Florian Lungu

Florian Lungu died on the morning of Monday, 9 November 2026, at the age of 83. The news was first announced on Facebook by his friend and television partner Mike Godoroja, who wrote: "I don't know how to write this text... Florian Lungu has left... Mosu... this morning! A large part of us, those of us who love jazz, goes to heaven along with Tiberian, Nicolas Simion and now Mosu." Romanian Radio confirmed his death. The place and cause of death have not been made public, and funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of writing.

Tributes came from across Romanian music. Composer and instrumentalist Ionel Tudor called him "a cheerful man, full of jokes, serene, who had a good word about everyone". Journalist Doru Ionescu wrote that with his death and that of Mircea Tiberian "more than a chapter of our music closes", recalling Mosu's jokes on the main stage at Gărâna. Singer Luiza Zan said he had been the first person to believe in her.

Florian Lungu was born on 5 January 1943 in Bucharest into a family of musicians. His father, Nicolae Lungu (1900 to 1993), was a composer and choral conductor known for his carols and his Orthodox liturgy, who founded the Romania Choral Society in 1935 and conducted the choir of the Romanian Patriarchate. His mother was a pianist and one of the founders of the Madrigal choir. He had a sister, Nina, a former Madrigal chorister.

He spent his childhood in a house with an upper floor and attic at the intersection of Calea Dorobanților and Șoseaua Ștefan cel Mare in Bucharest. He was fascinated by every kind of vehicle and machine; at 14 he spent a night at the police station after borrowing a neighbour's motorcycle and riding it without a licence. He said the nickname "Mosu" ("the old man") had stuck to him since the third grade of primary school.

Although he wanted to become an engineer and was passionate about electronics, he studied piano and in 1960 was admitted to the Ciprian Porumbescu Conservatory in Bucharest (now the National University of Music Bucharest), in the composition department. His teachers included Victor Giuleanu (theory and solfège), Ion Dumitrescu (harmony), Nicolae Buicliu (counterpoint), Tudor Ciortea (musical forms), Dan Constantinescu and Tiberiu Olah (composition), Aurel Stroe (orchestration), Emilia Comișel (folklore) and Adriana Sachelarie (music history). He passed the State Examination in 1966.

After a shortened military service he taught at the Music High School in Giurgiu (1966 to 1967). In 1967 he competed for a sound engineer post at Romanian Radio; Florin Bogardo won it and Lungu was hired as a music editor instead. He worked in the creation and repertoire section from 1967 to 1970 and then as an editor and presenter in the light music and jazz section.

With Cornel Chiriac's jazz shows now broadcast from Radio Free Europe, a jazz programme was initially out of the question. Lungu made the Sunday variety show "Estrada duminicală", writing comic texts for Dem Rădulescu and Rodica Mandache, and used it to place a Romanian jazz cycle in the printed schedule. Jazz programming grew from there. His radio cycles over the years included "Jazz românesc", "Jazz Portret", "Jazz Lexicon", "Jazz Club", "Stereo Jazz", "Jazz și Swing", "Jazz Forum", "Jazz în festival", "Nocturn Jazz", "Noapte de jazz", "Jazz pe... românește", "Album de colecție" and "Pur și simplu... jazz!". He also made pop, electronic, rock, symphonic and choral programmes, and was responsible for special studio and live jazz recordings at the broadcaster. He was one of the organisers and keepers of Romanian Radio's jazz sound archive, and kept making programmes as a pensioner, saying he had more airtime retired than when employed.

On Romanian Television (TVR), where he collaborated from the 1970s, he made "Jazz Alive", "Jazz Fan" (with Mihai Godoroja), "Panoramic Jazz", "Estival Jazz" and "Marele Jazz", and from 2004 to May 2006 the weekly "Jazz Restitutio" on TVR Cultural. From 2 April 2009 he and Godoroja presented the weekly "Unora le place" on TVR 1 and later TVR 2, and the same month began the weekly "Blue Monday" concert series at the Hard Rock Cafe in Bucharest.

