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by Seth Rogovoy
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.
One might think that growing up in the land of Bela Bartok, Franz Liszt, Hungarian folk melodies and Gypsy rhythms would hardly be fertile ground for a jazz musician.
But in fact, as jazz pianist Laszlo Gardony explains, Hungary is a musical crossroads and melting pot, where at least for the post-1956 generation, the sounds of West and East met and mingled. In Gardony's case, it produced an entirely original fusion of contemporary acoustic jazz with echoes of Africa, India, New Orleans and the Hungarian countryside.
Along with his trio, Gardony will perform his original compositions and a few standards, Gardony-style, in a concert at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield on Saturday night at 8. Tickets are $12 regular admission, $10 for members and $6 for students; call 443-7171 for more information.
The Hungarian native was improvising on piano by the time he was five. He began his formal musical training at age seven, but by his teen-age years his ears were tuned to the blues and the progressive- rock sounds of English bands like Deep Purple, King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
He attended the Bela Bartok Conservatory (now the Franz Liszt Academy) in Budapest, where his studies focused on jazz, 20th century composers, African music, Eastern European folk and European classical music.
``The musical heritage was very rich in Hungary and the entire area,'' said Gardony in a recent phone interview from his home in Boston. ``There is of course Bartok's music, and the folk music in the area is very rich and rhythmical.
``But in some sense Hungary is a musical melting pot, because it has been the center of so much commotion over the centuries - lots of wars and migrations.
``The whole Hungarian philosophy was that whoever lives here is considered Hungarian, and therefore there were lots of influences mixed in to the culture.''
At the conservatory, Gardony fell in love with the music of Bill Evans and John Coltrane, and soon he was playing in jazz groups and touring around Europe.
``I got out of the country in a touring capacity when I was relatively young,'' said Gardony, who first went to Sweden to play when he was 22. ``Then I was hired by a band where the leader was Hungarian but some of the sidemen were American.''
Back home, he tried to make a stab as a professional jazz musician, but the constraints of the local scene made it unworkable. ``It was really hard keeping a band together,'' he said, ``because people kept leaving the country. It was especially difficult keeping a rhythm section happening. To keep a band together was always a short-lived project.''
In 1983, Gardony came to Boston as the recipient of the largest full scholarship ever awarded by Berklee College of Music. He toured with a group of Berklee musicians called Forward Motion, returning to Europe for concerts and recording two albums with them. He graduated magna cum laude from Berklee in 1985, and later joined the faculty as an assistant professor of piano.
He has since recorded four solo albums, including last year's ``Breakout'' (Avenue Jazz), which among others features guitarist Mick Goodrick and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, who will both appear with Gardony at his performance in Pittsfield. He has appeared at top clubs and jazz festivals around the world and has won numerous awards, including Down Beat magazine's ``Outstanding Performance Award.''
When forced to come up with a description, Gardony calls his music ``contemporary acoustic jazz with a soul.''
``Unfortunately, we have to say that these days, because there is a lot of contemporary jazz without a soul, and there is a lot of contemporary jazz that is not acoustic,'' he said.
``I'm very much for acoustic instruments and the acoustic sound,'' he said. ``At the same time I think the rhythmic elements in my music are rooted in jazz and rock and fusion, too, but at the same time it has a healthy dose of an ethnic element in the rhythms, also. But it doesn't pull it into the world music direction - I don't want to make it sound like we're world music. This is jazz, basically.'
Gardony prides himself on being able to compose and arrange songs that are rhythmically and melodically complex yet at the same time accessible and entertaining.
``What I'm really looking for is something that has this accessible human quality that doesn't go into an esoteric realm where only the select few would be able to connect with it,'' he said.
``Musically I'm very far from Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong, but in spirit I really admire them, or Gershwin even, people like that who really created music which was a sincere expression of their own personality or whatever they wanted to write about, but at the same time had this very honest, joyful, uplifting feeling.''
(This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on March 9, 1996. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1996. All rights reserved.)
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