GABRIELLA SZABO
PIANIST,
BERGEN, NORWAY
Gabriella Eszter Szabó was born on 25th of May 1979 in Komló (a small town in South – Hungary). She grew up in a musician family: her parents are conductors of different well-known choirs and her brother is a famous jazz pianist.
She moved to Pécs where she started to play piano at the age of 8. Her teacher, Mária Apagyi, helped her to develop in classical music, improvisation skills and creativity. She played at several festivals, piano competitions.
In 1997 she performed first the famous hungarian contemporary composer, Miklós Kocsár’s series “Hangportrék” in the hall of the Music Academy of Budapest.
She continued her education at Faculty of Music at University of Pécs, where she studied plenty of useful techniques from Tünde Kiss, Mária Apagyi, Aurél Tillai, László Kircsi, László Gönczy, László Vidovszky, István Hegyi, Tamás Lakner, István Várdai. During the study years she became the official accompanist of the musical department working with singers, choirs, orchestras, different instrument players at rehearsals and concerts too.
In the meantime she started to work on luxury ships on the river Danube. With the „two singers- one pianist” group she played concerts in many different genres at the Nautilus and Austrian River Cruise companies for five years.
She was admitted as a piano teacher to Lauder Javne music school in Budapest in 2005, where she taught classical pieces and the basics of improvisation and composition for two years.
Later, from 2007 she started to work at Faculty of Music at János Kodolányi College where she was responsible for the piano studies, music history and contemporary arts too.
Gabriella has been open-minded for every music styles and genres of high standard since she was a child, therefore plenty of influences can be found in her music.
She has founded her own music group Miegymás in 2009, where she has been pianist, composer and manager. They played Gabriella’s own pieces, mixing the elements of jazz, classical and folk music. Their music is a so-called „cross-over” style. They played many successful concerts in Budapest, in the countryside, in Vienna and in Transylvania as well.
The result of their long and persistent work is a CD recording, „Pieces of a mosaique”, which has been published in 2011 by NarRator.
Gabriella has moved to Bergen (Norway) in 2012. She worked as a private piano teacher first and continued composing too. She is often invited to play in different projects with choirs, dancers and instrument players. She has been working at Bergen Kulturskole for 2 years as a piano teacher and accompanist.