Istvan Medgyesi

Istvan is a solo multi-instrumentalist and is known for his soulful and always evolving live performances....If you like talented musicians palying good music, you'd do well by yourself to go see Istvan...For a short answer I'd say Istvan has his own brand of eclectic music. For the long one, I hear traces of Doc Watson, John Fahey, and various ethnic stylings intertwined in his performances. Istvan plays both the guitar and banjo during his live perfomances and he wields them with the fingers of a master picker... - North Coast Voice 5/20 - 6/10 2009 Vol. 9 Issue 8, pg.22

Meet Istvan: Fairport Harbor — by way of Cleveland Heights — multi-instrumentalist (guitar, banjo, auto-harp, and sitar) Istvan Medgyesi dabbles in a little bit of everything under the spacious umbrella of folk music. "I'm a very eclectic listener," he says. "Which has a big influence on the approaches I take when writing and performing."

Experimental Recordings: Friendly Experiments, a collection of tracks from a series of impromptu recording sessions, came out in 2007. Between performing and studying Hindustani classical music, Medgyesi is in the process of recording a new album, which he hopes to have finished by fall.

Purple Haze: Opening for Grateful Dead contemporaries the New Riders of the Purple Sage has been the highlight of Medgyesi's career so far. "It was pretty cool to share a stage with some of the musicians I grew up listening to," he says.

Why You Should Hear Him: On Friendly Experiments, Medgyesi channels everyone from Bob Dylan ("I Knew This Girl") to My Morning Jacket ("Morning, Morning"). He even comes close to achieving the droning nirvana of psych-rock guitar hero Ben Chasny's Six Organs of Admittance on "Truly We Dwell" and "The Lost Regions."

Where You Can Hear Him: istvanmedgyesi.bandcamp.com

Where You Can See Him: At the Grog Shop on April 10 and Beck Café on April 15. — Jeremy Willets
- Cleveland Scene