Photo: Hosung Joo

The music of jazz pianist Máté Lachegyi prefers to walk on the edge, creating a constant sense of excitement. He designs and executes complex, fascinating structures, often picturesque in their appearance, though sometimes more like a motion picture. His music has an inherent lyric quality, showing an attitude of awe, too. While it breathes open rhythmic structures, the groove never stops. Lachegyi is a very sensitive but also daring pianist when it comes to finding an idiosynchratic succession of chords, which is the basis for his improvisation, building up large, transparent structures.

He founded his new quartet in Holland with French sax tenor player Adrien Losco, Israeli bassist Omer Govreen and Hungarian drummer Miklós Kovács, three musicians from very different cultural backgrounds who were able to bond on stage, and who resonated to the impulse form Lachegyi’s compositions extremely well. These tunes are oustanding in their use of the element of surprise. In the words of a former teacher of his: ’You never know what direction this music is going to take in the next moment’. What Lachegyi himself stresses is that in his music there is always a longing to re-unite with nature, as known from canvasses of romantic painters.

Lineup:

• Adrien Losco — tenor saxophone
• Máté Lachegyi — piano
• Omer Govreen — double bass
• Miklós Kovács — drums