Artist database

21 August 1941 Budapest - 12 August 2013 Agárd

Excellent composer and jazz pianist, one of the most versatile personalities of the Hungarian jazz scene, pioneer of the Hungarian symphonic jazz and crossover.

In 1960 – at the age of eighteen – he graduated at the piano department of the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music. In 1964 he took a degree at the Dentist Department of the Semmelweis University, too. He’s an active dentist up to this very day. Since his childhood he’s been giving concerts, at first mostly playing classical music pieces, and in the last decades primarily as jazz pianist. In 1957 he won first prize at the Helikon Festivity (Keszthely) in piano category. From 1965 on he has won many awards at the jazz contests of the Hungarian Radio.

Between 1965 and 1980 he taught singing, composing and arrangement at the Jazz Department of the Béla Bartók Secondary School for Music, and he also wrote books on these subjects. In 1969 he won the Press Award of the Montreux Jazz Festival with Rudolf Tomsits’ quartet. From 1980 to 1990 he performed with Balázs Berkes and Imre Kőszegi as „Supertrio”. In 1985 he founded Creative Art Ensemble – he was leader, composer and conductor of the ensemble until 1991. In 1990 he founded Creative Art Trio with Balázs Berkes and Elemér Balázs – their performance at the Sevilla World Expo in 1992 was a great success. Also in 1991, he gave successful solo concerts in Japan.

In 1992 he lead the workshop of the Big Band of EBU (European Broadcasting Union), where musicians of seventeen European countries participated. The program mostly included works by Vukán. In 1996 his concert with the Ferenc Liszt Chamber Orchestra in the Netherlands was chosen to the Concert of the Year. Since 1999 he’s been steady partner of flute artist Eszter Horgas. So far they have released twelve albums together, recording transcriptions of works by Gershwin, Chopin, Bach and Bernstein, as well as opera adaptations (La bohčme, Madama Butterfly, Porgy and Bess).

In 2000 he founded the formation „Septet” with Elemér Balázs, János Egri and the Budapest Saxophone Quartet. He’s been performing in duo with Béla Szakcsi Lakatos since almost three decades. He has given concerts in almost every European country and in 1983 and 1993 he was on concert tour in the USA. He has played with such excellent artists as Philly Joe Jones, Clifford Jordan, Linda Hopkins, Anette Lowman, Frank Foster, Clarck Terry and Kenny Wheeler.

Throughout his really versatile career as composer he recorded a number of albums, composed music for more than 130 films (two of them were nominated for Oscar), but he also created an opera (Black Advent), six ballets, masses (for symphonic orchestra, choir and soloists), several concertos, eighty songs (for poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda, etc.) and 150 psalms for a capella choir. He has composed incidental music for TV- and radio plays and theatrical performances. His ballet „Derby” has been played by the Hungarian State Opera House for more than three years.

Prizes:
1970 Composers' Prize of Hungarian Record Company
1978 Béla Balázs Prize
1981 Performers' Prize of the Hungarian Radio
1990 Erkel Prize
1993 eMeRTon Prize
1996 Lyra Prize
1998 Small Cross of the Merit of the Hungarian Republic
2000 Gábor Szabó
2001 Jenő Huszka Prize
2002 Artisjus Prize
2012 Kossuth Prize