Krisztián Oláh spent a long time mulling over recording his first album, one that would consist solely of his own compositions, and in the autumn of 2019, the moment for it arrived. At the opening concert of Jazz Showcase, the pianist will be presenting the thoroughly modern material from the result of this project: At The Back Of My Mind. Joining him on stage will be his quartet, full of youthful vigour, and Rick Margitza, a musician with Hungarian roots who once backed up Miles Davis, on tenor saxophone.
For Oláh, a winner of the Junior Prima Award, this will not be a first visit to the stage of the Festival Theatre, as the 2016 Jazz Showcase also featured him alongside collaborators Áron Tálas and Mátyás Gayer, all three of them fresh from reaching the finals in the international piano competition at the Montreux Jazz Festival the previous year. In 2018, Oláh became the first Hungarian musician to be invited to the Thelonious Monk Institute's international jazz competition in the United States, where he competed against 14 of the world's finest jazz pianists. The material in At The Back Of My Mind grew out of his experiences from the period of preparing for and participating in the event. Breaking through to the surface in compositions whose mature sound belies his youth and via the expressive means of jazz are all the musical inspirations that allude to the legacy of European classical music from the past centuries. Thanks to the the wonderful improvisational skills of his companions, Kálmán Oláh, György Orbán and Dániel Serei, the audience can look forward to plenty of extemporisation. The extraordinarily versatile tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza has now and then found an occasion to perform together with Hungarian musicians over the past few decades as he became sought after all over the world for his work as a soloist - apart from Davis, he has also worked with McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea and Maria Schneider.
Krisztián Oláh Quartet:
piano Krisztián Oláh
saxophone Kálmán Oláh Jr.
double bass György Orbán
drums Dániel Serei
Guest:
saxophone Rick Margitza
