The diverse elements of his wide-ranging professional career nevertheless correlate with one another, mutually presuppose each other, and point in the same direction. His work as a performing artist – the time spent on stage, the experience and artistic material gained on the concert platform – is organically connected to his activity as a collector, arranger, creator, and interpreter of folk music; and to his pedagogical and institution-building work at the basic, intermediate, and higher levels of arts education, to his educational-strategic innovations, and to his inner drive for renewing and professionally developing artistic instruction. In all of this, the seemingly separate major musical domains also become interconnected: the mutually enriching unity of classical music and folk music comes into being. Experience gained in one field is put to use in the other, and vice versa; the musicality developed here becomes the foundation of “good practice” there, bearing fruitful results. Moreover, this process integrates neighbouring artistic fields as well – dance, literature, and theatre. Connected to this is adult education, non-formal arts education, and the amateur arts movement. Part of this process is also the undertaking of public-cultural and educational tasks, representing Hungarian cultural values and the traditions of national minority communities.
He has been connected to the adult-education branches of music and dance for nearly two decades. Through courses and higher-level training programmes, he has taught and examined several generations of choir conductors, folk-song ensemble leaders, children’s and folk-dance educators, and choreographers across the country (Sárospatak, Győr, Székesfehérvár, Zsámbék, Tata, Budapest), as well as beyond the borders, in Vojvodina and Upper Hungary (Felvidék). He entered basic-level music-school education in Budakalász as the founder of the school, and intermediate-level music education in Vác as the founder of the department. At the same time as the establishment of the Kalász School of Arts, he completed the Postgraduate Programme in Public Education Management at the Department of Economics of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, where he earned his diploma in 1999. The administrative, labour-law, pedagogical, and public-education / arts-education management knowledge acquired there – building on what he had learned at the Teacher Training Faculty of Janus Pannonius University in Pécs – proved decisive in enabling him, alongside his career as a musician, to take on school leadership and pedagogical management. The founding of the school was for him a difficult yet uplifting and exceptionally fruitful period: shaping the institution’s uniqueness; creating, uniting, and leading a teaching staff capable of extraordinary achievements; establishing departments; acquiring high-quality instruments; achieving efficiency in grant-writing; and developing a successful strategy for securing an independent building. These experiences played a determining role when he was entrusted with the establishment and leadership of an integrated educational and public-cultural institution in Budakalász – the Kós Károly General Cultural Centre – between 2008 and 2011. Designing the institution’s complex structural framework and creating the more than seven hundred pages of foundational documents (Organisational and Operational Regulations, Pedagogical Programme, Quality-Management Programme, etc.) required great care, patience, and stamina amid continuous restructuring efforts by the maintainer. In addition, he delivered lectures at the Fővárosi Pedagógiai Intézet (Budapest Educational Institute), at the Conference on Arts Education in Sárospatak, at the Óbuda Folk-Music School, and at the Budapest Teacher Training College. He has served on numerous occasions as a jury member, jury president, participant, mentor, and grant curator at folk-music and folk-dance qualification events, national arts, academic, and talent-search competitions.
Over the course of four decades of continuous activity, the Vujicsics Ensemble has represented the valuable traditions of its homeland in the domestic and international concert world with its performance and creative achievements, exerting a significant influence. Without claiming completeness:
1981: Valencia (Spain); 1982: Vienna Folk Festival (Austria); 1983: Roskilde Festival (Denmark); 1983, 1984: Kuwait; 1984: Jeunesses Musicales tour (Belgium); 1984: Concertgebouw Amsterdam (Netherlands); 1985: Mittagong Festival (Australia); 1987: San Sebastián (Spain); 1989: Brosella Folk Festival, Brussels (Belgium); 1989: WOMAD Festival, London (United Kingdom); 1989: Edinburgh Festival (United Kingdom); 1992, 1998: Avignon Festival (France); 1992, 1999, 2002: Saint Chartier Folk Festival (France); 1993: Skagen Festival (Denmark); 1994: San Giorgio a Liri (Italy); 1995: Okarina Etno Festival BLED, BOVEC, METLIKA, MURSKA SOBOTA (Slovenia); 1994, 1996, 2000: Nantes (France); 2001: Telemarkfestivalen (Norway); 2003: Lapidarium Warsaw (Poland); 2005: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade (Serbia); 2005: “Thirty Years of the Vujicsics Ensemble” Müpa, National Concert Hall; 2006: Belgrade Music Festival – BEMUS Kolarac Hall (Serbia); 2006: Festival of World Cultures – Dublin (Ireland); 2012: Bratislava KC Dunaj Cultural Centre (Slovakia).
