Jazz English

Audiences at Wolf Trap's Jazz and Blues Festival witnessed jazz history live and jazz history kept alive.

The Thursday-Sunday concert event hosted almost 30 artists on two stages – as well as some showers of rain that unquestionably should have been edited out of the worthy program.

Now in its second decade, Hungary’s top jazz festival holds a unique position in the country’s jazz life. All the other festivals (Nagykanizsa, Szeged, Miskolc) have fallen behind in recent years, but not the Debrecen Jazz Days. Despite the economic and cultural recession, the Debrecen organizers have successfully maintained or even raised the level of the festival.

It is said that time weeds out the weak and only the fittest survive. After the boom years of the 1970, the last few years have seen the demise of almost all the major Hungarian jazz festivals with the exception of the Debrecen Jazz Days, which was held for the 14th time from July 18-21 in this university town in eastern Hungary.

University clubs often provide fertile ground for new developments in jazz. The jazz club of the Economics University is one which, in this experimental tradition, offers a well-rounded program of avant-garde jazz. Leading Hungarian performers of the genre are regularly featured in Saturday evening programs which have included György Szabados, The Dresch Quartet, the Grencsó Kollektíva, Károly Binder, and Attila Lőrinszky.

January, 1986 marked the debut concert of the Budapest Big Band. The new 20-piece band was formed with the help of the Soros Foundation, named after György Soros, a Hungarian expatriate living in the States who sponsors cultural and scientifical programs. The BBB, a democratic association of young musicians, was lucky enough to receive half a million forints to start its career.