Sándor Szabó - guitar artist, improviser, composer

Born in 1956 in Törökszentmiklós, Hungary, he started his studies with a private teacher of classical guitar. After trying different styles from the middle of the seventies, he began to focus on jazz and improvisation. In the begining of the eighties he continued his studies in Budapest in the Jazz Facultaty of Béla Bartók Music Conservatory as a guest student. At that time he already felt that he should approach improvisation not by one certain style, but rather by utilizing his sensitivity and susceptibility and making synthesis of all the musical influences he ever experienced. Immersing himself in Far Eastern music was an ideal breeding-ground to achieve this.

His career started in 1980. He was the first who played solo acoustic guitar music in Hungary. Since the acoustic guitar has no tradition in the Hungarian music culture, playing guitar and composing for guitar was not an acknowledged and respected art. That is why he could achieve results mainly abroad with his playing, through playing techniques of different stringed instruments, with his modern pieces, and deep spirituality. His records has been released in England, USA and Germany. His playing can be heard in the three SzaMaba trio albums released in Hungary.

In 1980 the talented drummer and percussion player joined to Sándor and they formed the Sándor Szabó / Balázs Major duo. Within a few years they performed in almost all of the clubs and venues in Hungary. In 1988 the English Leo Records company released their first album.

In the eighties Sándor Szabó often invited musicians from other countries to play together. They made several concert tours and sound recordings. Playing with Gilbert Isbin, the Belgian guitarist, was one of the first significant collaborations. This period was hallmarked by a succesful duo album released on the English label HWYL Records. This duo in the early ninethies together, with Balazs Major in trio, made a recording in the BRT Studio in Brussels. However, this album has been never released. After this he met Andreas Georgiou, the Greek guitarrist, and they had a succesful Hungarian concert tour but there is no any recording of this collaboration.

In the very beginning of the nineties he met Massimo De Mattia, the Italian flutist. They play several tours in Italy and in Hungary. Their collaboration can be heard in the first album of SzaMaBa: Hypnos.

The most significant period of his career was with the SzaMaBa trio. He was the founding member of the trio that from the middle of the eighties has worked for ten years. At the beginning the trio played in occasional concerts. In the first group beside Sándor Szabó was groupleader László Bagi, guitarist, and Balázs Major, percussion player, who were founding members. Simultaneously with the Szabó/Major/Bagi trio, Sándor established a guitar trio called Great-Plain Workshop with László Bagi and András Bakondi. One year later the two groups, playing different styles, unified with joining of Balázs Major. The playing of the Great-Plain Workshop can be heard in some tunes from the albums called Sanctified Land and on the Anima. After two succesful years András Bakondi left the group. They remained in trio and they named it SzaMaBa. By 1993 they became one of the most successful groups. They performed in almost all the music festivals in Hungary. The trio, with guest musicians, made three albums which was released by Tandem Records. There is a live recording which is released by the Pannon Jazz in 2005.

Due to the economical situation in Hungary at that time, the culture suffered, and the trio received less and less invitations, and is the reasons why the SzaMaba trio divided in 1996. Since then Sándor Szabó proceeds with his solo carreer.

His music has changed a lot since the SzaMaBa. It has become freer and more experimental but in the meantime more composed and structured. He tries to utilize the full potential of sologuitar playing. This can be heard on his three latest albums called Alexandria, the Gaia and Aries and on the Dreams Within Dreams, released on Acoustic Music Records. This company is the greatest company in the world publishing acoustic guitar music. Due to this Sándor Szabó is better known in Europe than in his homeland. From 1998 he played on many international tours and festivals. He touredin Japan, Korea, USA, and almost everywhere in Europa. Apart from his solo concerts he often plays in duos with the Bulgarian pianist, Nikolay Ivanov and Balazs Major hungarian percussion player.

In his music he blends the classical forms with meditative mood of the Eastern music, Hungarian folk musical elements and improvisation that he inherited from jazz. The athmosphere of his concerts is intimate and personal. He approaches each concert with a sense of mission.

The works and the spiritual heritage of Béla Hamvas, the great Hungarian writer, has made a great influence on his thinking. He deals especially with the mystical intuition in that one level of the recognition of the world is the creation by intuition and meditation. That is why he considers the improvisation as a way of creation that goes to the deepest. The hidden deepness of the world can come to light by the intuition. His music is the acoustic project of this invisible but perceptible world. In his music texture the ancient and the modern appear as one unit. His ideal is a complex musicality feeding of ancient sources beyond all the times, the message hidden in the common nature of the sound and silence.

He looks for the eternal passages between the precipices of different cultures and ways of thinking somewhere here in mid-east- Europe and right now in the end of a declining materialistic culture and in the begining of a new spiritual culture.

Sandor Szabo often plays in exhibitions and performances together with other artists. Sandor has been searching the new possibilities and technologies for building the 'perfect' guitar. He discovered a new way of building acoustic guitars. The innovator of the new theory is Michael Kasha, the well known scientist. One of the greatest guitar builders is the American Steve Klein who planed an acoustic guitar that the talented brilliant Hungarian luthier, Tihamer Romanek, built for Sándor Szabó. It is a 16 string guitar which is very special in its structure and unique in sound. Tihamer Romanek has built many guitars for Szabó as the result of their collaboration in using the Kasha system.

He uses many kinds f acoustic guitars in his concerts. Besides the different tuned and stringed 16 string guitars, he uses an 8 string fretless guitar. Its sound is somewhere between the Indian sarod and the arabic ud, however the 6 and 8 string classical guitars are also used on concerts and in recordings. Recently he has started playing on 6 string baritone guitars.

Besides the acoustic projects, Sándor Szabó composes and plays contemporary experimental music introducing a new sound called AmbiMorph. In the last few years Szabó has conducted far reaching experiments to use the electric guitar sound in a radically different way. He created a new conception called Multishift for developing new interesting electric guitar sounds which based on the psichokinetic hearing. For achieving this he uses his special algorithms in the latest generation of digital effects.

In 2002 he has been the member of the Georgian Contempory Unit in the USA. Read more at: www.solponticello.com This contempory enseble stands of very unique and highly traned experimental improviser musicians from Atlanta and Athens/Georgia. (Erik Hinds...harpeggione, Blake Helton...drums. Colin Bragg... electric and acoustic guitars, Kyle Dawkins...classical guitar, Brian Smith...classical guitar, Sandor Szabo... acoustic guitars).

From 2002 Sandor is one of the organizer of the International Acousticguitar Festivals which is a tour of 10-12 concerts in various cities in Hungary. It held in Hungary every year in the middle two weeks of May.

"If you hear the Hungarian guitarist Sándor Szabó for the first time, you will think that you are discovering the guitar completely anew during every listening minute. You will be fascinated as you discover that Szabó does not simply let us have a glimpse of foreign tonal worlds and cultures through some tiny windows. Instead, he draws us into his own musical macrocosmosm in a gentle but all the more compelling manner. And there is truly much to be discovered here: inspiration from the Near East and Far East, a new awareness of his own Hungarian traditions of folk music, classical concepts of form, as well as much, much space for the free flow of thoughts and ideas- improvisation. Not only is Szabó's musical vocabulary unusual: in addition to the 'conventional' guitar, the Hungarian also plays instruments with 8, 13, even 16 strings and frequently relies on custom-made designs with special 'Eastern' sound. Szabó succeeds in something that is a rare feat in music: he astonishes the listener, he is the seducer who every listener with a slight penchant for what is special is only all too willing to follow."

1997 Winter Catalog, Acoustic Music Records