Budapest Ragtime Band - one of the most mellow old bands of the Hungarian jazz scene - was formed in 1980 of highly educated musicians coming form the Acadamy of Music. Their aim – besides to keep the traditions of ragtime music – is to introduce and maintain some other traditional American music genres, and certainly to entertain their audience on a very high standard. The ragtime, as a very popular music at the end of the 19th Century was born in America. Scott Joplin, James Scott, Kerry Mills and other talented composers wrote these first rag-tunes for piano. Budapest Ragtime Band used these piano scores, and arranged these pieces to their own ensemble of 8 memebers. They also play swing and dixiland evergreens and make their concerts more colourful with virtuoso solos. As the unique and very popular Spike Jones band did, BRB plays classical music arrangements (like Blue Danube, Sworddance, Monti csárdás, William Tell overture, Carmen) in a lively way. Through the use of several different music genres they give very successfull concerts in Hungary and in many foreign countries, where they had the opportunity to play with jazz stars like Dave Brubeck, Chris Barber, Clark Terry, Illinois Jacquet, John Scofield and Johnny Griffin.

László Galyas – trumpet
János Orbán – trombone
Gábor Farkas – clarinet
Tibor Antal – violin
Dimitrisz Politisz – banjo, guitar
Ferenc Gayer – double bass
Zoltán Zakar – piano
János Weszely – drums
József Széki – percussion, xylophone, singing
Andrea Horváth – singing