Marta Teli

Márta Téli represents those fortunate few for whom artistic talent has always found a range of different channels. She has done a lot of things and has always looked for a variety of ways to talk to people. Nevertheless these activities are all related to two major fields of art: music and theatre.Márta is a translator, producer, actress and singer. Plays by Neil Simon, Ken Ludwig, Marshall Karp and others have been translated by her and run throughout Hungary. Through her theatre agency she is active in introducing and translating mostly American and British plays. In 1995 she produced and played in a theatre adaptation of Sleeping Beauty for children, which was also shown on Hungarian TV at Christmas that year. She has also played several roles in English at the Merlin Theatre in Budapest with American and British actors. Her last show was Arnold Wesker – Benjamin Till’s one woman musical ’Letter to a Daughter’ in June 2000.From 1996 to 1998 she organised Jazz Jam, an international jazz festival held in Budapest’s beautiful castle district. Musicians including Mike Stern, Trilok Gurtu, Andy Summers, Larry Coryell, Tony Lakatos, the Colosseum, the Attila László Band and Márta’s own band all performed. Márta’s reason for having organised Jazz Jam is very simple and clear-cut, ”One of my goals is to bring people together from all over the world in music and art.”Singing has been part of her life from a very early age. ”When I was a child I always sang. I would sing at home, in the street, in the kindergarten and on the bus. There was simply no place which wasn't good enough to sing in. I sang songs I heard on the radio, or folk songs I had learnt from my parents. After some time, when I got on the bus with my mother on the way to the kindergarten and back, people recognized me and asked me to sing to them. One day I thought I would ask the bus driver to give me his lunch in exchange for a song. And he did. So it was my first ’concert’ which earned me a living .”This initial enthusiasm paid off years later when Márta attended both the Budapest University of Performing Arts and the Béla Bartók Jazz Conservatory. Upon graduating she worked at the Szolnok Szigligeti Theatre in Hungary, where she played in dramas, comedies and musicals. Theatre work however, didn't put an end to Márta’s singing ambitions. She continued to sing with her jazz band in clubs.One summer at a jazz camp she met Richard Dunscomb, a big band conductor from Purdue University. Richard liked Márta’s singing so much that he suggested that she should make a demo tape and send it to different music schools in the States and apply for scholarship. He supported Márta by giving her a written recommendation. ”Richard’s suggestion came as a surprise to me. At that time our country was practically cut off from the world, and I had never thought of going to the States before. It sounded a bit unrealistic then. However, it was exciting at the same time to think about going to the homeland of jazz music”, she recalls.She made the demo tape and sent it to different places in the US and scholarship offers started to trickle in from schools and summer jazz camps. Márta initially attended the Jamey Abersold’s Jazz Camp at the same time as being granted a full tuition scholarship at Berkelee College of Music in Boston. She graduated one semester earlier than planned and was awarded a cum laude performance diploma and is the only Hungarian singer who has a diploma from Berkelee.After leaving the college, she moved to New York for practical training, but her marital status had a say in the length of her stay there. After six months she moved back home to her husband. Nevertheless, the time spent in The Big Apple had a very powerful influence on her life. ”Those four and a half years I spent in the States taught me lots of things about music, people, their backgrounds, friendship and life. This is inevitable unless you’re not open enough to see things and learn from them.”Upon returning to Hungary Márta was ready to make a jazz album but when she set out to find a record company she was continually turned down. It wasn’t her voice that they didn’t like but the type of music. Most companies believed it wouldn’t sell and asked for pop music so Márta compiled a huge collection of material and presented it to them. They then found it too good for the pop audience and suggested she should rap instead.In the end she decided to find her own way to her recording debut. She found a brewery to sponsor the production of her first record, Quiet Motion, released in November 1994. Featuring a collection of jazz standards, it has gained international recognition without contracts with major record labels. "It was strange to learn from a friend living in L.A. that my album was played by a jazz radio station. I was also told that an Italian radio station in New York also played it.”In the meantime Márta continued to play concerts in Budapest and throughout Hungary. She continued until she felt she might need a different direction to find new challenges for her creativity. ”There was a point when I needed to think over which way to go. I thought New York would be an ideal place to give me direction. I spent a month there and it was then that I decided to make a pop album with an American producer and an engineer” , she recalls.Things seemed to work out when an American businessman introduced her album to the American musician-producer, John Regan, who has worked with stars such as Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Peter Frampton. John found Márta’s performance very convincing and decided to come to Hungary with Harvey Jay Goldberg, a sound engineer for musicians such as Tony Braxton, B.B. King, Bryan Adams, UB40, McCoy Tyner and Dizzy Gillespie. He was also sound engineer for the movie Blues Brothers 2000.John and Harvey made her second album, Változó kék (Changing Blue in English) with songs written by Peter Frampton, Neil Sedaka, Mike Reid and Kit Hain as well as songs written in Hungarian by Hungarian songwriters including Tamás Somló, Péter Gerendás, Jackie Orszáczky, István Lerch and Márta. The record features well-known Hungarian musicians such as János Solti, Tibor Tátrai, Béla Lattman, Gyula Csepregi, Kornél Horváth, just to name a few. This was the first time American producers worked on a Hungarian record. It wasn’t something accidental and from the outset Márta was very conscious about the final results. "It was extremely important for me to make an album which had very high artistic and musical quality. I didn’t want to settle for anything less than that. We spent a month working very hard in the studio until the English and the Hungarian versions of the songs were perfectly completed.”The album is about love and communication between men and women. Surprisingly the reaction of Hungarian record companies was the same as before when it came to releasing the album. They said the material was too sophisticated for the Hungarian audience and turned Márta down again. Without the financial help of two companies she wouldn't have been able to release the album in November 1997. In spite of failing to make Hungarian record labels share her understanding of music and art she is positive about the future, ”I won’t give up because there is no such thing as ’too good’ to sell .” The album was highly acclaimed judging by the reaction to the successful concert Márta gave at the International Buda Stage, Budapest. In late November 1998 she released a new jazz CD entitled Smiling, which again contained a collection of jazz standards, also with corporate financial support. ”Isn’t it a meaningful coincidence that all my albums come out by Christmas?”, she wonders. The hope is always that people find that music and art inseparably constitute the message that Márta would like to communicate to them. The record also features well-known Hungarian jazz musicians including Elemér Balázs, József Barcza Horváth, István Fekete, Gábor Juhász and Béla Szakcsi Lakatos jr.Keeping the Christmas tradition a new CD was released in November 2000 entitled Follow Your Dreams, where Márta performs with Gábor Winand, a Hungarian jazz musician and vocalist. This features traditional and modern jazz standards with contemporary arrangements.In early 2005 she released her latest CD, Árnyékból fény (Light from Shadow in English). This record combines elements of world music, Hungarian folk and pop and is aimed a wider audience. The material was written by Márta with local songwriters Péter Pejtsik, Krisztián Szakos and Csaba Vedres. Márta wrote most of the lyrics as well as some of the music. “It was great to work with Péter Pejtsik. He’s an excellent composer, can arrange music well and is also a kind and open person. Although I published the music myself, the songs are often played on Klub Rádió, a local radio station.”Márta goes on to say she is planning to produce a new maxi CD with 4 songs. This will be the first of a trilogy in this format. The producer is Pierrot, a prominent Hungarian musician and music promoter and Krisztián Szakos is again the musical arranger. ”We made cover versions of popular international 70s and 80s hits in a very contemporary way and I sing in English. While keeping my jazz principles, Pierrot took me to a different dimension with a range or styles I never thought I possessed. It’s such a coincidence that it will be released again in November!”