French and Hungarian unity triumphed when Strasbourg’s Jazzdor festival staged a takeover at Budapest's Opus Jazz Club

The Jazzdor festival in Strasbourg is a continuing success, but has also devoted itself to spreading French acts across Europe, colonising other cities and their venues. The Berlin manifestation now counts as fully established (coming soon, between June 3rd-6th), and now Budapest is the latest twinned location, as this second edition of an Opus Jazz Club takeover saw a return to cultural funding, following a dormant year in ‘24. Opus is an essential haunt on the Budapest scene, in the style of a classic NYC eating-joint, with its rows of long tables, and its light-wood look.

Fancy a Bonbon Flamme? This is the new-ish pan-European outfit formed by French cellist Valentin Ceccaldi, joined by members from Gent and Lisbon. They are a prime example of this Jazzdor-Opus collaboration, their second album recently released by BMC Records. Opus lies within the Budapest Music Center, which has its own recording studio, operating one of Europe’s most prolific high-quality labels.

The LP involves a declaration of love for the lime and the chilli pepper, and therefore a south-of-border fuzz-up, the leader’s deep cello working with Luis Lopes (pictured above) and his cyclic metal-chant guitar frazzles. A sonic crush ensues, lime juices running in pools to their feet, first cumbia, then Mexican, revolving around a perilous axis of psych, washed in an excessive tequila miasma of paranoia. A donkey ride to a higher kaleidoscopic state. There was a Tony Oxley-sized cowbell too.

On the same evening, Kovász also played, themselves celebrating a new release on BMC. This quartet melds agile jazz with gritty-reeling Hungarian folkloric content, driving and sonically abrasive, but also flightily complex and almost danceable. A storming free-blast opened, soon calming, but with some hectic drumming from Attila Gyárfás, who then picked up a gardon (like a stubby cello, hammered with sticks), using it as a violently distorted percussion tool. The rest of the line-up featured tenor saxophone (with harmonising effects), piano/synths and bowed bass, the latter player also using gardon with a bow, for riff-slash purposes.

Hungarian jazz frequently teams up with that land’s indigenous folk forms, but there are also forays further beyond. Said Tichiti is a Moroccan gnaoua player, living in Hungary for 25 years, forming Tariqa, a band that demonstrates the characters of local folk musics, and radically combines them into a fresh groove-stomp. One number (or sometimes one minute), we have Berber bouncing, the next we’ve slid into Transylvanian romping. Tichiti sings and plays the guembri/sintir, joined by trumpet, saxophone, violin, guitar and drums. The alto and fiddle are closely entwined, the latter player, Ferenc Kovács also singing, and providing a strikingly hardcore folk element. ‘Atlas Dance’ has a skipping shuffle, with oud and wooden flute, sounding more straight-Arabic, perhaps a tune from Egypt. There’s a big slithery spider drum-style, full of accents and tiny flicks, with accents on hi-hat and qraqebs (Moroccan metal castanets), allied with a tunnel-echo guitar solo.

Representing the absolute essence of France, clarinettist Louis Sclavis continued his India quartet tour, his music still sounding strong, despite its lack of a direct influence from the subcontinent. Compared with his Münsterfest showing in January, Sclavis was on a way higher soloing form here, again ably abetted by your scribe’s new vote for ‘most exciting French drummer’, Christophe Lavergne. The bass-less combo had trumpeter Olivier Laisney onboard instead. Benjamin Moussay compensated by soloing on piano with his right hand and using his left to inject deep-slung basslines on his Moog-oid keys. Lavergne began to heat up with cutting and snicking fills, before slinking into a slow and spacious solo, with rotation scatters, high strikes and low booms. Sclavis was biding his time for a while, traipsing with Laisney, in a ramshackle unison, before easing out reed smears, accompanied by a lurking, undercover piano. Then, ‘Madras Song’ featured an extensive clarinet solo, heading east, although as much klezmer, Arabic or Greek as Indian in nature. The drums were on a leash, but pulling, as a burnished trumpet solo flew upwards, as speedster ‘The Long Time’ closed out, Sclavis making controlled yowling shakes during his fleetly fingered solo, scarred around its perimeter, heading higher and faster, a squirming intestine of dark Gallic jazz licorice.

But there were also some French perversions! Hip-hop wordsmith Mike Ladd (long a Parisian native) transposed his Boston rhyme-style to Reverse Winchester (pictured above), a new duo with guitarist Mathieu Sourisseau. Ladd is nurturing a rasping delivery of his lines, their smoky texture leaning close to the abstracted blues, tethered by Souirisseau’s guitar, which itself possesses an earthy friction. Curled and cussin’ couplets of rhythm have a half-singing, half-reciting amalgam, moving further away from hip-hop. “That’s cathartic,” Ladd concludes, after one of their more rugged pieces.

Almost-veteran saxophonist Christophe Monniot wrote less expected music for his Six Migrant Pieces, joined by a band that included Bruno Chevillon (bass), Jozef Dumoulin (keyboards) and Aymeric Avice (trumpet). The leader’s wiry alto weavings were matched with tongue-twisting trumpet phrases, a sour-reed sound emerging. Cool school chasing ensued, with a pursuant bass force, rogue trimmings often messing with a smoother whole. This band digs sudden full-stop endings.

This was a vibrant four nights for new French and Hungarian music, with bonus players from Belgium, Portugal, Morocco and the USA. In the parallel universe of music, and on its cosmopolitan streets, generally, Hungary is no thorn in the side of the European Union.