Gabor Szabo
Dreams

Gabor Szabo, born in 1936, was a virtuoso guitarist of Hungarian origin who emigrated with his family to California in 1956. His guitar style primarily drew on folk and Central European tradition, yet this did not prevent him from collaborating during the '60s with various giants of American jazz. During that decade, Impulse released several albums under his name or credited to his quintet comprising pianist Gary McFarland, Italian-American cellist George Ricci, bassist Luois Kabok, another Hungarian refugee, and percussionist Hal Gordon.

The recordings for Impulse are closer to free jazz than to folk, although the Magyar musical influences position them towards an atypical and extremely original fusion for the time. His collaborations with the prestigious classical and blues guitarist Jimmy Stewart, who had a history of almost teaching Eric Clapton and George Harrison, date back to the second half of the '60s. With the solo album "Dreams" from 1968, Szabo launched his own record label, Skye, founded in New York together with Gary McFarland and Cal Tjader. Skye Records would release a catalog predominantly fusion-oriented and free jazz.

Old companions collaborated on the album "Dreams": McFarland, Stewart, Ricci, Gordon, Kabor, with the addition of a brass section, composed of three horn players, a violinist, and a drummer; a mysterious album, which for years remained decidedly underground, it is a colorful container of musical references among the most disparate, arranged in an extremely original style by Szabo's guitar. From two Spanish folk tracks originally signed by the famous guitarist De Falla, it transitions to influences from the Greek tradition of the beautiful Galatea's Guitar, a mystical and aseptic composition by Gabor Szabo himself. From the jazz-crossover of Half The Day Is Night to the Gypsy music of The Fortune Teller, with ample use of feedback between the two guitars at play; from the cover Ferris Wheel by Donovan, which becomes for the occasion a melancholic oriented-fusion, to the post-bee-bop with an ethereal intro of The Lady In The Moon.

The record found little space within the "fusion genre" charts for years, despite remaining one of the most successful results of this particular musical trend, with only Santana noticing it a few years later. The continuation of this artist's career is entirely focused on blending various "guitar styles" with Indian, Aboriginal, and African sounds, after an infinite number of always exciting live performances and several new record productions not only for his Skye Records, Szabo returned to Hungary at the end of the '70s only to come back to the USA in 1982, the same year of his death.