Kornél Horváth

jazz musician

Kossuth Prize awarded jazz musician Kornél Horváth, became the percussionist of Trio Stendhal alongside László Dés and Ferenc Snétberger after the change of regime, which earned him fame all over Hungary. Today, he is a leading figure in Hungarian jazz life.

The first major milestone in Kornél's international career was his success at the 1998 Leipzig Jazz Festival with Zoltán Lantos' Mirrorworld Quartet. Since then, he does not only play in the ensembles of Hungarian celebrities such as Rudolf Tomsits, Mihály Borbély or Imre Kőszegi, but he is regularly invited abroad and has been touring with such impressive figures as Tony Lakatos, Al di Meola, Tommy Campbell and other celebrities on almost every continent.

In the 2000s he created tHUNder Duo with his colleague Gábor Dörnyei in London, where they released a DVD in 2011. Two renowned internet channels have also made concert and educational recordings with the duo, the American Drum Channel and Drumeo in Canada. His latest CD, Songs of Moment is a duo made with the Brazilian guitar-virtuoso Alegre Correau.

Kornél Horváth was born in 1957. He began his musical education as a flutist, and ventured onto percussion teaching himself. In 2004, he received The Knight’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit and was awarded Kossuth Prize in 2008. In 2016, the British RHYTHM Magazine named Kornél the world's best percussion artist.