Károly Binder

Károly Binder (born 2 April 1956) is a Hungarian jazz pianist, composer and educator.

Károly Binder in 2017

Early life

Binder was born in Budapest on 2 April 1956.^[1] He was five years old when he started playing the piano and studied jazz in Budapest at the Béla Bartók Musical Training College from 1976 to 1979.^[1]

Later life and career

From the early 1980s Binder led quartets and quintets that appeared at festivals in Europe.^[1] He performed and recorded with the free-jazz musician György Szabados in the middle of that decade and near its end played in duos with Theo Jörgensmann, Laszlo Sűle and others.^[1] Many of his frequent recordings from the early 1980s and into the 1990s have been reissued on Binder Music Manufactory, his own label.^[1] He is the head of the jazz department at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest.^[2]

Style

"Binder's style of world music mingles elements of Japanese, lamaist, gamelan, Indian, and African music with the diatonic harmonies of classical music and the improvisational freedom of jazz."^[1]

Selected discography

• (1981) Károly Binder Quartet Live at Bátok Terem with Mihály Dresch, Róbert Benkő
• (1982) Binder Quintet featuring John Tchicai
• (1985) Károly Binder " In Illo Tempore "
• (1991) Károly Binder and Ramesh Shotham Dance Music
• (1993) Károly Binder featuring Theo Jörgensmann Live at Music Academy Budapest