Balázs Bágyi New Quartet and Li Xiaochuan

The 44-year-old drummer and composer Balázs Bágyi is one of the defining figures of Hungarian jazz. He regularly performs in concert internationally, serves as chairman of the Hungarian Jazz Federation and has led his own bands for close to two decades. His unusually melodic "dancing” drumming style is in itself a complex musical experience. His previous quartet functioned from 2004 to 2011, during which time it received great acclaim at a good number of domestic and international festival...s. The style of his latest quartet is acoustic contemporary jazz incorporating elements of post-bop. Bágyi is joined in this formation by the saxophonist Sándor "Szoszó” Lakatos, who graduated in the Netherlands, the Junior Prima Award-winning, classically trained pianist Dezső Oláh, and Péter Oláh, a veteran of countless other ensembles, on double bass. Their album Homage to Shakespeare, featuring vocalist Kriszta Pocsai, won a Gramafon Award in December 2016.
The Balázs Bágyi New Quartet largely plays compositions written by the band leader himself. At the Saturday evening concert of the 2017 Jazz Showcase, they will be joined on stage by the virtuoso Chinese jazz trumpeter Li Xiaochuan, who has been touring the world since 2001. In recent times, China has experienced explosive development in jazz - as in countless other areas of artistic life. Li Xiaochuan, a member of this new generation who has also achieved success on the international stage, earned a master's degree in the United States (from the University of North Texas) and over the past 15 years has performed with artists such as Billy Drummond, Uri Caine, Louis Nash and Tito Puente Jr. In 2014, he recorded a solo disc entitled New Age with the active participation and guidance of the Grammy Award-winning American bassist Eddie Gomez. As a result of the positive response the record received from critics in Europe and the US, he performed as a guest soloist on the Pat Metheny Unity Group's tour of the Far East.