The Merlin Jazz Club ran from April 1991 to September 1994 inside the newly opened Merlin Theatre at Gerlóczy utca 4, and in those three years it brought Pat Metheny, Al di Meola and a roll-call of Hungarian jazz greats to a converted transformer hall near Deák tér. It ended not with the theatre but a dispute inside it — though jazz-flavoured nights returned to the building in the 2000s.
Opening night, April 1991
The Merlin opened on 10 April 1991, and jazz was there from the first evening: the Hungarian Theatre Lexicon records that the Merlin Cultural Centre “opened with a jazz club” in the municipality’s Gerlóczy utca building (Magyar Színházművészeti Lexikon). On the eve of the opening, pianist Béla Szakcsi Lakatos’s band played “within the framework of the Merlin Jazz Club”, according to a detailed 1994 account in Új Magyarország by the music journalist Béla Szilárd Jávorszky (“Merlin kontra Merlin”, 1994). The club was organised by the concert promoter András Drienyovszki, operating alongside — not as part of — Tamás Jordán’s theatre company.
Who played there
For a club that lived three years, the guest list was remarkable. Jávorszky’s 1994 article — the single richest surviving account, so the names rest on it — lists Pat Metheny, Al di Meola, Rick Margitza, Attila Zoller, Jiří Stivín, Zbigniew Namysłowski, Jasper van ‘t Hof and Krzysztof Ścierański among the international guests, organised “without separate subsidy”; di Meola, it notes, was a frequent visitor. The house side was just as strong: Szakcsi Lakatos, Gábor Gadó, Csaba Deseő, Gyula Babos and Balázs Berkes appear among the members.
One night survives as more than a listing: the pianist György Szabados played a solo concert at the club on 22 September 1991, and the recording is preserved in his online audio archive (szabados archive). The musicians’ own verdicts, quoted in the 1994 piece, explain the club’s standing: Szakcsi Lakatos called it “Budapest’s only representative jazz club”, and Szabados said the city had seen nothing so well organised and well loved “since the legendary Dália club”.
Why the jazz club ended in 1994
The club did not fade; it was evicted. Jávorszky’s article prints the termination letter from the theatre’s founding association, signed by Tamás Jordán: “from 15 September 1994 we cannot guarantee the operation of the Jazz Club.” Behind it lay a dispute between Drienyovszki’s club and Jordán’s theatre over space, noise and control — the article’s title, “Merlin versus Merlin”, says it plainly. Several musicians took the club’s side in print; the theatre carried on without it. This account rests on that one contemporaneous piece, but it quotes both parties directly, and we have found nothing that contradicts it.
Jazz after the jazz club
By the venue’s late-2000s era the dedicated jazz club was long gone, and the Merlin had rebranded itself as a broader theatre-club-café — its 2008 “about” page promises “greats of the domestic and international music scene, artistic, electronic and underground bands, DJs and events”, with no mention of a jazz club (the venue’s archived site, 2008). But jazz kept a foothold in the programme. The venue’s own resident-nights page from October 2008 lists Jazztalk, a Wednesday jazz and spoken-word series running since 2002; Sunday Session, a free jazzy-downtempo wind-down; and Bomb The Jazz, a jazz-funk-disco night — alongside the electronic series Hypnosis, Blast From The Past and Hypnotronik (archived programme page, 2008).
These pages are the venue describing itself, so we treat them as a primary but single source; a 2016 retrospective independently remembers the place hosting “parties of every style from jazz to old-school house” with a “special theatrical atmosphere” and a cult-status grand staircase (We Love Budapest, 2016). That mixed identity lasted until the whole venue closed at the end of 2011.
One caution for searchers
The Merlin Jazz Club is sometimes confused with the Budapest Jazz Club, a separate venue founded in 2008 on Hollán Ernő utca and still part of the city’s jazz scene. They share nothing but a city. The Merlin’s club lived and died in the transformer-station building on Gerlóczy utca; our main history page places the jazz years in the venue’s full timeline, and the era’s photographs are mapped in our archive guide.
Sources
- Jávorszky Béla Szilárd: Merlin kontra Merlin (Új Magyarország, 31 March 1994)
- Magyar Színházművészeti Lexikon: Merlin Kulturális Központ
- György Szabados solo, live in the Merlin Jazz Club, 22 September 1991 — Szabados audio archive
- merlinbudapest.org “Bemutatkozó”, archived 25 October 2008 — Wayback Machine
- merlinbudapest.org “Állandó Estek”, archived 27 October 2008 — Wayback Machine
- We Love Budapest: Memento a már nem létező budapesti kulthelyekről (29 January 2016)
Facts checked 14 August 2026 against the sources above. merlinbudapest.org is an independent history site; the Wayback Machine pages cited are archives of this domain’s former owner, the venue itself. Spotted an error? Use the Report a problem link in the footer.