The good news first: the world keeps turning. The hr big band is still playing. Tony Lakatos stays in Frankfurt. And he won't stop making music. Now the bad news: The Frankfurt big band has to find a new tenor player for its saxophone setting. She also has to find someone who can play solo. In addition, she has to find someone who fits into the collective of individualists. Then it should be one where everyone is happy when they only see him, let alone when he blows the horn. Because then everyone knows that the walls will shake and the audience will freak out. And last but not least: It should be someone who can play everything, can play well, exceptionally well, fantastic. And improvise. Like Tony Lakatos.

The manager of the hr big band, Olaf Stötzler, is not to be envied. He will know: everyone can be replaced, but geniuses cannot. If Lakatos leaves, all you can do is try to fill the void. Everyone who knows him will go into raptures. The recently published biography about him by Rainer Erd, “Just don't say artists to me”, provides information about this. A book full of declarations of love and yet no hagiography. The musician himself resists worship with every fiber. In everyday life, beyond the stage, he always stays cool. Why doesn't he want to be called an artist? Why doesn't he recognize what a great musician he is - with his own tone, his own style, his own character? Is it flirtatious when he rejects the decorative epithets for his game?

He also remembers a story told by Al Foster, once Miles Davis' drummer.

Foster was once on tour in Japan with Herbie Hancock's band, which also included tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker, who died much too early.

One night there is a knock on Foster's hotel room door.

Michael Brecker stands there and asks: “Al, you played with Dexter Gordon, with Stan Getz, with Stanley Turrentine, with Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis, with the greatest in jazz history.

Tell me, we're now on tour together, can I even play jazz? "

Appreciated everywhere

Tony Lakatos tells the story, adding, “No matter where you are, who you play with, you are never safe. If you are sure about your status and your music, then something is wrong. ”He has that in common with many great artists. As self-confident as they may appear, they secretly measure themselves against their peers, and really only find real satisfaction in the recognition of valued colleagues.

It is therefore not surprising when Lakatos mentions a tour in an American all-star band with pianist Joanne Brackeen, bassist Cecil McBee and Al Foster on drums at the end of the nineties as a highlight in his career, which is rich in highlights, and he also met with a little one With a wink, one is still surprised today: “And I went on a tour with these musicians. That was a very important moment for me. I learned so much from these people. It was like studying at a music college for twenty years. "

Lakatos is held in high esteem everywhere, in his home country Hungary, where his career began with the cornerstones of his father playing csárdás, and in Germany, where he has been a freelance jazz musician since the early 1980s and a member of the hr Big band has become at home.

Of course also in New York, where he lived for a while in the nineties, belonged to the inner circle of the jazz community, made considerable recordings, enjoyed performing over and over again, but never found his fulfillment.

“I was happy to be there, but I was wondering whether jazz is really everything in life.

I realized that there are other important things too, such as family. "

It was probably due to other circumstances that the musician, who like no one else had the artistic stuff to achieve lasting success in the motherland of jazz, has been musically active in Frankfurt for a long time.

As much as he enjoyed the life of a free musician, he appreciates that a permanent contract with a public service broadcaster has relieved him of a few worries.

In addition, they were always generous with the star without any airs.

He could always accept free gigs.

That also gives hope for the future.

When he appears with the hr big band for the last time this Thursday and Friday, that doesn't mean a standstill for him.

You will soon be able to hear him again.

In the jazz cellar.

Because the lances are still being broken there.

Under the title “Goodbye Tony”, Tony Lakatos will perform on Thursday, October 14th and Friday, October 15th, from 6pm and 8pm together with the hr big band in the broadcasting hall of the Hessischer Rundfunk, Bertramstraße 8, in Frankfurt on.