Artist database

8 July 1943 Budapest - 2 October 2022

When Béla Szakcsi started playing the piano at the age of nine, he dreamed of becoming a famous composer and interpreter of classical music. But after having graduated from the Béla Bartók Conservatory, he became acquainted with jazz, and this experience diverted him from further classical musical studies.

Szakcsi made his début in Andor Kovács' group, but by the middle of the sixties he had formed his own group, with which he appeared on the album entitled Anthology '67. His trio, LDL, shared first prize with another group at the competition organized by the Hungarian Radio, and in 1970, as a member of Aladár Pege's quartet, he won second prize at the Montreux Jazz Festival, a feat that opened the gates of the international jazz scene to him.

From Zurich to Warsaw, from Nuremberg to Belgrade, from North America to Asia, he has performed at the highest-ranking festivals. He has collaborated on albums with jazz musicians from all over the world. Prominent among these are the albums recorded with percussionist George Jinda. As the soloist of Special EFX formed by George Jinda and Chieli Minucci, Szakcsi has appeared as composer/performer on eleven albums. It was thanks to these recordings that he was offered a contract with the American recording company GRP in the middle of the eighties (Sachi, 1988; Mystic Dreams, 1989; Eve of Chance, 1992; Straight Ahead, 1994). Chick Corea has often expressed appreciation of Szakcsi's excellence as composer and performer - one who has played with such notabilities of the genre as Carmen Jones, Frank Zappa, Art Farmer, Mark Ledford, Dave Weckl, Omar Hakim, Terri Lyne Carrington, Marvin "Smitty" Smith, Jay Leonhart, Gerald Veasley, Victor Bailey, Randy Roos, Attila Zoller, Rodney Holmes, David Sanchez or Mike Richmond.

In the history of Hungarian jazz, it is Szakcsi to whom we must give credit for the spreading of fusional jazz, first with his group Rákfogó, later with Saturnus. From the beginning of the seventies, he taught jazz piano for twelve years at the Béla Bartók Secondary School of Music, where, following the example of Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, he laid special emphasis on the fusion of classical music and jazz. It was with this object in mind that he resumed his studies of classical composers from Bach to Bartók, Stravinsky, Schönberg and Webern.
In the meanwhile he was also engaged in collecting Gypsy folklore and adapting it to the stage. His first Gypsy musical, Red Caravan opened in 1975, and was followed by Once upon a time a Gypsy girl, then Cartwheel. In 1989 he wrote The Beast, a rock opera based on the life of Erzsébet Báthory, commissioned by the Rock Theatre, and his hundred-minute ballet entitled Cristoforo opened at the Hungarian State Opera on the quincentenary of the discovery of America.

All those who have kept track of the life-work of Liszt-prize winner Béla Szakcsi will have noticed that - following the lead of his example, Leonard Bernstein - he feels at home in every musical genre. He has recorded Hungarian folk song adaptations with opera singer Ádám Horváth and folk singer Gyöngyi Écsi (My flower, my flower, 1988), pieces for four hands with pianist György Vukán (Conversation for two pianos and orchestra, 1998, Das Duell I-II-III - Vukán-Szakcsi in Gottingen, 1998, Conversation Plus, 1999, Fourhand, 2000), and a succession of jazz recordings with eminent artists (Journey in Time, with Imre Kőszegi and Jackie Orszáczky, 1998, On the way back home, with Bob Mintzer and Peter Bernstein, 2001). For the past ten years he has immersed himself in the compositions of György Kurtág, at present he is making a close study of the works of György Ligeti, Péter Eötvös and Pierre Boulez.

To create a common language out of hitherto separate musical genres - this is obviously Szakcsi's true vocation, and it is in this spirit that the improvisations with Lajos Kathy Horváth, going on for decades, now came to be recorded for the first time (In one breath, 2002 - BMC CD 061).

Awards
1987 Ferenc Liszt Award
1994 Gábor Szabó Award
1998 Inter Lyra Award
2002 For Budapest Award
2002 Merited Artist
2004 Hungarian Jazz Award
2005 Kossuth Prize