Concertmaster Is Exploring New Frontiers

On his new album,violinist Ferenc Illenyi ditches classical repertoire (sort of) in favor of Gypsy jazz

Cutting an album of Gypsy jazz may not seem like the obvious choice for the concertmaster of the Houston Chamber Symphony and a distinguished member of the Houston Symphony Orchestra. But to hear violinist Ferenc Illenyi tell it, the decision to eschew his classical repertoire to make Gypsy Dream (Mesa/Blue Moon) was a no brainer.

“I would never record the standard repertoire in this age,” Illenyi says, during a phone call from his home. “It’s impossible to beat the best recordings because everything has been recorded a million times in the classical world.”

Raised in Hungary, Illenyi’s musical upbringing had little to do with the music of Django Reinhart and Stephane Grappelli. “My dad was a classical violinist and he shielded us from it because he thought that anything other than classical wasn’t working,” Illenyi explains.

Still, Illenyi says, he encountered the music of the Romani people in the restaurants and cafes of Budapest. “It was looked upon as a really low-class thing. It’s stupid, but that’s the culture,” he says. “When I came to America, I hadn’t heard Gypsy music forever. And then, somehow, I heard a recording and realized, ‘Wow, those guys are so much better than the classical players. The good ones are so much faster.’”

An expert sight reader who says he “doesn’t ever practice” his concert music at home, the real challenge for Illenyi was to teach himself how to play off the page. “Something happens to classical musicians when we’re trained,” Illenyi says. “Ninety-eight percent of us can only do what’s on the page. I’m trying really desperately to get away from that. Most of the Gypsy players, they can’t even read music, but they know hundreds of songs, sometimes over a thousand, and they’re forced to use their ears. Your brain functions differently.”

After diving into the jazz scene, Illenyi slowly became comfortable improvising in the new genre, and hooked up with several Houston musicians—among them bassist Chris Maresh, guitarist Erich Avinger, and pianist Andrew Lienhard—who round out the new album. If anything, the experience of playing Gypsy jazz has bolstered Illenyi’s view that classical violinists would do well to experiment with other forms of music.

“There’s something wrong with the way that classical music is being taught. The students are almost never forced to play anything by ear,” he says. “You’re given music and there’s a regimen as to how music should be learned. As a student gets better they’ll progress to harder and harder pieces, but never once in your training do you have to improvise something.”

Though Illenyi proves himself more than capable of holding his own on such classic Django jazz tunes as “Minor Swing,” heard on Gypsy Dream, he’s not the kind of player who is content to let himself get too comfortable. Of late, he’s been finding himself drawn to what many would consider a genre squarely at odds with classical music. “I really like American fiddle music—country and western and bluegrass,” he says. “I haven’t explored playing it much yet, and that would be something that is really not that hard to do when you’re classically trained. I could focus on the music itself. I like playing absolutely any kind of music.

“People really like when classical players venture out and try new things.”