Vilmos Halmos – piano, Jenő Nagy – banjo, Zsolt Kelemen – double bass, Gábor Kovacsevics – drums, Béla Zoltán – trumpet, Iván Nagy – trombone, Sándor Benkó – clarinet Featuring: Tamás Berki – vocals, Béla Szalóky – brass, István Lázár – trumpet, Ilona Mikó – percussion, Árpád Dennert – clarinet, as well as the combined chorus of the Nyíregyháza Cantemus Mixed Choir, the Honvéd Male Choir and the Hungarian National Choir, conductor: Dénes Szabó Producer and music director: Sándor Benkó The Benkó Dixieland Band were the first group in the world to compose a New Orleans style piece for the Christmas liturgy, colouring it with a classical chorus and then presenting it as a church service. This work was entirely composed by members of the band. Its perfect balance of moods, its original and entirely unified sonority of a traditional jazz mass, and the organic integration of classical chorus and music, made it a great success among believers and non believers alike. After the premiere, many choruses around the world asked the Benkó Band rewrite their mass so it would be more generally performable as a work in its own right. The musicians have now rewritten it as a non liturgical piece, notating the improvised sections to enable classical musicians to play it and the mass is now performable anywhere. This reworked version of the Christmas Mass is being performed as a world premiere at the Palace of Arts.

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