Istvan J. Balazs
Istvan J. Balazs was born in Miercurea-Ciuc, Romania in 1980. Istvan started his first private accordion and orchestration lessons at eleven years of age with prof. Besenyei Miklós Brass orchestra conductor and accordionist. After only one year of studying Istvan was already playing Lehár Ferenc operettas and Johann Strauss waltzes with a local orchestra.
Balazs entered the world of film music in Budapest relatively lately in 2010, after twelve years of composing pause, by starting composing again symphonic cinematic music trailers and demos. He then after was commissioned by Gábor Keleti, Film director from Budapest, to score the short movie "When Do You Turn to God (2016).
After one year of being re-located to Vienna for studying Film Scoring, Istvan was taking master classes and workshops with top notch Hollywood composers such as Alexandre Desplat (2016) and Danny Elfman (2017).
Meanwhile Istvan was writing music for commercials, promos and radio broadcasts, continuing on scoring short movies and trailers such as "Easter Services Promo (2016), "A Day of Károli Family (2018)" as the result of a fruitful and very close collaboration with Gábor Keleti, film director from Budapest.
Currently, 2018 Istvan is actively working closely with US film director Handel Humphrey on the "American Family Revival" feature length Documentary. Istvan and Handel's close relationship started in 2017, when Istvan was commissioned by Handel's Production Company to score within two weeks the Geaschel's Family Documentary part of the American Family Revival, for submission to the 2017 CWVFF International Film Festival.
From February, 2018 Istvan is also working in close collaboration with internationally renowned Soprano Opera and Crossover singer Leila K. Dörnyei on their first Orchestral Cinematic album called "REDEMPTION", which will be released worldwide in Winter, 2018 by Three Steps from Heaven Production/Record Label. The album will be Publicly available on Amazon Music, Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud.
