Biography

„… I can't begin to describe the number of ways he can change his guitar's tone-colours - first it is sunny, then half-serious, half-mystifying, then full of innocent awe.”(The Flying Inkpot, Chia Han-Leon)

József Eötvös was born in Pécs in 1962. He graduated at the Franz Liszt College of Music in Weimar as the student of Roland Zimmer and studied the art of composing from Franz Just.

He regularly gives concerts in several countries of the world: he has played, among others, in Austria , the Czech Republic, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, Romania, Switzerland, Sweden, Slovakia, Lichtenstein, Japan and Singapore. He is invited to perform both solo concerts and orchestral concertos. He has made radio and television recordings both in his home land and abroad.

In his master courses, which sometimes concentrate on Baroque and chamber music, he carries out excellent music pedagogical activities. He is a regular jury member of international guitar competitions and the artistic leader of the International Guitar Festival in Esztergom and the Balatonfured International Guitar Festival. In his concerts, besides his own masterpieces and arrangements, the popularization of 20th century and contemporary Hungarian music plays an important role. (Among others: the works of Barna Kováts, Ferenc Farkas, Máté Hollós and Iván Madarász.) .

His arrangements are musical curiosities which are played on this instrument only by him in the whole wide world. His arrangement of Bach's Goldberg Variations is regarded by critics as the arrangement of the century. Following this success, he produced other arrangements as well, such as Bach's lute works (Chanterelle), Chopin's piano pieces 1 - 2 (Professional Music Press - Poland and Gendai Guitar - Japan ), Brahms's 21 Hungarian Dances (MelBay) and J. S. Bach The Art of Fugue.