From 1977 he presented most jazz and blues festivals and concerts in Bucharest and across Romania, including Sibiu, Brașov, Cluj, Iași, Costinești, Craiova, Satu Mare, Galați, Timișoara, Arad, Gărâna, Lugoj, Jimbolia, Victoria and Piatra Neamț, and organised or co-organised dozens of events, among them the Perpetuum Jazz and Marele Jazz concert series and the Estival Jazz and Intel Jazz festivals. He wrote thousands of articles for publications such as Muzica, Flacăra, Contemporanul, Formula AS, Actualitatea muzicală and Vox Pop Rock, and liner notes for most Romanian jazz LPs and CDs.

Lungu taught jazz history as an associate professor at the National University of Music Bucharest (1990 to 1996 and again from 2005), at the Gheorghe Dima Music Academy in Cluj (1997 to 2000) and at the Richard Oschanitzky Faculty of Music of Tibiscus University in Timișoara (2005 to 2011). Obituaries credit him with training generations of musicians who went on to shape Romanian jazz. Singer Luiza Zan recalled that he was the first person to believe in her and the first to introduce her as "Luiza Zan" rather than "Zan Luiza", explaining on stage that the two z's came from "jazz".

A member of the Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania, he wrote symphonic, chamber and light music. His light music songs and instrumentals included "Antract" (1962), "Bossa nova" (1964), "S-a înserat" (1969, lyrics by Cecilia Silvestri), "Cinematograful de altădată" (1971, lyrics by Gheorghe Astaloș) and "Ne-am regăsit" (1972). His jazz pieces included "Linii și puncte" (1962), "Trifoiul cu cinci foi" (1973), "Cercuri" (1974), "Dansul obcinelor" (1976) and "Festi-Dixie-Jazz" (1976). He also wrote orchestrations for Electrecord's "Istoria Jazz-ului" record series.

With Daniela Caraman-Fotea he wrote "Disco Ghid Rock" (Editura Muzicală, 1977; revised edition 1979), and he wrote "Jazz Calendar" (Intel Print Service, 1995). For Electrecord he proposed and curated the "Jazz Restitutio" collection (with Marius Popp) and the "Jazz Diaspora" collection.

Lungu was married to Carmen, nicknamed "Bimbirica", whom he described as his second and definitive life partner. She worked as a music director, and the couple collaborated on radio productions; he had built a small studio at home where he prepared programmes before taking them to the radio. No children have been publicly documented. He described himself as cheerful, sociable and rather sedentary, said he gave up drinking in 1979 and stopped smoking after 45 years, and named jazz, literature, electronics and motoring as his great interests. He was celebrated for the jokes he told from festival stages, notably at Gărâna.

Lungu regarded Romanian Radio as a genuine cultural platform even before 1990 and was proud that he could broadcast hundreds of minutes of jazz a month under communism. He described curiosity as the engine of his life and called himself the "devil's advocate" of jazz. He liked to quote a Latin-style motto he attributed to Marius Popp, "Jazz longa, vita brevis". In 2012 he wrote that he wanted to be remembered not by a dry CV but as a man with a soul who loved life, art and women passionately and "did not cast a shadow on the earth in vain".

Lungu is widely credited with keeping jazz on Romanian airwaves through the communist era and with preserving its recorded history through the Romanian Radio jazz archive and the Electrecord reissue series. Obituaries called him a "walking musical encyclopedia" and a storyteller of music. He was a co-founder of the Romanian Jazz Association (1990). Romanian Radio said his death was an important loss for Romanian culture, for the jazz community and for public radio. TVR marked his 80th birthday in 2023 with a special edition of "Remix" built around a tribute concert to Romanian jazz composers.

Title of "exceptional professional" from the Romanian Broadcasting Society for his work as a programme maker. Excellence Award for lifetime audiovisual activity, National Audiovisual Council (CNA), awarded in 2003 for 2002. Order of Cultural Merit, Knight rank, conferred by the Presidency of Romania in 2003.