József Balogh

Balogh "Joe" Jozsef (b. 1954) is a Romanian guitarist, blues-rock and jazz musician, founder of Metrock band. Joe started playing guitar at the age of 14, and first appeared on stage in 1974 in Bucharest, with a group of musicians from his hometown Oradea. They performed with famous Romanian artists, such as FFN, Sfinx (3) or folk singer Mircea Vintilă. At the beginning of the 80s, Joe Balogh formed Metrock. In four years, they had played more than 500 shows across the country. Metrock appeared on Electrecord's Formații Rock (5) compilation. In 1982, they released a debut album Castelul De Nisip ("The Sand Castle"). In 1984, Balogh joined the band Progresiv TM from Timisoara. After the fall of communism in Romania, Joe started visiting Hungary more often. He had been performing with a few Hungarian bands, and, in 1992, together with Attila A.G. Weinberger (another guitarist from Oradea), he was featured as a guest musician of The Blues Machine at the mega-concert in Budapest, starring Al Di Meola. From the late 1990s, Joe Balogh became more interested in jazz and formed Play Off band to performe jazz-rock and fusion with local musicians from Oradea. The group existed until 2003 when Joe established his current project Jazz Today.