Romani 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 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 in the great halls and festivals of Europe, Asia and America. Born in 1965 into the legendary family of Romani violinists descended from János Bihari, ‘King of Gypsy Violinists’, Roby Lakatos was introduced to music as a child and at the age of nine he made his public debut as first violin in a Romani 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 Ille’ 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 Ma