Aladár Pege

Aladár Pege

Aladár Pege grave on the Budapest Kerepesi temető

Aladár Pege (born October 8, 1939 in Budapest ; † September 24, 2006 there ) was a Hungarian double bass player . He was an exceptional interpreter of the classical solo repertoire and at the same time a jazz double bass player .

Live and act

Pege was initially self-taught , but then began classical training at the age of 15 at the Béla Bartók Conservatory and the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest. In the late 1950s he played with Attila Garay . As early as the 1960s, he had turned to jazz alongside classical music with his own trio. In 1970 he was named best soloist at the Montreux Jazz Festival . In 1973 he moved to West Berlin to work with stars like Dexter Gordon , Art Farmer , Benny Bailey , Albert Mangelsdorff , Walter Norris and Leo Wright . He played in the Mingus Dynasty and was on the world's most important jazz stages (including 1982 with Herbie Hancock at Carnegie Hall ). Pege had a jazz quartet with Hungarian musicians such as Gyula Csepregi, Zsolt Koloncsák and Tamás Kothencz. But there was also collaboration with Dexter Gordon, Wynton Marsalis , Michał Urbaniak and Tony Williams and recordings with Karl Ratzer , Gábor Szabó , Lee Harper , Charly Antolini , Dorothy Donegan and Attila Zoller . In addition, Pege was also on the road with a classical repertoire.

Since 1978 Aladár Pege has been teaching (classical) double bass as a professor at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest. Due to his dynamic and extremely vital pizzicato playing, his bow technique, which is unusually agile for jazz, and his flageolets , he was also referred to as the paganini of the double bass. He was undisputedly one of the most important bass players in Europe and a Kossuth Prize winner .

Web links

• Aladár Pege , at allmusic.hu (Hungarian)
• Obituary , in: The Guardian