Friday 15th November Doors 7.00pm start 7.30pm
Tickets £12 (£10 concessions) (available from 20th June from Waterstones Kettering and online here)
We are delighted to be welcoming back the wonderful Budapest Café Orchestra after they blew us away last year with a very special performance.
The BCO is a music-driven phenomenon, a specialist performance-entertainment outfit,certified to enthral audiences everywhere. The infectious energy of the BCO will sweep you off your feet and stay in your heart forever. You will journey from one emotional pole to another: from a desperately tragic evocative heart-rending ancient Jewish melody to a dance from Romania or Russia and all the fiery exuberance that goes with it.
The Budapest Cafe Orchestra share as many blood cells with the folk of Hungary as the Penguin Cafe Orchestra do with the web-footed fellows of Antarctica. Their Magic Potion is a closely guarded recipe of malt, hops, yeast and water, handed down in the secret tongue of Estuary English through generations of Professional Gypsies. With a sole mission: to entertain and enchant audiences, they are undaunted by even the most demanding and wildest art centre crowds, for example those inhabiting the darkest corners of Northamptonshire.
www.budapestcafeorchestra.co.uk
find the band on facebook
THE MEMBERS OF THE BAND
CHRIS GARRICK – violin & darbuka
EDDIE HESSION – free bass accordion
KELLY CANTLON – double bass
ADRIAN ZOLOTUHIN – guitar, saz, balalaika
The Budapest Café Orchestra play powerful and driving folk-based music from Eastern Europe inspired by the music of European gypsies. The richness and dynamism of Balkan music is on display here in all its untamable glory in a wide-ranging programme of impassioned Hungarian Czardas, tender Russian folk melodies, rollicking dances from Romania and Moldavia, bitter sweet Jewish laments, one or two electrifying compositions of the group’s own making plus a few surprises along the way… The music evokes vivid images of Tzigane fiddle maestros, Budapest café life and gypsy campfires – good enough to make you want to book a holiday along the Danube!
Comprising four fabulous players of violins, guitar, accordion, double bass, saz & balalaika the BCO boasts some of the country’s most revered international stars: Eddie Hession has accompanied Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras and Chris Rea and is a supreme accordion champion of Great Britain; Chris Garrick is one of Europe’s most celebrated jazz violinists and has performed with Dame Cleo Laine & Sir John Dankworth, Wynton Marsalis, Nigel Kennedy and Duffy. The band boasts one of Russia’s most valuable exports in the shape of Adrian Zolotuhin, a master of strummed strings and buff recording engineer besides. Veteran bass-man Kelly Cantlon has been in the business of laying down low notes for many many moons. He is an original founding band member of the BCO and remains its backbone and grounding force.
“Joining the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain stands the Budapest Cafe Orchestra, hugely entertaining, immense skill and profound musicianship. Wake up EMI and the rest of the bloated plutocrats that run the “music industry”, there’s some REAL creative talent about”
Reading Chronicle
“Back by popular demand, the fiery vivacity and awe-inspiring musicianship of the finest purveyors of Eastern European gypsy music this side of a Lada scrap heap will leave you with a grin on your face and rhythm in your feet…”
Times
“Last night we went, with friends, to see The New Budapest Cafe Orchestra in Leintwardine. It was the most exciting, inspiring and uplifting evening. The orchestra were absolutely wonderful, and we all felt privileged to watch and be so close to such amazing musicians. The whole event was a delight and everybody in the audience were stamping and shouting for more. Thank you Arts Alive for bringing such class entertainment to our area. More of them please, we would certainly love to see that orchestra again.”
Anon
“The Budapest Cafe Orchestra play a blistering barrage of Czardas, East European and Russian folk tunes that might have come from the Hot Club of Paris via the Orient Express!”
Brighton Argus
“What a treat we had from the Budapest Café Orchestra More than anything, it felt like a touch of magic had landed in the theatre. Not only was their musicianship and performance magical, but there was also magic in the sense of trickery, or what illusions they were going to engage us in by the very sounds they produced on their instruments. Add to this the very real rapport they immediately established with the audience, and you have music and entertainment of absolute quality. Follow all this with a repartee that kept everyone enthralled and amused and you have a good night out; and add to that a magical stage presentation and you have something even more.”
Laurence Rugg, Orcadian
“The boys from the BCO eek out an interesting advantage over others in that they are musically connected to the culture rather than culturally connected to the music and this manifests itself in their performances which are among the most fulfilling live entertainment spectacles you are ever likely to find of any genre”
BBC Celtic Connections