This month, the band of Gábor Gadó and Veronika Harcsa present their second album. Their first album, Shekhinah (2023), receiving Citizen Jazz magazine’s ÉLU award, featured Gadó’s fresh compositions with lyrics by Veronika Harcsa. The Language of Flowers, on the other hand, brings to life compositions written by Gadó more than two decades ago to lyrics by Eszter Molnár, and thus revives the brightest era of Hungarian vocal jazz, hallmarked by the work of Gábor Winand.

Gábor Gadó and Veronika Harcsa are two artists who are known primarily as jazz musicians, yet their work is increasingly shifting towards classical and contemporary music. Another step in this direction was their previous album Shekhinah in 2023, receiving Citizen Jazz magazine’s ÉLU award, and this year the dialogue between classical and jazz musicians continues in the songs of The Language of Flowers. But while Shekhinah features Gadó’s recent compositions with lyrics by Veronika Harcsa, The Language of Flowers brings to life Gadó’s compositions from more than two decades ago to lyrics by Eszter Molnár, and thus revives the brightest era of Hungarian vocal jazz, hallmarked by the name of Gábor Winand. Between 2002 and 2006, Gadó and Winand released four albums (Corners of My Mind, Agent Spirituel, Different Garden, and Opera Budapest), which have taken their careers to new heights and won prestigious French awards. The Gadó – Harcsa Quintet has selected 11 songs from these albums, but their aim is not to replicate, but to approach these pieces as one would the repertoire of jazz standards or classical songs: as melodies and lyrics that anyone can perform, finding their own voice in them.

Gábor Gadó has been working with BMC Records for a quarter of a century, releasing an incredible number of 25 albums for BMC Records, including one of the label’s biggest hits, 2002’s Orthodoxia. After his famous French quartet, Gadó has recorded materials with many groups, and this quintet was also formed on his initiative. He couldn’t have found a more suitable vocalist partner for reinterpreting the vocal jazz tradition than Veronika Harcsa, who is justly the most popular Hungarian jazz singer in the country and the most recognized abroad. Her duo with Bálint Gyémánt, which has also participated in the Jazzahead! festival, is already releasing its third album out on German labels, while BMC Records hosts her contemporary improvisational and classical projects such as Debussy NOW!, the Modern Art Orchestra’s Bartók album, or Different Aspects of Silence with Kornél Fekete-Kovács, the Robert Balzar Trio and Dan Bárta. In the Gadó – Harcsa Quintet, we find musicians familiar from Shekhinah and Gadó’s other projects: Belgian trumpeter Laurent Blondiau, sound magician saxophonist János Ávéd, and the contemporary scene’s prominent cellist Tamás Zétényi adds defining colours to the character of the music.