Muzsikás Bio

More than four decades

MUZSIKÁS is a name given to musicians playing traditional folk music in Hungarian villages. Their performance is an exciting musical experience where the audience is transferred back to the remote Hungarian village atmosphere where traditions survived through the centuries. Members of the group play and improvise in the style of the old traditional Hungarian folk bands in which the solo violin and the song typically were accompanied by the three-stringed viola and the contrabass. The music of MUZSIKÁS can be characterized as the traditional arrangements of authentic Hungarian folk music featuring a style that is typical of the best village musicians. It has nothing in common stylistically with the Gypsy-Hungarian style, but is rather the true folk music of Hungary, the most beautiful melodies of which were considered by Béla Bartók to be equal with the greatest works of music.

The WINNER of the WOMEX Award 2008 for World Music! After 40 years of their unrivaled career, MUZSIKÁS is the most renowned and popular Hungarian folkmusic ensemble worldwide and in their home-country as well. MUZSIKÁS pioneered the global acceptance of Hungarian folk music that is now equal with all the other styles of music. Due to their unique musical skills, instrumental knowledge and musical versatility, they can cope with playing on different music scenes, collaborating with various noted musicians and groups, from folk and world-music to classical, klezmer and jazz, and even to alternative rock music.They have toured all over the world from Europe country to North-America, Japan or Australia and from New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore to Taiwan or Malaysia. They have already presented their exceptional live performances at the greatest festivals and in the most significant concert halls, such as the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Barbican Center and Queen Elisabeth Hall in London, Théatre de la Ville and Cité de la Music in Paris, Santa Cecila Academy in Rome, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and Carnegie Hall in New York.

As the first Hungarian folk ensemble accepted by the classical music scene, they combined traditional music with the classical compositions of Bartok, Kodaly, Kurtag and Ligeti in joint concerts with renowned calssical musicians. They achieved to fuse 20th century Hungarian classical and traditional Hungarian folkmusic, hereby, saved for the future generations, the heritage of Bela Bartok, the greatest Hungarian composer and collector of traditional music. Their long-lasting partner musicians were a viola-player, bagpiper, vocalist-violinist, Sándor Csoóri Jr., one of the founders of the group, and a female folk vocalist Marta Sebestyen. Nowadays, they perform together with a fabulous female vocalists, Maria Petras or Hanga Kacsó the young winner of the folk singing contest of the Hungarian State Telvision, Muzsikás also collaborate with Zoltan Farkas and Ildiko Toth, dancer-coreographer copule.  MUZSIKÁS' musical collaborations include solists like Alexander Balanescu, violinist, Roel Dieltiens, cellist, Jeno Jando, Andras Schiff or Balazs Fulei, pianists, string quartets, like Takacs Quartet, Keller Quartet, Skampa Quartet; choirs and symphonic orchestras such as Pro Musica Girls' Choir, Sent Efraim Male Choir, The Danubia Symphony Orchestra, Concerto Budapest, Hungarian State Filharmonic Orchestra or the Genéve Chamber Orchestra; and folk musicians. MUZSIKÁS' music appears in the film of the Oscar winner director Costa Gavras, "Music Box" that also received the first prize at the Berlin film festival in 1989. They have provided the music for a contemporary dance piece titled "Dancing Room" which was performed in several theaters in England and filmed by BBC. Amongst various prizes, they were awarded the most respected Hungarian State award for artists, the Kossuth Prize, the Prima Primissima Award and in 2008 they received the prestigious WOMEX Award for World Music as well. They appeared at the Royal Festival Hall in the concert-series of Infernal Dance organised by Philharmonia London Orchestra honouring the great composer Béla Bartók, they received standing ovation at the Carnegie Hall with their program, The Routes and Roots of Bartók, together with the renowned pianist, András Schiff.

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(c) Copyright Daniel Hamar, Muzsikás