European Jazz Masters Of The Past # 1 – Aladar Pege

The start of a new year is probably a good period to start something different and new … and for my blog I finally am at the point to do so. As I announced last year, I will start a series of short artist portraits titled European Jazz Masters Of The Past and it will feature musicians that had an impact on the history of jazz in their respective countries and beyond. Having been working in the European jazz scene for more than 40 years and having had the honour and luck to hear, meet and work with some of these legendary artists, I will start with a selection of musicians I personally met and had the good fortune to get to know a bit better or work with, in one or the other capacity. These portraits will include biographical data, info on the local jazz scene, personal stories, listening recommendations and photos. The order in which the artists will appear is of no relevance, nor does it show any preference of one over the other. It is a personal selection of musicians I liked to listen to in concert and still like to hear on disc today. In that manner it is as well a list of artists that I recommend the younger jazz fan to listen to, so getting a deeper understanding of the local and regional jazz history. With these short portraits I want to create a kind of jazz gallery, but instead of looking at artistic paintings from the past, we are listening to the Jazz Masters from times before us.

European Jazz Masters Of The Past # 1: Aladar Pege (8. 10. 1939 – 23. 09. 2006)

After the first world war the Hungarian music scene centred in Budapest where the Franz Liszt Music Academy gave aspiring musicians a classical education. Like in many European countries at that time, Jazz had caught the interest of openminded music listeners and recordings were imported from the US. Early local jazz influenced records go back to around 1912, some claim even to 1905. For sure Hungarian radio started to play regularly imported jazz around 1925 and at the same time more local bands started to record their music, even so they had to do so abroad, as then there was no recording studio in Budapest.

By the time Aladar Pege was born in 1939 into a family of bass players – his father, grandfather and one uncle played the instrument – the jazz scene in Hungary was active and found outlets in bars and hotels. Aladar decided at 14 to as well follow the family tradition to play the bass and a year later his father got him his first instrument. He studied classical bass at the Bela Bartok Conservatorium and at the Franz Liszt Academy, from which he graduated in 1969. He paid for his studies with the money he made playing at the Moulin Rouge in Budapest at night, having started to perform around 1955, with his own group or as a sideman with other local greats. Despite classical music being his first musical love, he was on the way to make himself a name in the jazz scene in Hungary and abroad. The first time he got some international recognition was at the 1963 Bled Jazz Festival in former Yugoslavia, where his group played a very successful and critically acclaimed show.  This and further performances outside of Hungary led to the group being invited to the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1970, where they were voted the best group and Pege elected as the best European Soloist.

Photo by Rainer Rygalyk

Parallel to Peges development, the Hungarian jazz scene went through many difficult phases, directly connected to the political landscape after WW 2: first there were a few healthy years with a traditional jazz scene around master musician Lajos Martiny, but in 1949 jazz had to underground, as the communist government forbade all western cultural import or copy. During the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, which cost thousands of people their lives, many musicians fled to the West, including some of the best jazz musician of the times in Hungary, as, to name just two, Attila Zoller and Gabor Szabo. Jazz was only heard in illegal and private listening sessions of records smuggled into the country. But in 1962 politics opened up a bit and the first jazz clubs, festivals and training courses for musicians were made available. Hungaroton, the state-owned record company, started to work with local jazz acts as well. The Dalia jazz club in Budapest was one example of a new place presenting young jazz musicians in concert and Aladar Pege was among those performing there. Since 1965 the Bela Bartok Music Conservatory has a jazz faculty and local media are interested in the new music as well. By the end of the 1970’s Hungary counted overall 52 jazz clubs, giving their local scene many places around the country to perform.

In that period the Aladar Pege Group featured mainly the following musicians: Bela Lakatos or Marta Szaboky on piano, Geza Lakatos on drums, Janos Nemeth or Mihaly Raduly on tenor sax and the later as well on flute. They recorded in 1970 the first album under Pege’s name, ‘Montreux Inventions’ for Hungaroton, featuring mainly Pege’s compositions, plus the standards ‘Moon River’ and ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ plus D. Goen’s ‘Scherzo’. This record put him firmly on the map as one of Hungary’s most important musicians, already displaying his immense talent on the bass and as a composer.

The years between 1975 and 1980 Pege decided to spend in Berlin. He wanted to continue study classical bass and became a private student of Herbert von Karajan’s first solo bass player, Rainer Zepperitz. Years Pege enjoyed not only because Zepperitz was a great professor to him, but as well for the many opportunities to perform. While in West-Germany he played Swing or Bebop with Leo Wright, Walter Norris, Dexter Gordon, Art Farmer, Albert Mangelsdorff or Carmell Jones, while in the East of the divided city he played only free jazz, beside others with Günter ‘Baby’ Sommer or Ulli Gumpert. And he played electric bass in a band that had engagements for dances! In that way he could play in any style during these years in Berlin and learned a lot in classical music as well as in jazz. He recorded two albums with pianist Walter Norris for the German enja label, ‘Synchonicity’ and ‘Winter Rose’. The second of these duo albums got 4 ½ stars in Downbeat and brought Pege even wider recognition. Wherever he went and played, people were astonished by his outstanding technique on his instrument, something that led a German reviewer of a concert in the magazine JazzPodium call him the ‘Paganini of the contrabass’. His playing was as well full of emotions and he therefore reached his audience deeply, not only via his outstanding technique but as well through the emotional content of his performances. He meanwhile had become a Professor at the Franz Liszt Academy, teaching classical bass twice a week for 5 hours. 1978 he was awarded the Franz Liszt Price by the Hungarian Minister for Culture, one of the highest honours given every year to classical musicians of the country.

