With the Balance trio’s second album, Ja´nos A´ve´d placed the emphasis on the art of listening. Not merely in the music sense of the word: the band leader-saxophonist has encapsulated his whole basic attitude as a human being and artist into these compositions, which thus point far beyond the musical areas bounded by a notated score. “Am I open enough to partake?” This question lies behind the compositions throughout, and invites the listener to pay deep attention, to take part, similar to that with which the composer himself busies himself in the world, and which he shares with guitarist Ma´rton Fenyvesi and A´kos Benko´ on this new album by BMC Records.

for we know in part runs the title, just so, with the transience of lower case letters. “People always want to overcome their own limitations. I realized that what we try to do with our own strength always remains finite and human. So actually the important thing is not what we do, but the direction in which our actions point, and if something is really good in music or in me, then it does not originally spring from me; it is something I receive” says saxophonist-bandleader János Ávéd, explaining the title. And this artistic attitude, rooted in an awareness of fragmentation, results in quite novel musical forms. This album features compositions with writing based on the prosody of speech, a rhythmic-based composition evoking the instantaneousness of improvisation, a folk-ballad atmosphere enriched with electronics, and a piece that gives a major role to silence. In spite of all the different stylistic elements and colours present on the album, János Ávéd and the musicians in Balance, guitarist Márton Fenyvesi and drummer Ákos Benkó, launch every note from the same position: a basic attitude of inexhaustible seeking, aiming to know the whole. They demand this of the listener too, for without dedicated attention this CD will admit the listener at most as far as the entrance hall. Based on the booklet text by Emese Szász

János Ávéd, saxophonist, composer, arranger, and music teacher from Mindszent, is an outstanding figure in the middle generation of Hungarian jazz, and is a sought-after musician not just as a soloist, but also as a creative partner. In January 2011 he founded the lineup Ávéd János Balance, in which with guitarist Márton Fenyvesi and drummer Ákos Benkó, he seeks new musical opportunities in free musical forms latent in the drumsguitar- saxophone combination, wihout a bass instrument. As they do this, they make use of any spontaneously arising melodic elements. The lineup’s debut album Balance was released in 2016 on the BMC Records label. János Ávéd is a key member and soloist in the Modern Art Orchestra led by Kornél Fekete- Kovács, and with them he has had several composer concerts in which the lineup played his work written or arranged for big band. As a member of the orchestra he has already worked with many world stars, such as Benny Golson, Kurt Elling, Péter Eötvös, Bob Mintzer, David Liebman, Randy Brecker, Chris Potter, and many others. In music he seeks the delicate balance between improvisation and composition: “Perhaps we improvising jazz musicians long to be able to play spontaneously with the composer’s sense of form and perfection of composition”, he says, yet music is much more for him than a one-off artistic experience. With every concert he aims for divine perfection, be it in free jazz, melodic jazz with a lyrical mood, or unusual forms that have little in common with “divine order” depicted in the music of Bach. In his attitude as a performer we always sense that he is his own artist, one that sets himself the highest standards.