Percussionist András Dés was guided by musical curiosity when he decided to record his latest album, einschließlich (BMC Records, 2020) in the woodlands of the Bakony hills with the members of his quartet, Rangers. Nature became the producer of the record, and serendipity – one of the main driving forces of jazz – took the key role. Instantaneous risktaking is vital for a jazz player, so Dés decided not to bring any instruments to the session with his quartet. Instead, he played the objets trouvés of the forest: trees, stones, leaves, pine cones, snails’ shells, the ground, as well as using his own body as an instrument. Even though Dés says his album was not made with social critique in mind, the listener cannot escape the thought that this music was created in a forest at the eleventh hour as a memento of the final minutes before a great collapse.

Although András Dés considers himself as a contemporary improvisative musician he started his studies of classical percussion at the age of seven. Later his interests turned towards the instruments used in different sorts of folk music and finally he graduated from the Jazz Faculty of Ferenc Liszt Music Academy in 2005. Over the past years, Dés has developed his own percussion set: with his right hand he plays like a drummer and with his left hand like a percussionist. As a member of numerous successful jazz bands he has been touring all around the world and has played at many important venues such as Carnegie Hall, Covent Garden, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Damascus Opera House, the Jerusalem Theatre, the Cairo Jazz Festival or the Shanghai World Expo. As a percussionist, he has contributed to almost 100 albums, four out of them (“Unquiet Stillness” 2009, “Tourist No 1” 2014, “The Worst Singer In The World” 2017 “Einschließlich” 2020) as a leader. He has also composed several film and theatre scores. Throughout his career, Dés has been crossing borders between genres. Some major stages were playing in the bands of great Hungarian folk singers, being the member of the popular group Jazz+Az and working with the outstanding contemporary composer, Péter Eötvös. As a jazz musician he has worked with performers such as Miklós Lukács, Palle Mikkelborg, Frank London, Charlie Mariano, Theodossii Spassov, Ferenc Snétberger, Jack DeJohnette, Gerard Presencer, Eivind Aarset, Eric Truffaz, Grzegorz Karnas, Aga Zaryan, Leila Martial, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Mahan Mirarab, Golnar Shahyar and Chris Potter. And of course he has been working a lot with his father, the composer and saxophone player, László Dés. His openness to diverse froms of art is not limited to music. Apart from collaborations with writers and poets, he is also the author and performer of the solo theatre piece “Unblinking”. (Pressetext)