Erika Kertesz & David Reschofsky

May 09, 2007 08:00 am | I met them at Tajtékos napok café at the head of the restaurant-strewn Ráday utca on a slightly drizzly afternoon recently. In of one of those charming, low-slung, one-story survivors from the early 19th century, Tajtékos napok is cozy, intimate, the right setting for a relaxed interview.
An upright piano stands close to the small tables. Big posters of Louis Armstrong and other big jazz names are on one wall.

Running late after having fought and nearly succumbed to the Váci út rush hour traffic jam, I was a bit nervous about doing an interview with musicians who play a kind of music I know practically nothing about: jazz.

But my anxiety disappeared as soon as I met singer Erika Kertész and guitarist Jay Myerson, waiting patiently for me at a table half way between the front window and the piano, where they will soon appear in concert.

In retrospect, I realize that the calm and candor they exuded when I first saw them is characteristic of their music, as well. Kertész and Myerson do relaxed, moody arrangements of jazz standards, as well as jazz arrangements of pop music standards from the '70s, '80s and '90s.

It's a sound that's likely to appeal to a broad audience of music lovers - jazz aficionados, pop music fans, even classical music lovers who appreciate a fine voice - quite simply because Kertész's voice is so lovely, rich and expressive.

At 25, she's already got the stuff of a singer who could make her mark in the big time. Not that she's concerned about making it big. Her calm approach to life and music-making is more about enjoyment and fulfillment of musical dreams and desires than it is about success and recognition.

Born in Pécs and raised in Kaposvár, Kertész moved with her family to Budapest in 1989. At the music-specialist elementary school she took up piano at seven and then violin at about age nine, learning classical music through high school. She also sang in the school choir, a defining experience in her love of singing.

The music she grew up with at home, however, was not classical, but pop. Her interest in jazz led her to study jazz singing for several years with Tamás Berki.

She began to search for other musicians to work with, but found no one who was heading in the same direction, no one who was the true spark, the kindred spirit that musicians need so badly if they are to express themselves as musicians.

She hesitated. Maybe a career in music wasn't right for her after all? Enter Jay Myerson.

Thirty-five, long-haired, soft-spoken and ebulliently enthusiastic about his work with Kertész, Myerson is an English guitarist who had worked for six and a half years in Chicago and another five near San Diego, California.

He came to Budapest two years ago as part of a project for one of his CDs. He'd been a member of jazz bands and established his own recording studio in California, but was ready to move on to something new and explore the Europe he'd left behind but had never actually seen or experienced.

Intimidating

The jazz scene Jay found in Budapest was not only impressive; it was downright intimidating to the accomplished guitarist. Here were these Hungarians, not known in America, who were playing better and more authentic jazz than what he'd found in the music's country of origin.

What's more, the audience here was also much better than in America. These were not just consumers who treat the music as a commodity, but listeners who really appreciate and understand what the musicians are doing up there.

He met musicians and started playing with them, especially double bass player György Horváth. Like a lot of us long-term "visitors" to Hungary, he first only planned to stay here a little while, get his feet wet, then move on.

But that changed when he met Kertész through a mutual friend about a year ago. From the moment they started jamming together they both knew they'd found the right musical partner.

They began with the jazz standards. Things were going well. The repertory of songs grew quickly.

But Kertész had this desire to do something different, a bit unorthodox in the jazz world: to do the pop songs she'd loved since childhood and had grown up, but in a new form.

So one day she suggested they do their own arrangement of George Benson's pop classic Just the Two of Us. Myerson, a self-confessed former "jazz snob" (he's since become more open), was a bit taken aback. A pop song?

But he trusted her musical instinct and natural talent and decided to give it a go. He worked out the guitar charts and gave the song a bossa nova feel. And they both loved it.

That was the beginning of a string of arrangements of modern standards, which includes songs like Lisa Stansfield's The Real Thing and George Michael's Jesus to a Child, both of which appear on the demo CD they gave me to sample.

These form the core of a 12-song CD, which is in production now. They've laid down the basic tracks for five songs, - Kevin Shopland