Zucker-Gyárfás Duo

American multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Zucker (piano, synth, voice) and Hungarian drummer Attila Gyárfás have been making music since they met in 2017 in New York. Living in separate continents, Zucker and Gyárfás have developed the unique synergy of their wide-ranging and ambitious duo project playing in short spans of a week or two at a time on the road in diverse venues — from candle-lit jazz clubs in Edinburgh and Istanbul to an electronic music venue built out of repurposed car speakers in Timişoara; from an art gallery in London to a sculpture park outside of Cluj-Napoca. Performing sometimes with a grand piano and a high-fi sound system, but sometimes with a skeletal drum kit, a synthesizer, and a single speaker, the duo is at home within a remarkable range of sounds: passages of complex contrapuntal chamber music are followed by noisy improvised soundscapes punctuated by Gyárfás’s gong synthesizer, and followed again by Zucker’s plaintive lullabies.

Their debut record Cities and Deserts was released in 2022 on Hunnia Records. Avant Music News described it as “an effort that is offbeat, avant-garde, and technical, while still pulling at the emotions...Two thumbs up and highly recommended.” Cities and Deserts was voted among the top Hungarian jazz records of 2022 in the Jazz.Hu readers poll.

The duo has performed in recent years in 14 countries around the world.

photo: Oskar Upenieks