JazzaJ 15th Anniversary

The best-known domestic platform for improvised music is celebrating its 15th birthday. The program presenting the diverse activities of JazzaJ runs all day with the participation of nearly 30 musicians. Two workshops, an exhibition opening, and four non-frontal concerts touching on the fields of electronics, free jazz, classical, experimental, contemporary, and folk music.

Ticket info:

Day ticket (seated)
Valid for all concerts in the concert hall
7900 Ft

Concert ticket Type 1 (seated)
Valid for the following concerts: Grencsó-Benkő-Mákó-Kiss; QSE [Quadrilateral Sound Exchange]
4900 Ft

Concert ticket Type 2 (seated)
Valid for the following concerts: Budapest Improvisers Orchestra x Sonus Cordis Quartet: Purcell; Bertók - Németh - Porteleki
4900 Ft

The schedule of the day:

13:00 - 15:00
Lecture Hall
Improvised music workshop (free, registration required)
Facilitator: composer Ernő Zoltán Rubik, one of the founders of JazzaJ

We are accepting applications from a maximum of 12 participants for the workshop.

17:00 - 18:00 
Lobby 
Practise Being Human (free opening event)
exhibition opening: speech (17:00), workshop presentation (17:10), live PBH recording (17:30) 

At the opening there will be a few speeches and the participants of the daytime workshops will introduce themselves. While the audience can watch the PBH videos with headphones on the screens on site, we will also record a new session with invited musicians at the venue. 

Practice Being Human formulates the experience of human presence and reality at the intersection of improvised music and visual anthropology. It is based on time-framed 3–5 minute musical get-togethers in which the creators breathe together with their environment. In the video series we can experience intimate duos and trios whose instant compositions create unique topographies. Here every participant is both creator and passenger at the same time.[Wrap-around-break]The video project launched in 2021 by the founders of JazzaJ (Zoltán Papp and Ernő Zoltán Rubik) together with Zoltán Kerekes, in addition to its independent artistic value, also represents a creative documentation of the global improvised music scene. 


18:30 
Concert Hall 
Grencsó-Benkő-Mákó-Kiss

István Grencsó - saxophone 
Róbert Benkő - double bass 
Rozi Mákó - electronics, piano 
Árpi Kiss - trumpet

At JazzaJ concerts, musicians play in new, previously untried line-ups according to curatorial concepts. The Grencsó-Benkő-Mákó-Kiss quartet is a characteristic example: a pair who have grown tight over recent years of JazzaJ events meet the great generation of the Hungarian free music tradition. 

19:30 
Concert Hall 
QSE [Quadrilateral Sound Exchange]

Paulina Owczarek (PL) - alto saxophone
Daniel Kordik (SK) - electronics
Ian Mikyska (CZ) - viola da gamba, guitar
Attila Gyárfás (HU) - drums, gardon 

Between 23–30 April 2024 we took Central and Eastern Europe on our backs to track down our soulmates in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland. Two years later, we are once again bringing together the quartet formed at our invitation. QSE’s aim was for musicians of the region to get to know and inspire each other better, and to start closer collaborations between the improvisational music scenes of Bratislava, Prague, Poznań and Budapest.

21:00 
Concert Hall 
Budapest Improvisers Orchestra x Sonus Cordis Quartet: Purcell

BIO:
Péter Ajtai - double bass
János Bali - recorder, electronics
Bálint Bolcsó - electronics
Gergely Kovács - percussion
Gergő Kováts - saxophone
Dániel Váczi - glissonic 
Endre Kertész - cello
Ernő Zoltán Rubik - piano, objects 

Sonus Cordis String Quartet:
Eszter Krulik - violin
Róza Lachegyi - violin
Boglárka Szűcs - viola
Flóra Matuska - cello

Featuring:
Tara Khozein - vocals
Ernő Hock - bass
Ádám Jávorka - viola
Albert Márkos - cello 

BIO:
The nine-piece ensemble, convened in 2016 at the initiative of Ernő Zoltán Rubik and Péter Ajtai, plays open-form works and free improvisation. Among its members are composers, classical musicians who play contemporary music, and players known from the free jazz scene. This diversity is made communal and playful by an intense attention to sounds – and silences. 

Sonus Cordis:
In spring 2022 JazzaJ invited Sonus Cordis, confident performers of the classical repertoire, to complement their sound with musicians experienced in improvisation. Back then it was Mozart, now Purcell’s works are placed in a new light: with the strict system of rules of the baroque tradition and the creativity of free music, a sound may emerge that is novel while in its spirituality remaining connected to Purcell’s foundational ideas. 

22:00 
Concert Hall 
Bertók - Németh - Porteleki

Márton Bertók - analogue modular synthesizer
András Németh - hurdy-gurdy 
Áron Porteleki - drums, viola 

The duo of Márton Bertók and András Németh at Nº space worked out so well that JazzaJ is releasing the material. At a concert held in the House of Music, Áron Porteleki briefly joined Bertók and Németh, and that constellation was so powerful that this time they appear as a trio from the outset.


What is JazzaJ?
JazzaJ is a concert series, musical workshop and label that brings together the Hungarian improvisational music community. The team of musicians, organisers, curators and other volunteers provides a common platform for free jazz, noise, experimental folk and classical musicians who often create in isolation from one another. Motto: Attention and Freedom. The audience: co-creator. “Jazz” denotes unbridled creative vitality, while “noise” signifies openness to the wide spectrum of sounds. 

Among the 7–800 events – workshops and concerts – of the last 15 years, several have served as experimental bases that later led to the start of projects which went on to become widely known. The organisers, who are also well known in the European improvisational music community, have already brought to Budapest such artists as Eddie Prévost, Seijiro Murayama, Clayton Thomas, Michel Doneda and Barre Phillips.

JazzaJ owes a lot to cultural venues and festivals linked to the alternative and underground scenes (without claiming completeness: Mika Tivadar Mulató, Auróra, Lumen, Három Holló, Gólya, Manyi, Szerkesztőség, Nyitott Műhely, Dobozi21, Freedom, Kék Lovak, Nyolcésfél, MU Theatre, Toldi Club, Müszi; Bánkitó Festival, Kolorádó, Campus Festival, Budapest Autumn Festival).

Over the years, the group’s volunteers have created many kinds of creative content, for example in the form of video and graphic work, concert reports, interviews and photos.

Since 2016 JazzaJ has operated as an association, started up as a label in 2025, and in 2026 joined the Reset! network, which supports independent European media and cultural projects.