Pal Zoltan Illes Q&A

Your name: 

Pal Zoltan Illes.

Where are you from?

Budapest, Hungary.

Name of band:

pZi - Pal Zoltan Illes.

How would you describe yourself?

A multi-genre instrumental composer and producer on a personal crusade for instrumental music, and through his sounds on a crusade for higher morality, culture and the improvement of personal awareness by inspiring through story-telling in the purest language of music. You can expect a high variety in my music, which ranges from classical soundtrack music through electronica, chill, ethnic fusion to dnb and electronic poprock. Always melodic, clear, sometimes complex, sometimes simpler. My focus is to create somehow unique compositions forging from different traditions of music, telling stories, drawing diverse internal panoramas for the listener. 

Also I'm creating as many impulsive and effective videos for my music as possible, to further the expressive value of the instrumental tracks. I'm a highly social man who's very much interested in the reactions and feedback of the listeners, fans and fellow musicians about my music, and always ready to further the cause of similarly minded musicians and artistic, cultural causes.

Who are your main influences musically?

Jeremy Soule, Beethoven, Brahms, Vangelis, Vibrasphere, Inon Zur, Megadeth, The Sentenced, Iron Maiden, Front Line Assembly, Mike Oldfield.

What do you hope to achieve in music?

I'm aspiring to reach out for those who still prefer instrumental music and who love to hear stories unfolding through musical non-vocal means. Aspiring to provide a musical flag for the listeners to carry moral and cultural causes along the road. Aspiring to give his own share in keeping the cultural value of modern music in diversity, starting with strong roots in traditions and blending with new ideas, new currents from the big swirling pool of contemporary music. Intending to be a secure island of instrumental music paradise, continuously providing high value, culturally and humanly meaningful content, let it be music or videos for his music. In my opinion, a more educated, morally and culturally advanced society can be the only way to further evolve humanity.

What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?

The road I tread on is full of highlights for me, all and any of the positive feedback from any listener, fan or fellow artist who was moved or inspired by my music, let it be arriving to me on any media. My biggest highlight was receiving warm and very positive comments from seasoned composers or musicians whose words I highly appreciate as they themselves are bringing enormous cultural surplus to our sometimes starving world, which act of them is the biggest achievement I can imagine in a musician's life. This is what brings me forward to hone my skills, compose and produce new music and to try to reach out for even more listeners and at the same time to get to know more of those cultural treasures created by other artists.

And what’s the moment you want to forget?

Any failure or not so perfect step brought me to where I stand now, and all of those remind me of how I arrived here and why I should move forward. None of those moments I'd want to forget.

If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?

Ode To Hope - a classical/electronica cross-genre fusion track. It represents two of the strongest worlds I incorporate most often into my music: intensively composed, suggestive classical like music against modern popular elements of electronica and poprock with a positive, humanly clear message.

Where can we listen to it?

https://soundcloud.com/pal_zoltan_illes/pzi-ode-to-hope-classicalelectronic

Where can we find out more about your music?

Official site: http://www.p-z-i.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IllesPalZoltan

Twitter: https://twitter.com/illespal

youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/keveskeves

spotify: https://play.spotify.com/artist/65G8CunMcyAjK10qqSGjk3

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/pal-zoltan-illes/id842751023

GoogleMusic: https://play.google.com/store/music/artist/Pal_Zoltan_Illes?id=Acuqyzle3zn6rd3z7nadsctihly

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_srch_drd_B00J2IPGQE?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=Pal%20Zoltan%20Illes&index=digital-music&search-type=ss

BandCamp: http://palzoltanilles.bandcamp.com/

reverbnation: http://www.reverbnation.com/palzoltanilles

Anything else you’d like to say that I forgot to ask?

I'd like to give a personal shout-out for some of my fellow artists in no particular order: Gregory Blank, Massimo Ghianda, Almark, The Synesthesis, Dragon Rose, Foreign Technology, Jill Beaulieu. Also want to thank for the continuous support in no particular order: Evil Blacksheep, Zira, Kenny Darkreine, Sam Jones, Andy Museboat, Regina Horst, Steve Ness, 

Also here's a few playlists with a selection of my different genre tracks, you might want to consider to add:
https://soundcloud.com/pal_zoltan_illes/sets/compilation

Brian Kozaczek Q&A

Your name:

Brian Kozaczek.

Where are you from?

Westfield, Massachusetts, USA.

How would you describe yourself?

I would describe myself as a composer that searches to reveal musical forms while weaving and building dynamic musical movement. 

I use aesthetic materials such as intervals to create diversified unity. 

I like blurring and playing with texture, usually paired with rhythmic modulation, the multiplicity of events express many turns of the story but I feel texture (homophony, polyphony, hetrophony) is the defining element of the drammatic structure guiding it to one specific fate. I feel my best stories should have you cheering for a main character in the light of its sonic culture. 

Who are your main influences musically?

My influences; the usual suspects of earlier 20 century classical composers; Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Schoenberg etc.

And likewise throughout the various preceding musical epochs. I like gamelan music and much music of eastern tradition. I like electronic music, from minimal synth arppegiator, to musique concrete and aeliatoric format.  I like death metal, dubstep, I'm a fan of any pop songs that reveal a effective form and effect. 

What do you hope to achieve in music?

I hope I can leave a body of work that will serve as an autobiography of my life in the times struggles and joys of life. I hope that this particular langauge and culture of my invention serves a higher purpose in the lives and musical life and culture in the general domain of all humanity. 

I also hope that didactic inventiveness of my music looks to bend the ever increasing mastery and evolution that humans engage with musical instruments for. Getting all levels of people engaged in music making in a dialect that they recognize is inherent in their own time and social life and culture. 

What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?

I don't really have a career as of yet. I'm studying and building my portfolio in undergrad/grad composition track. 

Having several pieces rehearsed and performed is about all I ask for. 

And what’s the moment you want to forget?

It was disappointing hearing a professor, not comp but theory, say that it sounds as if they're rehearsing your piece with the music upside down. 

I could see what he was saying, but he's just too conservative to not be facetious. 

If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?

My most representative work as of yet would be 'Ancestral Dance' for solo piano.

This piece explores gestures idiomatic to different styles and meld together in a fantastic and frenetic story. A stoic nature is ultimately revealed and worked up to. 

It has an expanding cyclical form along with vigorous and even gentle turns of phrase that lead event to developmental sections. 

It has a couple anthem like textures that reveal the character being tested in the work. These worked out of the material and most of the piece was written backwards in a leading up to way. 

Where can we listen to it? 

http://soundcloud.com/brian-kozaczek/ancestral-dance/s-J0aqu

Where can we find out more about your music? 

Besides soundcloud I'm posting videos on you tube 

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU9Lq8hhlfsAp5XJKyy1_oA