Whole-Brain Rhapsody

An experimental jazz concert by Ádám Somlai-Fischer and Ádám Bögöthy

Performed at the Madách 200 Thought Festival, ActiCity Dance and Movement Arts Centre — 29 October 2023.

We have talked with many musicians about what they see and imagine while improvising. For some it is not visual at all, but many describe thoughts and feelings that can be drawn — and there are well-known examples, such as the way horizontal (contrapuntal) baroque music becomes vertical (harmonies under a single melody).

If we can show these to the audience, they will listen to improvisation differently — seeing what appears to us when we think of the piece’s “playground” in which we improvise.

We work out and visualize easily graspable musical ideas in well-known pieces, introduce each with a two-minute spoken preface, then perform it improvised, in a jazz idiom.

The projections help the audience hear the ideas inside the sounds, to better understand what they hear and feel. This is where the working title “Middle Hemisphere” came from: the myth stubbornly persists that our right and left brain hemispheres have separate analytic and creative characters. For us the two approaches are not opposites — we look for the experiences hidden in the subtle movement between emotion and intellect.

Functional diagrams for Miles Davis’s Solar

Imre Madách’s The Tragedy of Man shows the history of humankind through an eternal struggle and search. Reason and emotion, knowledge and faith keep colliding. I see the same tension — and the same harmonious balance — in making music: a constant dialogue between the analytic and the emotional sides.

Popular culture likes to set these against each other. For me the two approaches are not to be opposed; instead I look for the experiences hidden in the subtle movement between emotion and intellect.

With Ádám Bögöthy we portray these two approaches not as a contest but as a fine transition between them, in the frame of a jazz concert. We play songs chosen from six historical periods on double bass and guitar, in a modern jazz style. Before each piece we briefly introduce one musical idea, which the audience can also follow on video while we play.

PROGRAM:

1720 — Bach, Invention in D minor, jazz-harmonized. From horizontal dialogue to vertical alignment.

1839 — Chopin, Prelude in E minor / Jobim, Insensatez. A beautifully descending accompaniment under a very simple melody.

1914 — A csitári hegyek alatt (Kodály), harmonized. We stretch and release with harmonies.

1954 — Solar, Miles Davis / Chuck Wayne. Chords revolving around us carry it from major to minor.

1967 — Wayne Shorter, Footprints. It sounds like a familiar blues — but the melody reinterprets what we hear.

2023 — Billie Eilish & Finneas O’Connell, What Was I Made For (Barbie), jazz-harmonized.

Eve’s dream. A question from us.

Visualizations for A csitári hegyek alatt and Bach’s Invention No. 4

Performers

Ádám Viktor Bögöthy
double bass, musical co-creator

Ádám Bögöthy has become one of the most versatile and sought-after musicians of the Hungarian jazz scene.

After completing his studies in guitar and double bass (BA and MA at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music), he took part in several internationally recognized competitions, earning jury and audience awards alike (Jazz Showcase, Alba Regia International Jazz Competition, MJSZ Combo Competition). He received the Dezső Lakatos Ablakos scholarship for the young generation, and became an Artisjus and Fonogram awardee as a member of the Modern Art Orchestra. He presents his own music as a composer in two formations, Adams Circle and the Bögöthy Trio, and has worked with artists including David Liebman, Ben Monder, David Friedman, Bob Mintzer, Tony Lakatos, Marshall Gilkes and Dániel Szabó.

Ádám Somlai-Fischer
concept, harmonization, drawings and classical guitar

Co-founder of the Prezi presentation platform, used by 150 million people worldwide. His artworks have been shown at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Transmediale Berlin, NTT/ICC Tokyo and Kiasma Helsinki, among others.

Beyond the Hungarian press, his work has been covered by Wired, the New York Times, the Financial Times, Fast Company, Forbes and CNN. He was on the Financial Times’ Europe’s top 50 tech entrepreneurs list, won the World Technology Award (WTN, Time Inc.) in the Arts category, worked as an Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, was selected among the fifty most promising designers by International Design magazine, and served as Hungary’s talent ambassador. He founded the Kitchen Budapest innovation lab and co-founded the Bridge Budapest NGO and Budapest School.

He first studied jazz guitar in the 1990s with Ferenc Tornóczky; today he receives musical guidance from contemporary flutist Anna Rákóczy and jazz guitarist Gábor Juhász.