Jethro Tull Concert in Budapest

Jethro Tull will perform in Budapest again this year. The British giant of the progressive rock scene, founded 58 years ago, will perform at the Budapest Congress Center on August 23 as part of The Curiosity Tour.

The concert series will focus on their oeuvre spanning twenty-four albums from 1967 to the present, but special attention will also be paid to their latest album, Curious Ruminant, released last year - organizer Livesounds told MTI on Tuesday.

Led by flutist-singer Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull began performing regularly at the legendary Marquee Club in London in January 1968. By the end of the following year, they were playing in theaters and concert halls across Great Britain.

Now 78, Ian Anderson's band's style was developed from a unique blend of rock, jazz, Celtic and English folk music. The band has performed more than 3,000 times in forty countries around the world, selling around 60 million albums worldwide over the past 58 years, and has risen to become one of the most successful rock acts.

Jethro Tull resumed touring in 2017 after a five-year hiatus, with a new line-up that no longer includes founding member Martin Barre. The band now includes bassist David Goodier and keyboardist John O'Hara, who have been playing for two decades, along with guitarist Jack Clark and drummer Scott Hammond.

Ian Anderson wrote not only the vast majority of Jethro Tull's music, but also the lyrics himself. Perhaps the band's most successful album is Aqualung, released in 1971, which sold over seven million copies worldwide. Aqualung was made as a concept album, and its central theme is the relationship between religion and God.

"Aqualung is very important to me. The music balances between rock and acoustic sound, this is where I really showed myself as a singer-songwriter. I recorded the songs alone in the studio, the others played their parts on it later. It still sounds fresh today when I pick up a guitar for my own entertainment, I usually play something from that, Aqualung or Locomotive Breath for example," Ian Anderson said five years ago in an interview with MTI.

Jethro Tull's first concert in Hungary was in 1986, before the regime changes in Eastern Europe, and shortly afterwards they performed in what was then Czechoslovakia.

"We still have a serious fan base in the region today, and this was built during the Soviet era, when Western rock music meant a sense of freedom, a symbol of hope for the people living here. I know what a treasure it was in the sixties and seventies if someone had a Rolling Stones or Jethro Tull album," Ian Anderson said earlier.

Jethro Tull is giving its fourteenth concert in Hungary this year. For example, it performed at the second Sziget festival, i.e. Eurowoodstock, in August 1994, at the Gastroblues Festival in Paks in 2010, and in 2016 at the Kodály Center in Pécs with the Pannon Philharmonic. The frontman wrote the Jethro Tull song "Budapest" the morning after the 1986 performance in Hungary.

The band last performed in Hungary at the Erkel Theater last year, in April 2025.

Source: MTI.hu

Photo: Jethro Tull Facebook page