Roland Heidrich is a Budapest based experimenter guitarist and composer. His music is a mixture of jazz, blues, progressive rock, avantgarde and free improvised music.

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BIO

I see myself as someone with a creative attitude. I like to experiment with stuff and try to make something out of it...

I picked up the guitar at the age of 14. A simple act, that started my ever lasting passion for music and this iconic instrument. I was mesmerized by rock music first but i have soon discovered jazz and started to develop myself in that direction. After some years of studying jazz with Attila Csikós, my interests evolved in other directions aswell, like avantgarde and experimental music including free improvisation. I played with Judit Bálványos and Zsolt Varga, who introduced me to free improvised music. Having set up my prepared milti-pickup electric guitar for experimental music purposes, I met Sándor Szabó, who showed me into a different sphere of music and sound, principally through acoustic music. I played acoustic guitars for 10 years, explored the oppurtunities on the 8 string classical guitar, 16 string guitar and fretless 8 strings, before my return to the electric guitar and my original sound imaginations. In the last couple of years I mostly play electric guitar.

In all these years i was lucky to play and work with really great and inspiring musicians. It is hard to make a long list short, so i will keep this job for another time, but as far as releases and formations go, i played with: Sándor Szabó, István Grencsó, Balázs Major, Judit Bálványos, Zsolt Varga, Vajk Kobza, Csaba Gyulai, Róbert Benkő, Csaba Pengő, Alf Wilhelm Lundberg, Ralf Gauck, Zoltán Lantos, János Ávéd, Gergő Kováts, Thomas Gundermann, Zsolt Sárvári Kovács, Nikolai Ivanov, Bálint Bolcsó, Mark Wingfield, Kevin Kastning.

I always loved to compose and I do so today, but I think of music mostly as the creation of that very moment. In 2017 we started to work in trio with double bass player Csaba Pengő and drummer Zsolt Sárvári Kovács. We soon continued as ‘The Abstract’. A long awaited artistic and sonic opportunity has come to life for me. I really enjoy playing with Zsolt and Csaba, they deliver a solid ground for my concepts and compositions. My goal now is to keep the dinamic range as wide as possible and play really different feels and tastes besides each other. I was not afraid to write some bitter-sweet melodies, switch to free jazz in the next bar and continue with some heavy riffs in the next tune. Anyways we are on our exploration and already recorded two albums. The first one “Where are we going?” was released in 2019. The second one in 2021 under the title "A Fine Line In Between". Both at Hunnia Records.

In terms of other releases, the Grencsó Poetry Collective has released the album “From Door To Gate” (spring 2019) at Hunnia-/Adyton Records. Though this might be more interesting for the hungarian audience (becouse of the hungarian poems written by István Grencsó) the improvised music surrounds the lyrics in a very colorfull manner and is enjoyable as such. “River Music” was another collaboration with István Grencsó, Sándor Szabó and Róbert Benkő, where we play free improvised music, following various sonic and music creating concepts.

THE ABSTRACT

The Abstract plays a mixture between avant-jazz, prog-rock and bitter-sweet "Hungariana"...

After having played in different formations with double-bassist Csaba Pengő and drummer Zsolt Sárvári Kovács, Roland invited them to his trio. Although The Abstract plays Rolands compositions and musical concepts, these serve mostly as a canvas for further possibilities and creativity. Their music responds to a broad band of genres, styles and emotions. It is amongst their goals to play the widest dinamic range possible.

The themes that could be easily recognised as “songs”, provide the framework for an adventure, where the classical trio setting gets to display in a broad variety.

They recorded their first album “Where are we going?” at the end of 2018. In 2021 their second album was released under the title "A Fine Line In Between".

Roland Heidrich – guitar

Csaba Pengő – double bass

Zsolt Sárvári Kovács – drums

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