| World Jazz |
Söndörgő, In Residence at Müpa: A Hungarian Ensemble at the Peak of Its Powers
Three decades in, Söndörgő could easily have settled into being custodians of a tradition. Instead, In Residence at Müpa, the Hungarian ensemble’s dazzling new live album on GroundUP Music, finds them doing the opposite: treating the South Slavic tambura repertoire as something still very much alive, still being written, still capable of surprise. Recorded during a self-curated three-concert residency at Budapest’s Müpa (the band was named the venue’s Ensemble of the Season for 2025–2026), the album distills folk, classical and jazz nights into eight tracks that feel less like a “best of” and more like a single, sprawling conversation.
That conversation has some extraordinary guests at the table. Michael League, Jay Jennings and Chris Bullack of Snarky Puppy sit in across several tracks, folk legend Márta Sebestyén lends her voice, and Balkan brass specialist Fercho Mustafov and tambura virtuoso Branko “Bako” Jovanović push the ensemble’s own playing into even higher gear. It’s a remarkable amount of firepower for one record, and remarkably, none of it feels like a guest-star exercise, everyone plays into Söndörgő’s sound rather than over it.
Who is Söndörgő? The core group is a family affair: brothers Áron, Benjamin and Salamon Eredics, their cousin Dávid Eredics, and bassist Ábel Dénes, the only non-family member. All three Eredics brothers plus their cousin teach at the Folk Music Department of the Budapest Academy of Music, and their musical education, as the band likes to put it, began nine months before they were born, their father and uncle were members of the legendary Vujicsics Ensemble. That depth of grounding shows in every bar of this record, but so does the restlessness that has defined the band’s last fifteen years, from 2010’s Lost Music of the Balkans through 2019’s genre-dissolving Eight 8 Eight to 2024’s Chris Potter collaboration Gyezz. Söndörgő’s signature instrument is the tambura, a mandolin-like South Slav relative of the Turkish saz, bright, springy, plucked rather than bowed, and about as far from the fiddle-driven sound most listeners associate with “Hungarian folk” as you can get.
Opener “Rezidensko Kolo” sets the tone immediately: a nine-minute reworking of a traditional circle dance that, with Bako Jovanović and Fercho Mustafov aboard, treats the source material as a living structure to be stretched, re-accented and handed around the stage rather than a museum piece to be preserved. “Romaniada” answers with pure horn-driven adrenaline, Mustafov’s clarinet and sax lines chasing the tambura runs at a genuinely breathless pace. “Rekoh Ti” is the record’s most densely populated track, with Márta Sebestyén, Branka Básits, Jovanović and Mustafov all present, and it’s the closest the album comes to a full-ensemble folk tableau, voices and strings layered into something close to polyphonic.
The middle stretch shows the band’s other faces. “Kind of Béla” winks at Bartók, folding his classical-modernist harmonic language into a tambura setting with real wit rather than reverence for its own sake. “Hulusination”, at nearly fifteen minutes the album’s centrepiece, is where Michael League’s bass appears, and it’s a genuine highlight: a slow-build, hypnotic piece that gives the band’s wind players room to stretch out inside a groove that owes as much to modern fusion as to the Balkans. League returns on “From Hungary,” anchoring the Eredics family’s roots-driven melodic material with a low end that feels unmistakably like Snarky Puppy without ever pulling the music away from its Hungarian-Serbian core.
The closing pair belongs to the visiting jazz contingent. “Wrap” brings in Jay Jennings’ trumpet for over twelve minutes of expansive, exploratory ensemble playing, and “Reba” closes the record with the full trio (Jennings, Chris Bullack on tenor sax and flute, and League on bass) trading lines with the tambura family in a way that feels less like a guest cameo than a genuine meeting of two working bands who clearly enjoyed being on the same stage.
What makes In Residence at Müpa land so well as a live album, rather than merely a document of one, is how unforced the transitions between idioms feel. Söndörgő never treats jazz, classical reference points and South Slavic tradition as separate rooms to visit in turn, everything is filtered through the same plucky, percussive tambura sound and the same instinct for collective momentum. It’s an album that rewards close listening as much as it rewards dancing, and one that confirms, three decades on, why Müpa handed this band an entire season and why Snarky Puppy wanted them on tour. In Residence at Müpa is a career-highlight live record and an easy four-star recommendation.
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, September 24th, 2026
Follow PARIS-MOVE on X
:::::::::::::::::::::
Tracklisting
- Rezidensko Kolo — 9:25
- Romaniada — 4:09
- Rekoh Ti — 6:18
- Kind of Béla — 3:51
- Hulusination — 14:39
- From Hungary — 8:11
- Wrap — 12:56
- Reba — 8:50
Musicians
Söndörgő
Ábel Dénes – double bass
Áron Eredics – first tambura, cello tambura, derbuka, tapan
Benjamin Eredics – kontra tambura, trumpet
Dávid Eredics – alto tambura, clarinet, saxophone, kaval
Salamon Eredics – alto tambura, accordion, frula
Special guests:
Márta Sebestyén – vocal (track 3)
Branka Básits – vocal (track 3)
Branko “Bako” Jovanović – alto tambura (tracks 1, 3)
Fercho Mustafov – saxophone (tracks 1, 2, 3)
Chris Bullack – tenor saxophone, flute (track 8)
Jay Jennings – trumpet (tracks 7, 8)
Michael League – oud, derbuka, double bass, bass guitar (tracks 5, 6, 8)
Produced by Söndörgő
Engineered by Attila Görög
Mixed by Balázs Róbert
Mastered by Darcy Proper
Recorded at Müpa – Palace of Arts, Budapest, Hungary
Graphic & design by Csaba Lengyel
Management: Hugo Haasjes / 3S Music Management