One of the more striking revelations from the astronauts who pioneered into space is that they were ultimately more in awe of home, Earth, than the moon or stars. Similarly, Daniel Szabo ventured to America, the Land of the Free and home to Jazz, only to rediscover his love for Hungary — its musical riches — his home. In the best tradition of third stream exploration, Szabo has created a magnum opus deserving of the title and accolade “Visionary.”

This album, recorded in April of 2018 at The Bridge Studio in Glendale, California, was written for a unique instrumentation combining woodwind sextet with string quartet and jazz rhythm section. In “Visionary,” Szabo features an outstanding line-up of musicians and such as Sara Andon, Bob Sheppard, Kim Richmond and Edwin Livingston. Szabo composed, arranged and orchestrated all of the pieces and played the piano. The pieces were conducted by Timothy Williams. The style of this new repertoire shows a blend of jazz, classical and film music idioms, robustly American yet genetically Hungarian. This is the sweetest fusion music I’ve played.

-Peter Erskine, Fuzzy Music

Daniel Szabo

Daniel Szabo is an LA-based performer-composer who has recorded & produced eight albums as a leader. He’s also worked on a great number of recordings as a collaborator with such artists as Peter Erskine, Patrick Williams, Bob Sheppard, Jimmy Haslip, Kim Richmond, Chris Potter, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Lionel Loueke and John Zorn. He has toured worldwide and won multiple awards, including the Grand Prize of the City of Paris at the International Martial Solal Jazz Piano Competition as well as the Montreux Jazz Piano Solo Contest in Switzerland.

Szabo is an Associate Professor at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music. Daniel earned his Doctorate degree at the University of Southern California, in the fields of jazz piano, classical composition, film scoring and music theory, after being trained at the New England Conservatory and the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest.