Budapest Bar

In early 20th-century Budapest, in hundreds of cafes scattered around the city, urban Gypsy musicians enthralled crowds, playing everything from chansons to popular film ditties to jazz. Born into musical families, these artists had direct cosmopolitan lines to what was hot in Paris, New York, and Buenos Airesand an astounding ability to listen once and then make a song their own.

Budapest Br, born out of a renewed Gypsy scene and a vibrant rock underground, has brought the charm and wit, the skill and panache of this era back. Replacing the musics kitsch with great musicality, bandleader Robert Farkas and Budapest Br have found just the right balance of vintage vibe and contemporary feel.

Though many listeners are familiar with the complex, intense music of rural Gypsy communities, Hungary is also home to urban, well-educated, highly trained families of Gypsy musicians. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these in-demand performers toured the worlds major cities, picking up sounds from rumba to swing as they went. Budapest Br have kept this open eared approach and incorporated modern genres. Audiences are just as likely to hear a Hungarian or other European torch song or a rock classic as a virtuoso gypsy piece from Liszt to Michael Jackson.

The stage show features the five-piece band with a rotating roster of singers drawn from the crme de la crme of the Hungarian and international rock, underground and jazz scene. They have worked amongst others - with Melanie Pain of the Nouvelle Vague fame, Hungarian rock superstar Andrs Lovasi and Viennese electronica darling Tania Saedi.

Budapest Br, in its six-year existence, has achieved considerable fame and critical accolades at home and, increasingly, in the rest of the world. Their performances in clubs, theatres and concert halls in Hungary (including the A38, the Palace of Arts, the Katona Jozsef Theatre and the Sziget Festival) are routinely sold out. In the past 6 years they released five CDs all went platinum and two live-concert DVDs in Hungary. A book entitled Joy of Music about Budapest Br was published in 2012 to celebrate the bands 5th Anniversary.

In July 2012, Budapest Br performed before a crowd in Trafalgar Square, London numbering in the thousands as part of the BT River of Music (produced by Serious, the UKs leading live music promoters), a music and cultural festival organised in conjunction with the London Olympics. In April 2013 they had their debut overseas tour in Brazil and in the US. They played 11 sold out concerts in Sao Paolo state at the invitation of SESI (Servico Social da Indstria). In 2013 they also toured Turkey, played in several European cities and performed at the official opening of the UNESCOs 37th General Commettee meeting in Paris.

THE MUSICIANS

Urban Gypsy entertainers were renowned for being able to play anything and everything. Bandleader Robert Farkas, 37 (violin, guitar, accordion, piano), himself of Gypsy heritage, wanted to channel this great technical skill and musical savvy. Farkas had both conservatory training and a long history of playing with rock bands, and knew the Budapest scene like the back of his hand. He gathered musicians from unexpected places, including the rock bands he played with, hoping to inject that same energy and thrill into music that had become as faded as an old photograph. The result is a professional music group at the heart of a tight-knit collaborative miscellany of performers that transcends ethnic, musical and generational boundaries.

Mihly Farkas, 29, also studied at the Liszt Academy. He is an inspired and magnificent cimbalom player and a talented composer. Accordion and piano player Kroly krs, 27, comes from a family of musicians with a long and distinguished musical heritage. With his encyclopaedic knowledge of sheet music and countless hours spent at the piano, there isn't a melody he doesn't know. Bassist Richrd Farkas, 24, picked up double-bass well enough and fast enough to more than hold his own among the older and more experienced players in the band. The core band is complemented by veteran pop and rock drummer, Ferenc Kisvri, 48.