During the period of Reformation, the creative energy of our nation emerged with stupefying force and definitely flourished our churches and filled them with beautiful hymns. These compositions rooted in the folk art, somewhere in ancient times, but, were – already at their birth – real contemporary works! Their universality is offered by the fact that the motives of several hundred or even thousand years were shaped in, and emerged from, the soul of Hungarian people.
Thus, it was contemporary music at birth and so it should remain nowadays, because it can really reflect the strength of belief.
„Music is God’s gift, and if it is so, we have to live with it for his glory.” (Jean Calvin)
This particular wish made us form our Quintet in 2002 because we wanted to direct attention to the protestant, reformed songs (of mainly Hungarian melodies and texts), their hidden beauty and eternal content of the texts. With these compositions our intention has not been to renew the singing in congregations, but to convince people of the 21st century to see not something old-fashioned and outdated in these very old songs but, just the opposite, to look for treasures capable of continuous changes. We created a kind of musical tissue, a mixture of jazz and folk music, making however efforts for subordinating everything to the original melody and text. It does not mean for us that a composition can only be of religious content, but it has to be something that “does not burn, but feed fantasy, does not captivate but free it to heights, and the noblest resources of soul sprung by its calm and refreshing touch.” (Sándor Makkai)
Nagy János

Judit Kóta – vocal
Béla Szerényi – hurdy-gurdy
János Nagy – piano
Balázs Horváth – double bass
Péter Szendőfi – drums