Mátyás is a 35-year-old man in command of a full range of creative talents – he appreciates all the legendary blues harp masters who inspired him, but beside being faithful to traditional roots, he builds his own contemporary style which will probably open a new chapter in harmonica playing – and not only in the blues genre alone. Mátyás is out touring and performing, from one country to another and proving, festival after festival, that he is not only a true harmonica talent, but a singer, a songwriter and an amazing showman as well.
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Mátyás is a 35-year-old man in command of a full range of creative talents – he appreciates all the legendary blues harp masters who inspired him, but beside being faithful to traditional roots, he builds his own contemporary style which will probably open a new chapter in harmonica playing – and not only in the blues genre alone. Mátyás is out touring and performing, from one country to another and proving, festival after festival, that he is not only a true harmonica talent, but a singer, a songwriter and an amazing showman as well.
He started playing the harmonica at the age of 15, when he listened to a rare recording of the late Sonny Boy Williamson. In 1995 he founded his first band, the Blues Fools. The band’s reputation quickly grew, and the band became the most well-known Hungarian blues band on the European blues scene. During the 10 successful years together with his Blues Fools Mátyás recorded three albums with them.
Mátyás Pribojszki - Ripoff Raskolnikov
In January 2004 Mátyás invited some new, mostly jazz-influenced professional musicians to form the Mátyás Pribojszki Band. His purpose with this main project is to achieve progressive music goals with a multi-genre band in which each member has great experience. The last album, titled flavours (released in January 2005) contains entirely original contemporary compositions testify to the varied and accomplished art of Mátyás' quartet, together with their perception and mastery of other genres. For this album Mátyás specially invited three of his contemporary guitarist friends such as Ian Siegal (UK) and Mike Sponza (Italy).
The Mátyás Pribojszki band consists of harmonica, keyboards, double bass and drums – without a guitar originally in the quartet. Mátyás enjoys inviting great guitar players as special guests to join him for tours, as well. Besides his musician career, as a most amazing world-class jazz/blues harmonica performer, Mátyás is the official distributor of the best harmonica companies, the Hering, Syedel, Suzuki and dealer of the great Hohner harmonicas too! He has a nice webshop with all these great harmonica brands /harmonica.hu /On the other hand, he has dozens of young harmonica students in Hungary and Mátyás also the author of a Hungarian harmonica school-book for beginners, titled “Harp School”.
Both an accomplished blues guitar player and a prolific singer/songwriter, Austrian-based Ripoff Raskolnikov must be considered one of the most idiosyncratic figures on the European blues scene. Like thousands of his colleagues, he admires and reveres such blues greats as Blind Willie McTell, Skip James, Robert Johnson or John Lee Hooker.
On the other hand, and quite unlike most of his colleagues, he has no desire to imitate or copy them. Nor, for that matter, is he willing to remain within the boundaries of what is generally accepted as the blues. What does connect him to the aforementioned giants is his fully committed, unwavering integrity in exploring, and coming to terms with such human emotions as love, passion, desire, loss, pain, the quest of beauty, hunger for life, or fear of death.
Driven by such forces, Raskolnikov unleashes songs of powerful poetic and musical expression which, more often that not, defy stylistic categorization.
On stage, Ripoff Raskolnikov works mainly solo or as a duo with Venezuelan ace percussionist Ismael Barrios. He also does the occasional tour with his band including Szabolcs Nagy on piano, Robert Kepes on bass and Lajos Gyenge on drums, three excellent musicicians from Budapest/Hungary who worked on his latest, much-acclaimed album Everything is Temporary.
Whatever the line-up, Raskolnikov never fails to create an ambiance of poignant intensity. He is the sort of artist you like to watch as well as listen to. His stage charisma, his dry sense of humour and his highly
personal approach to the blues make him one of a kind.
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…shrink me down again