Laszlo Gardony Quartet To Perform At Regattabar This Month
The ensemble features saxophonist Don Braden, bassist John Lockwood, and drummer Yoron Israel.
By: A.A. Cristi May. 08, 2025
Internationally acclaimed pianist/composer Laszlo Gardony and his quartet perform at Regattabar, Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett St., Cambridge on Friday, May 23. The ensemble features saxophonist Don Braden, bassist John Lockwood, and drummer Yoron Israel.
Gardony and his quartet perform music from an upcoming album, in addition to Gardony originals and arrangements. Gardony's most recent Sunnyside Records recording is the 2022 Close Connection, which earned broad critical acclaim including a 4-star review in DownBeat. One of the most expressive and technically skilled pianists working in jazz today, Gardony is “a formidable improviser who lives in the moment,” (JazzTimes). He has performed in 27 countries and released 14 albums on the Sunnyside, Antilles and Avenue Jazz labels.
Winner of the Great American Jazz Piano Competition, Gardony has been noted for his “fluid pianism” by The New York Times, praised by JazzTimes for his “incredible technique spread over a highly personal harmonic language,” lauded by The Boston Phoenix for his “accessible lyricism and subtle complexities” and celebrated by the UK’s Jazzwise as a “fine pianist who has mastered the sound of surprise” and hailed by Cadence as a pianist deserving of wider recognition. And as DownBeat put it: “No matter how busy Gardony becomes, there’s a stillness at the center of his music, a distinctive amalgam of central European folk strains, majestic classic piano and improvisational fearlessness.” The legendary Dave Brubeck also called him “a great pianist.
A professor in the piano department at Berklee College of Music since 1987, as well as a faculty member at Harvard University’s Jazz Combo Initiative program, Gardony has performed and/or recorded with artists including Dave Holland, Miroslav Vitous, Bob Moses, Mick Goodrick, Yoron Israel, John Lockwood, Jamey Haddad, David “Fathead” Newman, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Eddie Gomez, Bill Pierce, Don Braden and Stan Strickland.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Gardony showed an early aptitude on the piano and soon started improvising, devising little tunes inspired by the blues, pop and classical music he heard around the house. Immersed in the European classical tradition while growing up, he was drawn to progressive rock as a teenager and spent countless hours improvising blues-based music at the piano. He investigated gospel and studied jazz, a passion that soon overshadowed his classical pursuits. “We had jazz and African music classes at the Conservatory,” he recalled. “There were some very knowledgeable people and a lot of records. When it came to jazz it was a tiny community, but very inspiring.”
After graduating from the Béla Bartók Conservatory and the Science University of Budapest (majoring in mathematics and physics), Gardony became one of Europe’s most sought-after accompanists. Possessing a powerful sense of swing, a strong feel for the blues and a firm command of post-bop vocabulary, he gained invaluable insights by sharing festival stages with acts like Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Abdullah Ibrahim. After several years on the road as a sideman, Gardony decided he needed to deepen his knowledge of jazz. A full scholarship to Berklee brought him to the United States in 1983, and a faculty position at the school upon graduation kept him in Boston. He made his U.S. recording debut with the acclaimed 1988 album The Secret (Antilles), featuring Czech bass great Miroslav Vitous and drummer Ian Froman. But it was his first-place win the following year at the Great American Jazz Piano Competition that catapulted him into the national spotlight.
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