Pianist Laszlo Gardony to Celebrate CLOSE CONNECTION In Marblehead & Plymouth

Internationally acclaimed jazz pianist and composer Laszlo Gardony will celebrate his recent Sunnyside Records recording Close Connection with two Boston area album release concerts this spring. He performs:

On Thursday, May 18 at 7 p.m., the Laszlo Gardony Trio with drummer Yoron Israel and bassist John Lockwood (the musicians from the album) performs at the Marblehead Arts Association, Jazz at the Arts Concert Series, 8 Hooper St., Marblehead. Tickets $35. For information call 781-631-2608 or visit https://marbleheadarts.org/jazz-at-the-arts-laszlo-gardony-trio/.

Thursday, June 1 at 8 p.m., The Laszlo Gardony Quartet with Israel, Lockwood and saxophonist Don Braden perform at Spire Center for the Performing Arts, 25 ½ Court St., Plymouth. Tickets $25. For information visit https://www.etix.com/ticket/p/2667492/the-laszlo-gardony-quartet-plymouth-spire-center-for-performing-arts?partner_id=240&_ga=2.128650629.826729390.1672930748-295021180.1670252796/.

One of the most expressive and technically skilled pianists working in jazz today, Gardony is "a formidable improviser who lives in the moment," (JazzTimes). He has performed in 27 countries and released 13 albums on the Sunnyside, Antilles and Avenue Jazz labels.

Close Connection, released December 2, 2022, is Gardony's 14th album as a leader. The album has earned wide acclaim including 4-stars in DownBeat. Following two daring solo recordings in which he reimagined jazz standards and explored spontaneous composition (2017's Serious Play, 2019's La Marseillaise), Gardony reunites with his favorite rhythm tandem of bassist John Lockwood and drummer Yoron Israel.

In this highly interactive trio setting, he rekindles his chemistry with Lockwood and Israel from their previous simpatico encounters on 2003's Ever Before Ever After, 2006's Natural Instinct, 2008's Dig Deep, 2011's Signature Time and 2015's Life in Real Time.

"It was absolutely comfortable," says the veteran musician of the freewheeling session for Close Connection. "We've been playing together more than 20 years, and after all that time it's easy to communicate these ideas in my head for the band. Music is always about something that you feel and imagine, not something that verbal communication could really express. Of course, I write detailed charts for my compositions, but they really understand the vibe and the whole feel and meaning of what has inspired the music and what I'm trying to express."

Close Connection finds Gardony addressing his own roots, specifically folk music elements from Central Europe (a quality he shares with Béla Bartók, whose great appreciation for folk tunes of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia informed his work). That quality comes across on the album's opener, the Gardony composition "Irrepressible," which teems with dissonance and distinctive Central European scales, and also on the brooding closer, "Cold Earth," a collectively improvised piece based on Hungarian folk music scales. "Most of that influence reached me via Bartók's music," Gardony explains. "It was around me throughout my childhood." and drummer Ian Froman. But it was his first-place win the following year at the Great American Jazz Piano Competition that catapulted him into the national spotlight.

Another aspect that comes to the fore on this rootsy project is Gardony's early infatuation with prog-rock music while growing up in Budapest. But rather than resorting to synthesizers and electric instruments, he tried capturing the energy of that '70s music in a purely acoustic setting. He calls it New Prog Jazz. "It's original acoustic jazz with the brave mentality, strong grooves and the forward-looking style of prog-rock bands I was into as a young person, like King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Deep Purple, Soft Machine and more obscure prog-rock groups like Atomic Rooster and Can. That kind of energy profoundly inspired me at an early point in my life, so I'm looking to recreate that energy on the particular harmonies and melodies that I write."

Gardony and his gestalt crew also exhibit a remarkable give-and-take quality on the lightly swinging, polyrhythmic jazz waltz "Sweet Thoughts," the invigorating "Cedar Tree Dance," which is underscored by a New Orleans-flavored groove, and the African-flavored "Savanna Sunrise," which has Israel maintaining a trance-like rhythmic figure on the kalimba, while juxtaposing a 6/8 pulse on the drum set, with Lockwood grooving underneath in another time signature and the leader repeating a simple, catchy theme on melodica. "It's basically four different layers of rhythm," says the composer. "And somehow it all creates the unity, almost like a gathering."

Six collective improvs by the trio - including the stirring rubato exploration "All That Remains," the spacious and moody "Walking in Silence," the South African-influenced hymn-like "Everybody Needs a Home," the blazing romp "Night Run" (strewn with brief quotes from bebop and jazz anthems like Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts," "I Remember April" and Thelonious Monk's "Rhythm-a-Ning") and the aforementioned "Cold Earth" - showcase the remarkably interactive quality of this Close Connection.

Recorded at WGBH Studio in Boston, Gardony's latest recording covers a wide swath of his influences. As he says, "Both the Bartókian elements and these more progressive prog-rock elements live in me in this perfect harmony along with all the great acoustic, cutting edge modern jazz that I love."

About the Artist

Internationally acclaimed Boston-based jazz pianist and composer Laszlo Gardony is one of the most expressive and technically skilled pianists working in jazz today. "A formidable improviser who lives in the moment," according to JazzTimes, Gardony has performed in 27 countries and released 14 albums as a leader: 11 on the Sunnyside label, two on Antilles and one on Avenue Jazz. Winner of the Great American Jazz Piano Competition, he has been noted for his "fluid pianism" by The New York Times, praised by JazzTimes for his "incredible technique spread over a highly personal harmonic language," lauded by The Boston Phoenix for his "accessible lyricism and subtle complexities" and celebrated by the UK's Jazzwise as a "fine pianist who has mastered the sound of surprise" and hailed by Cadence as a pianist deserving of wider recognition. And as DownBeat put it: "No matter how busy Gardony becomes, there's a stillness at the center of his music, a distinctive amalgam of central European folk strains, majestic classic piano and improvisational fearlessness." The legendary Dave Brubeck also called him "a great pianist."

A professor in the piano department at Berklee College of Music since 1987, as well as a faculty member at Harvard University's Jazz Combo Initiative program, Gardony has performed and/or recorded with artists including Dave Holland, Miroslav Vitous, Bob Moses, Mick Goodrick, Yoron Israel, John Lockwood, Jamey Haddad, David "Fathead" Newman, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Eddie Gomez, Bill Pierce, Don Braden and Stan Strickland.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, Gardony showed an early aptitude on the piano and soon started improvising, devising little tunes inspired by the blues, pop and classical music he heard around the house. Immersed in the European classical tradition while growing up, he was drawn to progressive rock as a teenager and spent countless hours improvising blues-based music at the piano. He investigated gospel and studied jazz, a passion that soon overshadowed his classical pursuits. "We had jazz and African music classes at the Conservatory," he recalled. "There were some very knowledgeable people and a lot of records. When it came to jazz it was a tiny community, but very inspiring."

After graduating from the Béla Bartók Conservatory and the Science University of Budapest (majoring in mathematics and physics), Gardony became one of Europe's most sought-after accompanists. Possessing a powerful sense of swing, a strong feel for the blues and a firm command of post-bop vocabulary, he gained invaluable insights by sharing festival stages with acts like Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and Abdullah Ibrahim. After several years on the road as a sideman, Gardony decided he needed to deepen his knowledge of jazz. A full scholarship to Berklee brought him to the United States in 1983, and a faculty position at the school upon graduation kept him in Boston. He made his U.S. recording debut with the acclaimed 1988 album The Secret (Antilles), featuring Czech bass great Miroslav Vitous

Photo by Chris Drukker

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