performed with his band at the Montreux Jazz Festival. This followed a two-year tour around the world. In 2000, he contracted with the legendary Blue Note Records where he recorded a straight-ahead jazz album with his quartet. His following albums beat the borders of contemporary jazz with its drum’n’bass and hip-hop rhythms which brought him worldwide fame on the jazz scene. In his music Truffaz is capable to merge electronic music, rap or even the basic forms of traditional jazz.
The trumpeter this time performes with David Kollár guitarist. This is going to be the second time they play together as they already performed at the HevHetia Fest in Košice, Slovakia. His music, which belongs to no genres, is much more known abroad than in his own country. Fortunately, it does not really matter him as Kollár takes music experimentations as a matter of course. Kollár, who comes from Prešov, is experimenting mainly with the guitar and guitar sounds. He works for theatres and composes music for films. He plays along with Gergő Borlai or Eivind Aarset and he also plays with the young Prešov band, the Fúzy Múzy. Kollár is the member of different international formations, like The Blessed Beat and the KoMaRa, where we plays with Pat Mastelotto, the drummer of the King Crimson.
22.30 Cement Shoes (NED/HU)
To find Gonçalo Almeida, Giovanni di Domenico and Balázs Pándi on the same stage seems something only one with great imagination could aspire. And that’s because this musicians combination is inherent in the crossing of creative music today, from drone, metal to free jazz. The result is a trio of individuality foreground, each with their own concepts, imagine goulash made out of fish would land on a pizza. “A promising wall of sound and adventurous creative music, that will make you glued to the floor, like you would be wearing cement shoes.”
Balázs Pándi – drums, Giovanni di Domenico – rhodes and electronics and Gonçalo Almeida on bass.
