Concert Halls

VI. Liszt Ferenc tér 8. Tel: (+36-1) 342-0179

The Academy of Music is located next to Andrássy út and Oktogon. Officially called the Ferenc Liszt College of Music Art, it was founded in 1875 and first presided over by the new institution's co-founder and eponym; its first managing director was the world famous composer Ferenc Erkel. The Academy today not only trains musicians to the highest standard, but it also functions as the centre of concert life in Budapest. The Art Nouveau edifice seen today was completed in 1907 featuring the richest interior decoration ever built in this style in the capital. Its large hall offers excellent acoustics for an audience of 1200; there is also a smaller concert hall with 400 seats. Even if you are not a big fan of classical music, it is worth buying a concert ticket just to admire the beautiful interior of these concert halls.

IX. Liliom u. 41. Tel: (+36-1) 215-1600

There is a tradition reaching back decades in Western Europe of settling artistic centers and artistic institutions in empty industrial buildings. The Trafó House of Contemporary Arts opened in 1998 as the first of this kind in Hungary.

Trafó is an institution, a building, a place, a medium, vibrating, an intellectual adventure, risk, possibility. A house which belongs to the contemporary arts. A place, where life speaks about dance, theater, visual arts, literature, music. A theater, which has no company, and where the viewer is co-equal with the created-an opportunity, as well as the necessity to relate in a creative way. A place where emotion is allowed more space than the usual alongside abstraction. A place, through which we can look out into the world.

The Trafó building, once the electrical transformer station for south Pest, was built in 1909 as a work in the industrial turn-of-the-century style. It was put to cultural use by a French anarchist artistic group at the beginning of the 90's, who discovered the building, abandoned for more than forty years. Performances and concerts followed one another for a summer, and for a time it functioned as a dedicated building. The Budapest City Council bought the building with leftover funds from the unrealized World Expo, so that the legal successor to the legendary Young Artists' Club (FMK), formerly on Andrassy út, could convert it into n suitable, multifunctional, well equipped contemporary arts center appropriate to the current day. The Trafó House of Contemporary Arts opened its gates during the 1998 Budapest Spring Festival with a piece by Yvette Bozsik.

Trafo's programs pay particular attention to variety of genres, the demands of quality, and internationality. The location for performance art programs is the Performing Hall.

The branch least established in tradition is contemporary dance. In this area our most important tasks are to show esthetic variety, and the differing dance languages. Besides this we turn special attention, from the perspective of the most recent dance history, to inviting significant works, companies, and performances as well. In selection of Hungarian and international programs, other than technical limitations, the only criterion is quality.

Budapest is a city with a great theatrical tradition, with some 20, the majority repertory theaters, and a number of small studio theaters. The Trafó theater programs are developed with this in mind. In arranging programs, the emphasis is in the first place on going beyond the language of classical theater, to renew it, to use the theater space and assets in a refreshing way, to present performances with visuality in the foreground.

Music is also represented in our programs on a monthly basis; apart from 1-2 monthly concerts we arrange two fixed festivals each year, not including the regular music programs of the Trafó Bar Tango, which take place after programs in the Performing Hall. Our two music festivals are the contemporary music program called Making New Waves and the From East of Eden, bringing together the representatives of renewal in electronic dance music and other modern music. These represent two main musical directions under Trafo's initiative. At Trafó we often bring into the program unspecified genres, and interdisciplinary programs, besides staging literary-inspired programs, and film or multimedia events.

Current trends and phenomena in progressive contemporary arts are shown in the Trafó Gallery.

IX. Komor Marcell sétány 1

XII. Jagelló út 1-3 Tel: (+36-1) 372-5700