Hungarian jazz prog outfit Mandoki Soulmates have signed to InsideOut Music and will reissue the band's latest album, Hungarian Pictures, later this year. The new version is a brand new visual album edition that includes a blu-ray with the visual album and additional material, as well as additional music, remixed and remastered.
Hungarian Pictures was originally released as a double set with Living In The Gap in 2019. The album is based on work mainman Leslie Mandoki did with early Soulmates collaborators Greg Lake and Jon Lord. The album is constructed as a suite, based on compositions and themes by Bartók, supplemented with the bands original songs. The album features contributions from Al Di Meola, Supertramp's John Helliwell
“For Bartók, diversity in culture creates enrichment,"says Mandoki. "He believed that it is precisely from these differences that art draws the strength that enables further development. He mixed sounds and traditional melodies from different regions of the Carpathian Plain in order to set an example against the burgeoning threat of National Socialism (Nazism) through the unifying aspects of music. That unifying impulse inspired Jon Lord, Greg Lake, and me.
"After completing our Mandoki Soulmates Wings Of Freedom tour through Europe, we received an invitation from the Grammy Organisation to give a concert in New York's Beacon Theater. The Soulmates show was a great success with an enthusiastic New York audience, standing ovations, and positive press reviews. For me, a former asylum seeker who over four decades ago fled from a communist dictatorship to freedom, this success in the “Land of the Free” is a very special moment."
Mandoki recently put together a global online concert performance of the suite, featuring an illustrious line-up of musicians that included Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, John Helliwell, Al Di Meola, Jesse Siebenberg (Supertramp), Tony Carey (Rainbow), Nick van Eede (Cutting Crew) and more.
You can watch a video trailer for the event below.
