Akos Nagy & Andor Polgar

Akos Nagy is a composer, improviser and electronics artist from Hungary. On his second tour in the Netherlands he will collaborate with several musicians of the Dutch arts scene, creating an intercultural soundscape. On his concert in Splendor, he will be accompanied by his apprentice: Andor Polgár, an Amsterdam-based ambient electronic music artist. During their 90 minutes live performance they will blend different sound generating techniques such as spectral modeling synthesis Karplus–Strong synthesis with some acoustic elements to create a calming ambience.

Akos Nagy's art is synthetic and shows synthesising tendency which is built from the Netherlandish polyphonic tradition. He examined Gothic and late Renaissance music, traces of which show up in his later music along with elements of Transylvanian, Indian, Khmer, Balinese and Japanese classical culture. He is researching the rhythm and tone systems outside Europe. He turns towards exploring new forms and structures, filling them up with his characteristic take on melody which origins usually from non-tempered (just intonation) systems. His music juxtaposes solid blocks of sound that keep reprising accumulatively a method he branded 'layering technique'. His music is influenced by the I-II World War Avant-garde, the American experimental, the early psychedelic music, many European and outside Europe folk music and former arts. In his pieces, he shows a penchant for mathematical series, textures arranged after principles of variation which are substantiated with polyrhythmic, polytemporal, polymetric patterns of melody and rhythm.

Andor gathers his inspiration and builds his art from a palette of generative techniques. He is not only using the language of mathematics for writing compositions, but also for forming the sound that makes it heard. In his music he is utilising modern mathematics such as Neo-Riemannian theory or the more ancient Euclidean algorithm. He is creating living, self generating musical pieces.

Akos Nagy, Andor Polgár modular synthesizers, spieluhr, singing bowls, tape loops

Videos that gives you an idea of how the performance will sound like:
Of Akos Nagy:

Of Andor Polgár: