Biography
Balogh Kálmán has been honing his musical skills for twenty years or so now, playing with the Hungary’s folk musicians with excursions into classical, jazz and rock, both at home and abroad. The Gipsy Cimbalom Band provides him with the opportunity to fulfil a more personal musical vision and although his mallet work is a highlight of their performance, the band do much more than providing a foundation for the cimbalom - they are all dynamic and versatile musicians with equally eclectic musical.
In this band Balogh and his fellow musicians present the instrumental music performed by Gipsies in the Carpathian Basin and the Balkans. The compositions are not mere reconstructions of pieces from each source area since the music, like Gypsies, crosses boundaries and the band manages to find unexpected combinations and juxtapositions. These traditional tunes merge seamlessly in the hands of the accomplished musicians as they verge from style to style, constantly improvising around the main theme. This music is no longer ‘traditional’ but universal.
Improvisations is at the heart of the music and has broadened the band’s horizons with elements of Latin music and flamenco, swing, ragtime and klezmer. These elements are not meticulously composed nor included just for effect - these inventive musicians have fine-tuned the harmony of the band to produce a colourful, playful and totally ‘new’ music. Different styles are combined to produce a homogeneous and distinctive whole.
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