“Here is an album as satisfying to the head as it is to the heart, shot through with hummable tunes, danceable grooves, and a jumbo crayon box’s worth of colour. It is as much chamber music as it is jazz, and more than that, it is a formal wonder”, writes Gabriel Kahane about Decisions We Make, the new album by the András Dés Quartet, released in March 2026 on BMC Records.

For András Dés, jazz is lived democracy: a form of dialogue based on trust, openness, and attentive listening. For this dialogue, he found creative partners with strong and distinctive voices in Martin Eberle, Philipp Nykrin, and Kenji Herbert. Following the positive international reception of Unimportant Things, the quartet releases its new album, Decisions We Make, in March 2026, once again on BMC Records. The 49-minute recording unfolds as an uninterrupted musical journey, linking compositions with open structures where playfulness, spontaneity, and risk-taking play a central role. Dés’s distinctive percussion setup is joined by trumpet, piano, and electric guitar, whose approaches go far beyond instrumental stereotypes, creating musical worlds in which genre boundaries dissolve. Decisions We Make explores extreme dynamic and emotional ranges: as the silences deepen, the explosive force of rock’n’roll becomes all the more powerful. The quartet thrives on contrasts, yet the harmony between the four musicians remains complete. As Kahane writes in the liner notes of the album, “It’s a testament to these four musicians that the free improvisations… feel as coherent and intentional as the eight tunes written by Dés.”

Although Dés András has been based in Vienna since 2018, he remains closely connected to his hometown of Budapest through numerous ensembles and projects, including Mihály Borbély’s Polygon Trio, which blends Eastern European folk music with jazz, and the Free Sounds Quartet led by László Dés, built around free improvisation. In recent years, András Dés has also been a regular participant in international projects and an active figure on Vienna’s vibrant music scene, performing with ensembles such as Christian Muthspiel’s Orjazztra, the trio Mash with Mahan Mirarab and Vincent Pongrácz, J.D. HIVE, and the groups of Golnar Shahyar, Basma Jabr, and Efrat Alony. His own quartet likewise reflects Vienna’s diversity: four musicians who grew up in Budapest, Vorarlberg, Osaka, and Salzburg, and found one another in the Austrian capital. Decisions We Make stands as an example of how, in a space shaped by trust, openness, acceptance, and mutual listening, the meeting of vastly different worlds can create harmony.