BECAUSE HUNGARY DID NOT FILL ANY MORE HIS SEARCHES TO MEASURE HIMSELF TO THE BIGGEST JAZZMEN, PETER GRITZ SLIPS AWAY TO LAND IN PARIS INTO 80. SINCE, FROM ANTOINE HERVÉ TO BARNEY WILLEN, FROM JACQUES PELLEN TO ERIC BARRET, STEVE LACY TO FRANÇOIS MÉCHALI, ENRICCO PIERANUNZI OR RICCARDO DEL FRA, HE BECAME ONE OF THE MOST REQUIRED, ESTIMATED AND MANY-SIDED DRUMMERS OF THE HEXAGON. A MEETING IN THE HEART OF HIS SECOND (THIRD?) FATHERLAND: BRITTANY, AT THE TIME OF "LES TOMBEES DE LA NUIT" (FALLEN THE NIGHT) IN RENNES.

You left Hungary on a blow of head? That's corresponded to the period where I due to make my military service. The mentality in Hungary to the jazz was very superficial. However, when I have left Budapest at 22 years, I earned my living well while playing rather often. I felt that it missed me many things to really be able to progress. I suffered from this species of myth of "elsewhere". It was necessary that I go to see more closely. I did not know too much where to go, I settled in Paris a little by chance... Let us reconsider your beginnings of drummer... I have started the instrument relatively late. My grandfather, musician of marching-band, played me Besame Mucho. The drums was an old dream of kid but at 18 years I was sporting professional and absolutely not intended to be musician. It is after the VAT and a concert from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers that I have decided to attack. I was fascined by its flexibility, its sonority, its elegance, its swing... All was very quickly. I have studied the technology, the harmony, a little the jazz at the academy of Budapest and two years later, I was professional and recorded a first disc of jazz although not being on the level to do it. No pop or rock'n'roll experiment to start? Not really, even if I liked hear some tubes of rock'n'roll. I have quickly tackled the jazz with Coltrane. I realized whereas, to deepen knowledge, it was necessary to move back in the history The jazz not exist without the tradition which itself did not existed in Budapest. there is played superficially the jazz "à.la.mode". While coming to France, it was me necessary to start all again. I had worked much, but badly the technology with the academy. It's keys that you cannot understand only seeing the musicians playing, It is the oral tradition which learned you the essential. The big jazzmen passed rare by Hungary? You know, at that time, in communist country, the jazz was still the imperialist music, coming from the United States, the prohibited music! It was appreciated by a minority. Your arrival in France... While arriving to Paris, I have by chance succeeded integrating in a group of music of East which left in round to Brittany. It is during this round that I have makes two decisive meetings: the Britanny guitarist Jacques Pellen, with which I play since, and the harpist Kristen Nogues. I have found to thousands of kilometers of at home, people who divided very the same smell, same sensitivity as me, in particular [To the next page]

Peter Gritz

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