by Gábor Bihari
January 2, 2009

GHYMES: 25th Anniversary / Album Debut Concert of Latest Release Titled “Álombálom”
Venue: Budapest Sports Arena (Papp László Budapest Sportaréna)

Time: 8 PM, January 10th, 2009

Special guests: Sándor Fábry comedian, the Honvéd Táncszínház (Honvéd Dance Theatre Company, choreographer: Zoltán Zsuráfszky) and the Budapesti Ifjúsági Kórus (Budapest Youth Choir, conductor: Ágnes Gerenday).

For those of you who like creative combinations of folk, rock, jazz, performed with serious guts, Ghymes offers quite a show that you shouldn’t miss.

25 years might sound like an awful long time. Most people associate a 25th anniversary concert with dinosaur bands riding on past fame, counting on people buying tickets out of pure nostalgia.

But Ghymes is truly different.

Multiple award-, gold- and platinum record-winning lineup as they are, they really mean it! And they mean to renew themselves and their music with every album they release. If only we look at their career journey: starting out as an authentic Hungarian folk band in then Czechoslovakia, then slowly expanding their horizons to include elements of jazz, rock, and the folk music of other ethnic groups from Central-Eastern Europe –- we realize that it probably took quite some courage to take those wild turns.

The result is dazzling, creative, inspiring, uplifting. And we haven’t even mentioned their lyrics, which is a true loss for non-Hungarian speakers, yet it’s still worth checking them out, as the music alone is strong enough to get the message across.

Let’s face it, few of us would at first glance imagine that a 25 year old band can actually offer continuous stimulus. Ghymes does.