In 1980 Pege played at the Jazz-Yatra in Bombay with his band and as the Mingus Dynasty played there as well, it happened that Sue Mingus, widow of bass legend Charles Mingus, was in the audience at Pege’s concert. Sue was moved to tears by Aladar’s emotional and captivating set and after the concert spontaneously promised to give him one of Mingus basses. Journalist Lee Jeske wrote in an article about the festival in Bombay: “And the musical hit of the week-long festival was a little-known Hungarian bassist: Aladar Pege”. Aladar was then invited to perform with The Mingus Dynasty band and, among other concerts, performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival to critical acclaim. The members of the band at this concert were Joe Farrell, Randy Brecker, Jimmy Knepper, Sir Roland Hanna, Pege and Mike Richmond on bass and Billy Hart. The concert was released as an album by Atlantic Records in 1981, but hasn’t been released as a CD yet, nor does it seem to be available in a digital format.

Photo by Rainer Rygalyk

Promoter George Wein invited Pege to come to the Kool Jazz Festival to New York, where he was supposed to perform at Carnegie Hall, but didn’t know with whom until a few days before the show, when he was told that he would be in a group with Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and Wynton Marsalis. This was in 1982, and while he was in New York Sue Mingus invited him to a party in her house and handed him, as promised, one of Mingus’s basses. His New York trip was very successful and opened many doors for him, but he decided to go back to Budapest, mainly because of his teaching role, but as well, as he stated: “I am a normal human being and I am afraid of America”.

Around the same time, 1980, Pege started to travel to close by Vienna – initially on invitation by clarinettist Fatty George, to participate in a TV show with Fatty, pianist Fritz Pauer and drummer Fritz Ocmek. Through Pauer Aladar got to meet and perform with trombone player Erich Kleinschuster, guitarist Karl Ratzer, pianist Rudi Wilfer and drummer and label boss Rudi Staeger, with whom Pege would record some outstanding albums. The first of these recordings was the piano/bass duo album ‘Blues Fuge’ with Rudi Wilfer (1981), followed by ‘Solo Bass’ (1982), a tour de force of solo improvisations over traditional songs from Hungary or jazz standards like ‘Lover Man’ or John Lewis’ ‘Django’. I saw Aladar performing live in duo or trio in Vienna a few times, thanks to my friendship with Rudi Staeger. In the fall of 1983, I interviewed a charming Aladar for the Austrian Jazz magazine ‘Jazz Live’ and the article was published in the December 1983 issue. In October that year Pege had recorded the second solo bass album for RST Records, Rudi Staeger’s label, live at the Viennese jazz café ‘miles smiles’, highlighting again his virtuosity, beautiful sound and soul. The live recording features Pege’s own compositions, including an improvisation titled ‘Miles Smiles’, which he dedicated to the club and the people working there. In the interview I asked Aladar, who only practised classical music, how he would himself explain his exceptional talent and feel for jazz, to which he answered: “I was born like that”!

album cover photo by Rainer Rygalyk

1981 was the year the most successful Hungarian movie of all time was released: ‘Mephisto’ by Istvan Szabo, which won the 1982 Academy award for Best Foreign Language film. The movie featured a Blues-Improvisation by Pege titled ‘Juliette’ and Aladar proudly told me that “a Hungarian film gets an Academy award and I have been involved a little bit as well”! Pege continued his frequent trips to Vienna and recorded a few more albums for Staeger’s label – ‘Rudi Wilfer Trio’, with Wilfer, Pege and Staeger plus special guest Karl Ratzer; ‘Rolltreppe’, a wonderful duo album with pianist Fritz Pauer and finally in 1990, ‘Solo Bass III – Classic & Jazz’, where he, besides originals and standards as well performed his adaptations of pieces by Bach and Mozart. The duo recordings with Rudi Wilfer and Fritz Pauer were later released on one CD under the title ‘Great Jazz Duos’ and the first two solo recordings as well were issued on one CD (1998) simply titled ‘Solo Bass’. All of these are highly recommended.

Pege continued to teach, perform and record in the following years. He recorded at home and abroad and with a variety of local and international musicians, including Eugen Cicero, Johannes Faber, Lee Harper, Charly Antolini and Bruno Castelluci. In 1994 he played a few shows in a trio with Larry Coryell and Bireli Lagrene, of which a full concert video from Cologne is available on YouTube and it’s definitely worth checking out. Two years later he started to release some of his live recordings on his own label, unfortunately only in Hungary and continued to do so until his passing in 2006. One can say for sure that there haven’t been or are many bass players who can play both, jazz and classical music, on the level Aladar Pege did. He opened up to jazz when hearing Oscar Pettiford for the first time while studying classical bass and stepped into this free and open musical world as if he always was meant to be there. His influence on young bass players, not only in Hungary, can still be felt today.

Photo by Rainer Rygalyk

Sources:

Gabor Turi – Hungary: The Road To Independence, in: The History of European Jazz, edited by Francesco Martinelli, 2018

Wulf Müller – Aladar Pege, in: Jazz Live, Austrian Jazz Magazine, issue December 1983 / January 1984

Liner notes from his various RST Records releases – with a special Thanks to Rudi Staeger for his help

Wikipedia and Discogs websites

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Here are a few recently released recordings I can recommend listening to:

Nils Petter Molvaer / Certainty Of Tides – orchestral arrangements of some of Molvaer’s best compositions … dreamlike and touchingly beautiful music

Geri Allen & Kurt Rosenwinkel / A Lovesome Thing – a duo live recording from a unique and outstanding concert

Sunny Kim, Vardan Ovsepian, Ben Monder / Liminal Silence – soundscapes and meditations by three diverse and amazing musicians

Enjoy!