Szilárd Mezei Octet – Only in Movies (FMR Records)

Album review (and more)

Violist and composer Szilárd Mezei is in many ways an atypical jazz musician of today—both on a global level and, more specifically, in Serbia. I once read somewhere that the greatest form of subversion today is simply being normal, which certainly strikes me as an interesting and relevant point. In a world that rewards shock value, foolishness, and activities designed to stop your doomscroll within the first three seconds on social media—where musicians feel compelled to invest enormous amounts of time in self-promotion and exposing their private lives in the public sphere just to remain “relevant”—Szilárd Mezei is precisely that “normal guy.”

He lives in the very small town of Senta in northern Serbia, far from all major music centers; he composes for his own bands, but also writes applied music for theatre. He releases several albums a year, without any pomp or spectacle. He does not seek media exposure, and on social media he only occasionally informs friends about his new albums or upcoming concerts.

At the same time, he is one of a very small number of musicians from Serbia—perhaps even the only one in the past 20–30 years—who has appeared multiple times in DownBeat’s annual polls. He has released music for prestigious free-jazz oriented labels such as Not Two, and has performed and recorded with Charles Gayle, Phil Minton, Joel Grip, and many others. Yet his most important ensembles have always been formed with musicians from Serbia and Hungary, the two cultural environments to which he belongs. Within this, he moves in a particularly compelling creative framework—on the one hand drawing inspiration from American greats such as Cecil Taylor and especially Anthony Braxton, while on the other remaining open to 20th-century composed music, theatre music, and Hungarian musical heritage.

His compositions are highly elaborate, sometimes maze-like, yet also full of spirit, wit, and a sense of creation that radiates intelligence and thoughtful design. In that sense, Szilárd Mezei is something of an old-school intellectual. His respect for the musicians he plays with is reflected in the fact that he never places himself in the foreground; the instrumental “stars” are often those we would call sidemen. In Mezei’s world, they are in a way the frontmen, while he himself acts as a creator and conductor from the shadows, setting the stage and then granting everyone the necessary freedom.

I write this rather long introduction with the awareness that many international readers may not yet be familiar with his work; on the other hand, my impression while listening to the current album Only in Movies is that it represents a synthesis of the very best this musician has to offer. From the moment I began writing this text, I have still been on the first track, “Only in Movies”—not because I write too quickly, but because the piece itself lasts 31 minutes and contains a great deal of his qualities, above all - his compositional and arranging genius.

At one time, about fifteen years ago, when he formed his septet, it most often functioned as Mezei’s most „jazz-oriented” ensemble, within a post-bop framework with influences of 1960s American free jazz. With a minimal expansion into an octet, featuring more or less the same or similar musicians, what comes most strongly to the fore here is Mezei the composer, whose work seamlessly intertwines a love of chamber composition, theatre, and the aforementioned niche of jazz.

If we return to the opening paragraphs and Mezei’s intellectualism—it is as if through this opening composition he makes it clear, that he has no interest in any kind of compromise. Like a filmmaker who makes a three-hour film, or a writer who produces an 800-page book, he invites us to leave behind the world of trivial everyday life and immerse ourselves in the world of art. With attention, concentration, and the desire to understand what the author wanted to say; with the aim of enriching our own lives, and then reflecting on what we have experienced. To analyze our own listening experience and perhaps share it with someone close. And then to immerse ourselves in this music again, allowing new layers and nuances—created by all eight musicians—to reveal themselves.

The third track, “The Tailor’s Apprentices,” is another epic piece lasting 25 minutes, which more openly draws us into Mezei’s remarkable world of collective improvisation. Even as a multitude of instruments intertwine, we as listeners do not feel that we are witnessing an “assault on the senses.” The colors of this music are dark and dense. Flute, bass clarinet, bassoon, viola, vibraphone intertwine—these are all instruments we might more readily imagine in a symphony orchestra or classical ensemble, yet here they enter into layered group solos.

Or at least until the next section of the composition, when Ervin Malina and Istvan Csik initiate a jazz-driven pulse, a meticulous weave of double bass and cymbals in the spirit of the finest jazz traditions. They are then joined by Máté Pozsár, a refined virtuoso from the Hungarian jazz scene, who restrains his untamed free jazz talent in order to craft delicate solo vignettes.

After writing this sentence, I looked at the player—the composition had “only” reached the ten-minute mark when Szilárd Mezei himself enters, bringing his distinctive blend of roughness and vulnerability as a viola soloist. Much more will happen before the end; but even this extended introduction gives a clear sense of the kind of arranging discourse at work here.

The album contains three additional “shorter” compositions lasting 5, 7, and 9 minutes. The track “8 - 6 + (2 - 8) + (6 - 2) + 6” is the only one that more extensively ventures into the realm of free improvisation, while the closing “Lath Waltz” may even sound ironic to the listener after everything heard over the previous hour. But this is only an initial deceptive impression, behind which lies once again a true compositional nerve; a few subtle details, a step off the rails, an entry into the labyrinth—followed by a return to the essential beauty of melody.

Szilárd Mezei is the author of what I would call “big music.” The kind that is neither fleeting nor aligned with trends, yet at the same time does not sound outdated or obsolete. Szilárd Mezei is a future classic.

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Musicians:

Szilárd Mezei – viola
Andrea Berendika – flute
Bogdan Ranković – alto sax, bass clarinet
Nemanja Mihailović – bassoon
Ivan Burka – vibraphone
Máté Pozsár – piano
Ervin Malina – double bass
István Csík – drums

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