Urgent by Christopher Robin Cox, Péter Ajtai, Attila Gyárfás

The train has left the station! The Skopje-Budapest trans-Balkan free-jazz railroad is in operation. First stop - ‘URGENT’.

Budapest based-American trombonist Christopher Cox, fronts this outstanding trio, featuring two of the mainstays of Hungarian creative jazz - Péter Ajtai and Attila Gyárfás - both accomplished "first call" improvisers. Meeting for an inaugural session on a dreadfully hot day in July 2023, at the popular venue Lumen Kávéző (where they could jam relatively undisturbed in the small theatre) the result was stunning! It sounded like they had played together for years. It felt that way too.
Recorded with nothing but a Zoom H5 handheld recorder, Cox independently released this spontaneous session, calling it Black Box.
This exiting trio's first PMGJazz release (and established label debut) is different. Whereas the first recording of this trio was a kind of happy accident, this one is not. They consciously decided to make another DIY recording. Approaching the session without much deliberation, they pierce the wall of silence with spontaneous angular attacks, filling the room with a natural sonic picture beautifully captured with just a pair of stereo microphones.


“The Cox / Ajtai / Gyárfás trio creates an authentic nexus of presence, true hand-wrought sound impression, during an era when many forms of attention are outsourced and cobbled from stray traces of the ether- in a way that might anticipate our field of diminished expectations. The truth is here; we move in concert together, and there’s no mistaking it with this kind of evidence- that it’s possible, even necessary and a reality that three musical forces can join in constructing something so elemental from the ground up- or that they can echolocate and find a map together that makes that kind of construction seem completely inevitable. I feel convinced that if you hear Péter’s timely, speaking resonance on bass, Attila’s completely dynamic and essential drum composition and Cox’ ability to both accompany beautifully and to speak the necessary truth on trombone- and hear them all in concert, as part of an integrated complete group statement, you’ll be brought into an Urgent truth about collective action and possibility. It’s a profound message at the core of much of this kind of expansive, brave and committed music, and to hear it delivered here with such fluidity, conviction and grace, as a deconstructed incantation to the moment / invoking the moment- is more than a pleasure; it’s a set of solutions, offered one after the other after the next. Cox has a rare, targeted way of hearing the presence of the instrument within an ensemble, one would have to witness this recording from multiple audible vantage points, over and over to fully appreciate this. And Ajtai is seemingly able to devise abstract anthems at will- tones that seem as if they’re more discovered than generated. And Gyárfás’ sensibility is similarly timeless, seems to have been pre-ordained and simultaneously completely of the moment. Together, they have created something- a shockingly beautiful, affirmative and lasting statement when we need it. ” - Josh Roseman

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