Kovács Ferenc - Tranzit

The music material of this CD has been made for Gerzson Péter Kovács’s latest performance, that I accompany in live on the stage. Some of the pieces has been made long before, but were just performed this time.
I composed the main motif when I was a college student in about 1978 (Symmetry). The time to play it has come. presently. I have written the repetitive piece for the Group No/180 (Window), but before having a rehearse of it I was kicked out of the group becouse of some problems on arranging dates with the Budapest Ragtime Band. Neither they played my piece written to them, titled „Crazy rag” , which can only be heard during the performance, since it is just a musical gag. My piece titled „Impudent” has been written for my Magony String Orchestra, but I played it on the CD alone, saving them the shains of working in the studio.
The opus titled „The Gate” was made in the spring of 2003, when we decided to form a jazz band with my pianist friend Zoltán Kovács. (The time came for it also this time.) Anyway it is the main composition. We preserved the first version because it is the most authentic one. Misi streches the notes in a perfect way, the excitement we all experienced is the original one. Later he performed great things on his instrument but that was too much and was about other things. I told him then that: „I think the first one is the best”, and he answered: „Of course, since I played that was necessary there”. He „gate” motif is a strange eqipoise of the E and F notes which generate the tension. The B flat and B tones give another dimension of this. The resolution on this axis is given by the D flat tone and its subsidiary tone, the A flat. Later I found this D flat tone on a trumpet I have taken from Tibet. No other overtones can be sounded on this strange horn. The time also came for this tone, after 5 years. Naturally it can also be heard in the performance. Of course we played the free musical parts as if we all had a 20-25 year experience with György Szabados. Attila Égerházi’s short piece also exactly fits were with its scale and meditative type.
When there are two accords as an accompaniment, then I constructed them in a way that they haave both functions at the same time. First there is one at the bottom with the left hand, and the other at the top with the right hand, and then conversely. It remains exciting this way. Such is TRANZIT itself. It is like a waiting hall, and people come from several places and times into it, and they start into very many directions. The strange meeting takes place anyway. The same thing happens to the orchestras as well. Someone is just coming, another just going. Everyone brings and takes something.
It can be felt from Zoltán Kovács’s solo that he is not only an excellent pianist, but also a brilliant composer! It is also good that they have got so used to each other with Szilu in the Djabe band. Of course it is easy to get used to Matyi, since he is invited everywhere to play the bass. Once I told him: „Matyi, listen to me, I’d like to talk to you”, and then he said: „Sorry, but I undertake no more bands”. And then he still dropped into the waiting hall.
Unfortunately Uncle Sipi could not come so I had to play the percussion parts. It is true that I made the big wood African kind xylophones myself, but I did not haave the impudence to take the sticks in my hand, so I was working with my hands and fingers. They turned out to be good, too. This, and the rhythm of the bass guitar provides the’ earth throbbing’ and ’earth heart’ of ’The gate’. So there are heavenly tones, earth throbbing and a state between the two in it. This is also TRANZIT.