Krisztián Oláh: Parallel Reflections

Young as he is, pianist Krisztián Oláh is a key figure of the Hungarian jazz scene. He was only twenty when he finished third at the 2015 Montreux Jazz Festival. During the two-week academic programme that followed, he appeared in concert with such greats as Al Jarreau, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Nils Petter Molvær and Joe Sanders. In 2016 the Hungarian Jazz Federation elected him young jazz musician of the year, and in 2018 he was the first Hungarian to be invited to the international competition that the American Thelonious Monk Institute organized for the world’s best fourteen jazz pianists.

His Parallel Reflections offers a contemporary reinterpretation or recontextualization of the interplay of a string orchestra and a jazz quartet. The six-movement suite is informed by baroque, neoromantic and early 20th-century music, as well as by the harmonics and rhythms of jazz.