Irén Lovász is a Hungarianfolk singer and ethnographer. She has a total of 12 albums to her credit, including on the Erdenklang Music, CC'nC Records, Fono, and Hungaroton Classics labels as well as recent CDs on her own SIRENVOICES label. She is featured on several compilations, including on the HEARTS OF SPACE label, WARNER MUSIC France, Minos-EMI, and other world music compilations.
Music career
Her first solo CD, Világfa, appeared at the request of the Hungarian National Museum to be used as background music for the exclusive archeological exhibition of the Millennium of the Hungarian conquest. The music was created by László Hortobágyi. Her first solo CD in Germany, Rosebuds in a Stoneyard, received the German Critics' Award in the genre folk/world music. She was also the soloist in Early Music groups and also sang contemporary music and worked with jazz musicians. She toured in Europe with the Berlin-based jazz guitarist, Ferenc Snétberger.. She was also a member of the Gayan Uttejak Orchestra directed by László Hortobágyi. An Estonian contemporary composer, Peeter Vähi wrote new music for her voice in which she sings early medievalTibetan and Sanskrit language texts: Supreme Silence. From 1998 until 2003, she worked with the Makám group. Their project is based on ancient Hungarian folk songs, and the authentic performance of these with Irén's voice. However, it also conceives a new musical world by the composer, Zoltán Krulik, using the language of contemporary music, employing the style of ethno-jazz, and adopting different ethnic sounds and instruments of traditional cultures. Their collaborative CDs are: Skanzen 1999, 9 Colinda 2001, and Sindbad 2002. In 2000, she was invited as a vocal soloist by the Hungarian World Music orchestra. In 1999, she worked for some years with the Czech-Moravian-Slovak eclectic folk music group TEAGRASS. Their CD is titled: Wide is the Danube. Since 2001, she has been a member of the 'e-jam' project, which is a mobile formation consisting of varying European musicians and performing mainly in Austria. In 2001, she performed repeated sold-out concerts with a repertoire of Hungarian Renaissance music, songs and poems, with the classical lute player, István Kónya. In 2001, she began her next project, an acoustic duo with a contrabass player, Attila Lőrinszky. In 2003, she received The SINGER OF THE YEAR eMeRton AWARD in Hungary. In 2005, she founded a new band, and with them she made a new cd: Cloud doors. The new music is based on archaic Hungarian folk songs, sacred songs and medieval Gregorian chants. The style is ethno-jazz, worldmusic, crossover. In 2006, on her own new label she started to publish a new CD series on Healing Voices, which was also recommended by the Hungarian Association of Music Therapists: Sacred Voice,, Inner Voice,. In 2008, she accomplished a crossover project with renown musicians of varied musical backgrounds, like Kornél Horváth, Béla Ágoston and István Győri, Zsolt Szabó. The music is based on Hungarian Renaissance love poetry, folksongs and dance tunes of the 16-18th centuries. The CD is titled: Flower in Love, In 2009 she made a third, revised, remixed edition of her famous Világfa CD with László Hortobágyi : Világfa From 2009 to the present she has been leading a weekly therapeutic singing circle in the center of Budapest aimed at healing, communion and personal expression, all in line with her HEALING VOICES album series concept.
