Grego

A few early years in São Paulo, Brazil, left a lasting mark — a leather market near the house where people played congas all day, samba running without pause.

Piano from the age of six with Elisabeth Vadász, back in Budapest. Composing spontaneously, notating from age eleven. Jazz studies from twelve. At thirteen he founded Trupp, a contemporary jazz group that played his own pieces and won prizes — school concerts at Fazekas Gimnázium, the Blueseum jazz-blues club in Józsefváros, and a session at Magyar Rádió on 4 January 1987 produced by László Matz.

A score for the New York City subway scenes of Crossing the Bridge, the documentary short produced and directed by the American film maker and professor Karl Bardosh. Parts of it were shot at Magyar Televízió in Budapest, where the post-production was also done.

The film follows the friendship between Sándor Weöres, twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, and William Jay Smith, former Poet Laureate of the United States, and sets their poems on screen as images rather than as an actor reading to camera. As Bardosh describes it, the broadcast on Hungarian television changed how poetry was presented there; the film poem itself reads Weöres's verse on his own mortality. IMDb

The family left Hungary in 1987 for Athens, where he finished at Byron College in 1989. Discovered there by legendary singer, Carl Anderson, on tour there with Joe Zawinul, who listened to his playing and invited him to record in his studio. But Grego then entered the jazz piano department of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and read social sciences and English literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, performing regularly with the guitarists David Golek and Adi Salomon.

A friendship with Ramsey Lewis began at the Blue Note in Jerusalem during these years that lasted decades.

After a few months in Paris he returned to Budapest and released his first album of entirely original songs and instrumentals, Touch Wood, in 1993, under the name Greg Földvári — a large cast of musicians including Vilmos Jávori and Attila László, and the singers Andrea Szulák, Bea Tisza and István Torontáli. The record was sponsored by MKB Bank and carries a Magritte on the cover.

Universal had offered him a multiple recording contract in 1992. He turned it down and left for Berklee College of Music in Boston to study composition, piano and conducting. He was the first Hungarian ever to enter Berklee and complete a full degree programme at this famous institute. He was awarded the Eubie Blake Scholarship, Berklee's BEST Scholarship, won first prize at the Emanuel Zambelli Piano Competition and received the Richard Levy Award for Composition, graduated magna cum laude in 1996 — the diploma conferred by Pat Metheny. His songs drew offers of recording from Carl Anderson, Lou Rawls and Phil Perry.

Chad Gadya (One Kid, חד גדיא) for mixed choir a cappella, composed and conducted by Grego. Performed by Cantus Corvinus, artistic director Géza Klembala, solo by Zoltán Gavodi. World premiere live recording, Óbudai Társaskör, Budapest, 1996.

The text is the poem sung at the close of the traditional Passover Seder in the Haggadah — the kid bought for two zuzim, and everything that follows it. Grego set it in English translation, with the cantor's solo in Aramaic.

He returned to Budapest in 1997 to study with professor Ferenc Rados. In 1999 he formed a piano trio with Péter Papesch on bass and Gergő Borlai on drums. After a six-month composition sabbatical in Padua, Italy, the trio played a series of concerts at the Kunsthalle in Budapest, elsewhere in Hungary, on Hungarian Radio, and across Europe — including Germany, Slovakia, Vienna and a trio concert at Klosterneuburg.

In 2002 the trio released the double live album Süss fel Nap! / Sun, Rise!, again entirely his own compositions.

Composer Marcel Farago, legendary cellist and keyboardist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, entrusted Grego to assist him through the recording of Freedom, his major orchestral works — made in Győr with the Győr Philharmonic Orchestra under Gergely Kesselyák, and released by Centaur Records. The sleeve credits Grego as Assistant to the Composer. Serendipitously, Farago is credited as a keyboardist on Henry Mancini's first recording with the Philadelphia Pops Orchestra. Grego dedicated his Chromatic Fantasy for cello solo to Marcel Farago.

McDonald's commissioned Grego to write a song for a newly built Ronald McDonald House — the charity that keeps families together when a child needs treatment far from home. The English song is Teardrops and a Smile; the Hungarian, Könnycsepp és mosoly.

Recordings: English · Hungarian. Also at tinyurl.com/GregoMcDonalds and tinyurl.com/GregoMcDonald.

The houses: ronaldhaz.hu · rmhc.org · ronaldmcdonaldhouse.org

Through Donumenta in Regensburg and its founder Regina Hellwig-Schmid, a long working relationship began with the Basque ballet dancer Nylea Mata Castilla — piano and dance as one piece rather than accompaniment.

In November 2009 they performed We Are In The Same Boat at the Bavarian EU headquarters in Brussels, in honour of the EU Danube Strategy: a stage installation curated by Regina Hellwig-Schmid around a Danube fishing boat, with her Danube photographs on the walls, hosted by State Minister Emilia Müller. In July 2014 they gave Epiphony at the Edwin Scharff Museum in Neu-Ulm for the 9th International Danube Festival.

