Miki Birta & Friends
Country: Hungary
Miki Birta - guitar
Gergely Kolta - bass
Szil?rd Banai - drums
Zolt?n Zana - sax., EWI
Miki Birta jazz-fusion guitarist, bassist, composer, arranger, guitar and jazz music theory teacher at the Kodol?nyi J?nos University College.
Date and place of birth: March 16, 1970, Budapest, Hungary. He started learning to play the guitar when he was a child, at the age of 10. In 1996 he graduated from the Jazz Guitar Department of the Budapest College of Music. His teacher was Gyula Babos.
At first he was influenced by rock music, especially by the lead guitarist of AC/DC: Angus Young.
During the course of his studies he started to listen to other kinds of music as well: Al di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco DeLucia’s album from 1981, “Friday Night in San Francisco” had a profound impact on him – as it also had on other guitar players.
He heard about Allan Holdsworth and Scott Henderson for the first time at the age of 17, and this defined his studies and his later style for a long time. But not only guitar albums had an impact on him: one of the first saxophone jazz albums that he valued very much was Branford Marsalis’ Royal Garden Blues.
1987 His changed the tune on his instuments: E6, A5, D4, G3, C2, F1.
In 1992 he became christian in a Reform church, this changes his thinking basicly about the music and the world as well.
1998 His first album came out in'98 (Next Generation), which is a trio album. It is probably closest to Wayne Krantz’ music (see samples under the mp3 section).
1999 They record their first Hungarian funky evangelistic album ( Creed ) in English. Recordings in Hungary have successfully been finished; unfortunately, however, this is where it stands right now. The project is still waiting to be fully finished (see samples under the mp3 section).
2004 His second album came out in 2004 with the title “Hey Kids!” This time it’s a quartet project. Here he also uses acoustic instruments (see samples under the mp3 section).
His third album came out in 2009 with the title “Friends” This is also quartet album but this time with saxophone or ewi, drums, and bass the instruments. On this album he play guitar acoustic guitar and bass to for 5 songs.
Outside of his home country he has had a number of performances and tours in New York , Florida, Germany, Poland, England, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania, Austria, Ukraina and Italy.
Athome (and in Poland too) he performed in P?l Vasv?ri's project with Mike Stern, Dave Samuels, Paco Sery, Bernard Maseli
