Artist database

Gábor Bolla was born in 1988 in Budapest. He has played the clarinet since the age of 10. In 2000 he won first prize in the National Schools' Clarinet Competition. Around that time he also got his first taste of jazz and within a year he had begun to play the soprano and tenor saxophones. In 2003 he got to the semi-finals in the World Saxophone Competition at the Montreux Jazz Festival. He has played in London a couple of times and at festivals in Bilbao, Bucharest, Delhi and Bombay. At the end of 2004 Bolla won the Hans Koller Prize in Vienna, and also received an invitation from the Vienna Art Orchestra to play on their upcoming CD. The Gábor Bolla Quartet (with Gábor Cseke on piano, Zoltán Oláh on bass, and András Mohay on drums) was formed on the saxophonist�s 15th birthday. The debut record of the band includes tunes of Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Miles Davis, plus compositions of the two Gábors. The latter match perfectly the pieces written by the great masters. Despite their young age (the oldest member, Cseke, is 33), all members of the band are already major figures of the Hungarian Jazz scene.