He taught at the University of Theatre and Film Arts, Budapest, for two years, 2004 to 2006, and ran a twelve-year research project in piano teaching at the Lauder Javne Music School, 2004 to 2015. He also wrote and recorded music for contemporary art installations and film scores, while touring regularly as a sideman in the Magdi Bódy Jazz Quartet alongside bassists Pluto and Péter Román, and drummer Gábor Szende.

The Cotton Club Singers, one of Hungary's top vocal groups, featured a Grego song on their originals album Luxury — next to a song by Djavan.

From 2015 to 2018, three years, he was Resident Pianist with award winning Viking Ocean Cruises, also featured as soloist in Star Theater concerts.

Stift Klosterneuburg — a unique and major venue of culture in one of Europe's oldest religious institutions, a monastery connecting faith and art. Also wine. The Grego Trio played the Augustinussaal on 19 September 2012, with Ernő Hock and Hunor G. Szabó.

After the concert the organizers invited Grego to sign his name inside the Imperial Bösendorfer, next to Dave Brubeck's and other greats. He was truly flattered, and refused — it would have been far too immodest to bow to that request.

Judit Frigyesi, the world-renowned musicologist, and the pianist Sir András Schiff were both piano students of Elisabeth Vadász, as Grego was. Frigyesi's new book was premiered in a talk with Grego at Lauder Javne, 24 March 2015.

It was András Schiff who recommended studies with Professor Ferenc Rados, when the two met in New York in 1996. Jacob Druckman, composer and department head at Yale, agreed — after a thorough review of the portfolio at a personal meeting on campus, he deemed such artistic maturity better suited to a professional stage career than to staying in academia.

Concerts, recording sessions and gallery evenings, with the musicians, actors and researchers who shared them.

Words by János Lackfi (b. 1971), the József Attila and Kossuth Prize–winning poet; music by Grego. Written during the worst of the covid pandemic, for the survivors of the Shoah and for the descendants, families and friends of the victims and the survivors. It came at the request of friends — Christians close to Jewish life and to Israel, and Jews close to Jesus — missionaries of a modern but genuine kind.

Grego asked, as composer, that the song should not be introduced by a well-known singer in a rich orchestral setting, but by Boglárka and Ferenc Kozma, a married couple and parents personally involved in that mission, carried by nothing more than plain guitar chords and one modest, deeply symbolic cello line. The request surprised people at first hearing. It was respected, and that is how the song came into the world.

The recording was made at the small gathering that held the premiere, in the summer of 2021, and was broadcast by Pax TV in its programme of the same name. Thanks for the idea, the commission and the premiere go above all to Kata Tar and the Jews For Jesus community in Hungary.

Slightly Out of Focus — twelve pieces for piano and bandoneón after Capa's autobiography of the same title, moving through the photographer's life chapter by chapter. Composed with the Italian musician Fabio Turchetti, who plays bandoneón; Grego at the piano.

First given at the Auditorio of the Centro Cultural Puerta de Toledo on 1 December 2023, in the festival Robert Capa estuvo aquí. Then, on 24 May 2024, in the Jardín Sabatini of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid — the Anastasio de Gracia Foundation and the museum marking seventy years since Capa's death. Free entry.

The Spanish press wrote that Turchetti had translated the chapters of Capa's story into melodies evoking the photographer's life, and that the part of the concert pianist Grego Földvári was fundamental to it — his Hungarian origin and his own work in photography drawing him naturally into the project.

The foundation behind the concert also runs the campaign that saved Peironcely 10, the building in the Entrevías district of Madrid protected because of Capa's photograph of it.

In the atrium of a ship, somewhere at sea, a passenger asked him to play something by his wife's uncle. Grego said he would try, though whether he succeeded rather depended on who the uncle was.

Henry Mancini.

He asked for the wife to be brought down to the piano, and asked her to stand beside him while he played Moon River, The Days of Wine and Roses and the Pink Panther theme — not only as a request taken, but as thanks for his own life, his mother's, his aunt's and his cousins', and for their children's.

Then he explained. Mancini was in Austria in the first days of May 1945, near Mauthausen, where the camps were and where tens of thousands were murdered. Grego's grandfather had been brought there after a three-week march from Hungary, during which a guard killed his young nephew, a boy, in front of him. Her uncle was among those who came.

Five years after that evening the couple came to Budapest and asked to meet. They talked, gifts were exchanged, and the conversation was filmed on 6 September 2022 at the Mercure Budapest Korona by Norbert Tamás. A film is in the making.

Bróker leszek / I Will Be a Broker — a forty-seven minute colour documentary by Ferenc Török, 2006, on the broker trade and the stock exchange as they took hold in Hungary after the change of system. Camera Dániel Garas, music Földvári Gergely. Made as a documentary study for Török's 2007 feature Overnight, on money, capital and a world speeding up. Discogs

In studio with celebrated master jazz guitarist, composer and educator Attila László working on yet unreleased albums of Grego.

