Impérial Quartet – “Dunav Magika”

With its fifth album, Imperial Quartet continues its exploration of the folklore of Central Europe and the territories crossed by the Danube. A cultural thread, the river becomes a symbol of circulation, encounters, and cultural mixing between East and West.

The quartet draws on popular traditions—Balkan, Hungarian, Gypsy, and klezmer music—to reveal their emotional depth and rhythmic richness. Modality, asymmetrical measures, and virtuosity intertwine in a free style of writing nourished by improvisation. The melodies are transformed, digested, and reinvented in a resolutely contemporary form.

A veritable laboratory of sound and rhythmic experimentation, the group composes and arranges collectively, in search of organic sound material. Alternating between introspective softness and powerful bursts of energy, Dunav Magika is a poetic and magical journey of sound, where jazz dialogues with the living memory of European cultures.