Art Base

Gypsy violinist Roby Lakatos is not only a scorching virtuoso, but a
musician of extraordinary stylistic versatility. Equally comfortable
performing classical music as he is playing jazz and in his own Hungarian
folk idiom, Lakatos is the rare musician who defies definition. He is
referred to as a gypsy violinist or “devil’s fiddler”, a classical virtuoso,
a jazz improviser, a composer and arranger, and a 19th-century throwback,
and he is actually all of these things at once. He is the kind of universal
musician so rarely encountered in our time—a player whose strength as an
interpreter derives from his activities as an improviser and composer. He
has performed at the great halls and festivals of Europe, Asia and America.

Roby Lakatos was introduced to music as a child and at age nine he made his
public debut as first violin in a gypsy band. His musicianship evolved not
only within his own family but also at the Béla Bartók Conservatory of
Budapest, where he won the first prize for classical violin in 1984. Between
1986 and 1996, he and his ensemble delighted audiences at « Les Atéliers de
la grande Ile » in Brussels, their musical home throughout this period. He
has collaborated with Vadim Repin and Stéphane Grappelli, and his playing
was greatly admired by Sir Yehudi Menuhin, who always made a point of
visiting the club in Brussels to hear Lakatos. In March 2004, Lakatos
appeared to great acclaim with the London Symphony Orchestra in the
orchestra’s “Genius of the Violin” festival alongside Maxim Vengerov.

When Roby Lakatos mixes the so-called « classical music » with the magic of
the Hungarian-gypsy vitality, it does not turn into a disrespectful attitude
toward the higher cultural heritage, but it more reflects the deep tradition
rooted in the cultural heritage of the Gypsy people and offers new,
refreshing pleasures to the listener and music lover. And just as Liszt,
Brahms and others used the Hungarian overtones in their compositions, so now
the public profits from the confrontation of these classics with the gypsy
roots. This enlivens all those men and women in whose veins still pulses at
least a little bit of the blood of the wandering spirit.

http://www.roby-lakatos.com

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