A solo evening for the 125th anniversary of Bartók's birth, on 25 November 2006 at the Művelődési Ház in Rimaszombat, Slovakia, presented with the Hungarian Cultural Institute there. The town is the birthplace of Ditta Pásztory, Bartók's pupil, wife and colleague, which is why the concert was held there.

The programme honoured Bartók as composer, pianist, scholar and teacher: his own works, his editions of Bach and Mozart, and Bartók-inspired pieces by Chick Corea and Dave Brubeck. Two of Grego's own works were given for the first time — his folk-song improvisations and Pillangók, a piano-teaching series.

Dúr és Moll / Major and Minor — a solo evening presented by MR3 Bartók Rádió's Klasszikus és Jazz, at the Márványterem of Magyar Rádió, Pollack Mihály tér, on Friday 22 November 2019. The first half gave the first performances of his piano arrangements of chamber sonatas by Georg Friedrich Händel and Nicola Francesco Haym; the second, his own works.

The programme ran: the overture to Händel's Ode for St Cecilia's Day, four Haym sonatas from the set of six, two Händel sonatas from op. 1, then Flower Song, Etude, three folk-song arrangements — A Vidróczky híres nyája, Szól a kakas már, Tavaszi szél vizet áraszt — and October 9th, Sámuel and Jesse's Jump. The encore was the closing chorus from Händel's Tamerlano. Bartók Rádió broadcast the evening on 7 November 2020.

The words of Flower Song, written for his daughter when she was one year old, were read at the concert by his daughter herself.

A separate Klasszikus és jazz recital is held in the Hungarian National Audiovisual Archive: Mozart's C minor Fantasia, Ravel's Menuet sur le nom de Haydn, Bartók's Allegro Barbaro and Bach's sixth solo suite in D minor, followed by Spanyol capriccio, Egyszer Skóciában, Harlemi teadélután, Szólj ha lusta volnék!, Süss fel nap! and Szeretlek, ő szintén.

A film by the artist and director Ladislav Pálmai, carrying Grego's Flower Song — the piece written for his daughter when she was one — as its music.

Pálmai travelled across Europe asking people in the street to perform two movements from the international semaphore alphabet in front of his camera: N and D, for nuclear disarmament, the two letters that make up the peace symbol. The footage became a music-video installation shown in a gallery in Slovakia, on the Ukrainian border.

The same year Pálmai also filmed a short clip of one of the Händel transcriptions.

Európa dal — written for Hungary's accession to the European Union and recorded with Éliás Jr. Originally hosted at europaiunio.hu; the recording is in the player above.

P és P, Puskás és Pelé — music and words by Grego, sung by Péter Szolnoki of Bon-Bon. A samba, on the 2015 album Dalok kicsiknek, nagyoknak for the Ovi-Foci Alapítvány.

The song came from a photograph taken in Madrid on 17 June 1959, after a Real Madrid–Santos friendly that Madrid won 5–3, and from Jenő Buzánszky's memories of Puskás — the two figures in the picture forming the shape of a heart. Its refrain asks for humour and always freedom, not only on the two birthdays, 1 April and 23 October.

For the same foundation he wrote two songs for children, of which Nagy lépés kis cipőben became the official one.

IMA — Hebrew Alphabet Prayer, subtitled Remember 7 October. Directed by András Fésős, camera and edit by Richárd Kiss, sung by Szonja Szirmai, sound mix by Tamás Zányi, composed and performed on piano by Grego — a prayer he wrote in Hebrew in memory of the victims of the attacks of 7 October.

A competition film in the music-video category at the 45th Magyar Filmszemle, Corvin Mozi, Budapest, 2 to 8 February 2026, screened on 4 February in the Latabár terem. Finalist at the Near Nazareth Festival 2026, whose certificate names cooperation and the strengthening of friendship and understanding between nations. Honourable mention at the Europe Music Video Awards 2026.

Árva, directed by László Nemes and shown at Venice, also carries his music, and screened at the same Filmszemle.

Hungarians premiered at the Danube Institute on 5 May 2026. He speaks in it about living in Hungary as a Jewish person, and performs the Hebrew prayer.

The Mád Man / A Mádi férfi, a musical documentary co-directed with István Jávor — Jávor on camera, Grego on music — about the Catholic caretaker of Jewish heritage in Hungary.

Solo concerts, new compositions including choral and orchestral works, novel piano arrangements of Händel, Haym and Mozart, art photography shown in galleries with a grand piano on site, and the musical documentary The Mád Man with the director István Jávor.

Starting from Winter 2025, playing an hour on the last Wednesdays of every month at the invitation of MagnetBank, in their prestigious central branch in the Pallavicini Palace of Budapest.