Hungary Snétberger Trio: Ferenc Snétberger (guitar), Anders Jormin (double bass), Joey Baron (drums) with special guest Matthieu Michel (flugelhorn) and featuring Máté Balogh (saxophone). Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, Müpa, Budapest, 17.12.2024. (LJ)
Ferenc Snétberger has garnered a well-earned reputation for world-class performances that fuse jazz, Hungarian folk, gypsy, and Latin American rhythms and melodies. His performance with the Snétberger Trio – which began with the director of Müpa presenting Snétberger with the ‘Artist of the Year’ award – substantiated this reputation. The award is for ‘talent and knowledge that will be passed down to the next generation’. It was fitting, therefore, that the concert featured one of Snétberger’s students from his Zenei Tehetsègközpont (‘Centre for Musical Talent’), Máté Balogh (soprano saxophone).
For the first hour, Snétberger played music from his album Titok (released by ECM in 2017) with Swedish double bassist Anders Jormin and American drummer Joey Baron. They were joined by the Swiss trumpeter Matthieu Michel for the second hour (and the two encores). Snétberger plays a nylon stringed guitar most likely because of his early training as a classical guitarist. It follows that the timbres he created with the nylon strings worked very well with Michel on the flugelhorn which produces a darker, muskier tone than the trumpet.
Throughout, the performances by Jormin, Baron, and Snétberger were exciting and highly engaging. Even though the music was often atmospheric and contemplative, there were moments of quirkiness and humour too. Above all, they each demonstrated an ease in each other’s musical company, which, in turn, enabled them to hold the audience in the palm of their hands. Jormin’s classical training at the University of Gothenburg (also where Lars Danielsson studied double bass) could be heard in his precision and technique. As a jazz bassist, he is equality comfortable playing arco and pizzicato. In fact, during some opening sections, Jormin’s bowing was lyrical and evocative as he experimented with harmonics by gently playing the nodes with the bow close to the bridge, mirroring Snétberger’s tendency to reveal overtones also by playing harmonics.
Baron’s drumming was fresh, textured, and inventive. He drove the band surehandedly with his steady tempo and rhythmic suggestions that Jormin anticipated on bass. All musicians looked to Baron whose energy both in his drumming and facial expressions elevated their performances as they gelled first as a trio, then as a quartet, and finally as a quintet. Snétberger, Jormin, and Michel are all well respected in their own right, but, an implicit acknowledgement that Baron’s experience, in particular, was not to be sniffed at could be detected. In the early 1970s he played with Carmen McRae before becoming a session musician with Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, and Hampton Hawes. He even drummed on David Bowie’s 1995 album Outside which prompted Bowie to quip: ‘Metronomes shake in fear, he’s so steady’. Baron’s control meant that, despite it being the first time that these musicians played as a quartet (with Michel), they were in sync.
Máté Balogh’s potential could be heard in the encore when all musicians performed a rendition of the Hungarian folk song Kis kece lányom which Béla Bartók collected from the Tolna region. Kis kece lányom is a wistful song about sending off a young married couple to their new home. Whilst Balogh conveyed the sentimentalism of this folk song with a clear simplicity, his performance of the John Coltrane classic My Favourite Things (accompanied by Snétberger) lacked some of the more inventive interpretations and modulations that more experienced jazz musicians often produce. In his ‘dialogue’ with Michel during their quintet formation, he seemed much more comfortable and demonstrated the impressive range and accuracy of which he is capable.
The varied dynamics, chord progressions, and textures in each piece created a distinctive musical terrain that has prompted new musical discoveries. This surely attests to the skilful inventiveness of these musicians. Indeed, the subtlety and warmth of Snétberger’s and Michel’s playing was counterbalanced by the more thought-provoking and experimental rhythms and sounds from Jormin and Baron. Their musical landscape was unique in its combination of styles that evoked the melancholia of Snétberger’s Romani gypsy heritage, the coolness associated with the Nordic jazz scene, and the warmth of the tango rhythms that have inspired Snétberger.
Lucy Jeffery