Through his collecting, scientific, artistic, and educational work, the ensemble he has led for forty years has become a leading professional workshop of the folk music movement, one that has shaped the South Slavic folk music tradition of the Carpathian Basin into a shared cultural treasure, developed a unique sound world, and carried out diverse activities in the service of transmitting musical heritage. In doing so, it has strengthened the musical self-knowledge of Serbs and Croats in Hungary, and has given nationwide momentum to tradition preservation, institutional folk music education, and the spread of integrative arts education.
He served as reviewer for the upper-level folk music core curricula, and as lead expert for the curriculum program of elementary-level, music-school folk instrumental education and for the material of the upper-level professional exam. He is the author of the curriculum programs for the folk accordion and the renewed tambura majors introduced in the 2011–12 school year. His reviewer and lead expert work made him aware of the specific circumstance that, in the absence of higher-level professional training, the upper-level exam requirements (such as thesis writing) are excessive in the field of folk music, and also that the output and entry levels of the elementary and intermediate programs are not aligned. It became necessary to recognise the need for such alignment and for the establishment of a university-level department at the Academy of Music.
At the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, from 2003 – as a direct colleague of Rector András Batta and Department Head Pál Richter – he was a founding member of the working group preparing the establishment of the Folk Music Department, and from 2006 a member of the leadership of the specialisation. The most outstanding achievement of his professional career to date is that in 2007 the Folk Music Department began its operation at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. In developing the successful strategy that brought about this breakthrough of historic significance, in establishing the department, and in the accreditation of its specialisations, he played an initiating and decisive role as a direct colleague of Pál Richter and András Batta.
His four decades of activity – as a creative and performing artist, specialist educational organiser, and teacher – has in every respect contributed to the major international success of the táncház (dance house) movement in 2011, namely the inclusion of the Hungarian tradition-transmission model on UNESCO’s list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Among his students, the members of the ensemble Söndörgő have achieved outstanding success at both national and international levels. Their work is marked by prestigious concert-hall achievements (Queen Elizabeth Hall, Kings Place, Opéra de Lyon, Philharmonie Luxembourg, Wiener Konzerthaus, Bimhuis, Great Hall of the Liszt Academy), major festivals (Roskilde, Lowlands, TFF Rudolstadt, Vieilles Charrues, Budapest Spring Festival), and praise from authoritative global newspapers, professional journals and news sources (The Guardian, The Independent, Financial Times, BBC Radio, Songlines Magazine), as well as the Junior Prima Award. Their most recent album is ranked among the world’s ten best folk-music releases.
His current research focuses particularly on the publication and preparation of Béla Bartók’s early Serbian phonograph recordings, early-twentieth-century gramophone discs, and Tihamér Vujicsics’s collections – all indispensable source materials for musical public education and, above all, for teaching. Of outstanding importance among his plans is the acceleration of the programme-launch process based on the recently completed accreditation documentation for the folk accordion.
In 2013 he was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. Within the Academy’s Folk Art and Ethnography Section, as well as its Committee on Education, Training and Science, he provides substantial support for the renewal and development of art education. All this is further facilitated by the shared Kossuth Prize which, as leader of the Vujicsics Ensemble, he and his group were awarded in 2014.
[2014]