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Szilard Mezei: Februari Fadontes
ByMezei pens substantive themes drawing on Balkan folk traditions though not subservient to them, which provide material aplenty for the players to seize, soaring and roiling within their boundaries, but never arbitrarily elbowing past them. Evoking haughty but faded grandeur, "Akkora/By Then" creates tension from the off, pitching a slow moving melody against a clattering rubato undercurrent. Tenor and viola launch into the first of many exciting simultaneous flights in what is one of this group's hallmarks. Mezei is by turns excitable, uncompromising and grandiloquent.
By contrast "Pakak/Sedges" is open and spacious, sketched by viola and clarinet in loose conversation. Mezei steps out, darkly emotional, with lovely accents and shadings on his sustained notes, while Bede's woody lower register ruminations culminate in multiphonic shrieks. Hock also gets the opportunity to shine here plying a lexicon of arco scrapes, harmonics and percussive taps. The title track is a mid-tempo bounce boasting a tenor outing of jazzy asymmetric phrases and an angular viola offering painted in broad impasto, before more intense interplay. Pulsing pizzicato bass variations, accompanied by off kilter tapping presage a reprise of the head with humorous syncopation to finish off this fine album on a sweet note.
Track Listing
Akkora/By Then; Pakak/Sedges; Februari Fadontes/Felling in February.
Personnel
Szilard Mezei
violaSzilard Mezei: viola; Peter Bede: tenor saxophone, clarinet; Erno Hock: double bass; Hunor G. Szabo: drums.
Album information
Title: Februari Fadontes | Year Released: 2011 | Record Label: NoBusiness Records
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