Budapest Xperience

7th MOL Jazz Festival, Budapest

The country’s largest jazz event will be taking place in mid-September, in Budapest’s ninth district. The opening and closing concerts will be held at the Palace of Arts, and new venues this year include both Trafó and Jazz Dome (a marquee in front of the Palace of Arts). Expect a festival mood at heaps of free, late-night gigs at the cafés and clubs of Ráday Street (including Fotocella, If, Jaffa and Spyl), too, as well as performances by both young, upcoming and established musicians at the Pinceszínház and the Budapest Jazz Club. In total, 130 musicians will be performing from 15 countries amongst 36 concerts.

Since the beginning of the venture, it’s been the festival organizers’ aim to present Hungarian jazz in a European context, by inviting a combination of both local and international artists. This year will see a Baltic focus, concerned with the eight countries along the Baltic Sea: Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Denmark. In relation to this, the Baltic Sea Festival will open at the MOL Budapest Jazz Festival. Unusual combinations of international acts have been put together with special care, with such pairings as the Quartet of Sweden’s Lars Danielsson featuring the acclaimed Polish pianist, Leszek Możdżer, and the quartet of Hungary’s Kálmán Oláh performing alongside an Estonian-Finnish-Hungarian line-up.

A world premier in this vein will be the legendary Joachim Kühn and his three young, French fellow musicians (Marguet, Monniot, Boisseau) debuting their first album in Budapest. As well as international diversity and collaboration, presenting Hungary’s younger generation of jazz musicians remains an important goal of the festival. So, they’ll take to the stage at five clubs and cafés, numbering a total of 15 concerts.
Following recognition by the international press as a major event in the European jazz circuit, two side-shows will take place this year. A parade of Hungarian vocal jazz will be held in the Jazz Dome under the banner Day of the Hungarian Song, on the festival’s closing day, while on Saturday, German, French and Hungarian experts will participate in a discussion entitled Jazz and Identity, analyzing the nature of the genre following the political changes of 1989.

7th MOL Jazz Festival, Budapest
September 9-13
Various locations.
For locations and schedules, see www.bmc.hu/jazzfestival
Tickets: 500 HUF – Pinceszínház
1,500 HUF – Trafó House of Contemporary Arts
1,500 HUF – Jazz Dome
2,500 HUF – Palace of Arts
Entrance to all other venues: Free

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