Yukako Furudate – Gypsy violinist

Born in Miyako, Iwate prefecture. Graduated from Toho Gakuen School of Music. Learned Gypsy playing style of violin in Budapest, Hungary, from Lajos Boross and Barnabás Vajda.
In 2006, she received the Special Prize of Jury, the Ede Reményi Society Prize and the Prize of Hungarian Musicians and Dancers at the International Gypsy-violin Contest in Hungary. It was the first time that either someone who is not Romani, or a woman from Asia won the prize, and it became a big news both inside and outside of Hungary. After that, she appeared at several major Hungarian TV channels like Magyar Televízió or Duna Televízió. She became so famous among the Hungarian Gypsy musicians that many of them say she is the reincarnation of Panna Czinka, the founder of Hungarian Gypsy music. She is the co-founder of the Vajda Gyspy Concert Orchestra, and also a soloist.
In June, 2012, she was invited to a concert at the Hungarian National Museum, and had a great success. So far, she had played with top Gypsy musicians such as Ferenc Sánta, Roby Lakatos, László Berki and others.
Especially in Japan, she has her own gypsy band and plays in concerts, gives dinner shows. She appears in midnight programs of the NHK Television and also served as Japanese-Hungarian interpreter in programs of classical music to the same station. She is the Tokyo representative of the Gyula Town Hungarian-Japanese Cultural Exchange Association. She is a semi-regular member of Jun Ueno’s Tokyo Night Show on Rainbow town FM.
Beside gypsy music, as a popular violinist, her album Hayao Miyazaki’s World, which was on sale in 2006 from iTunes, had taken the 3rd place of the year, and it’s still keeping high ranks on even Taiwan’s iTune chart.
In 2014, she won Gold medals in all the five divisions for instrumentalists at World Championship of Performing Arts (WCOPA), which is called as the Olympics for performing arts in Los Angles.

Kovács Károly – Gypsy cellist

Born in Budapest, in a famous musician family; his paternal grandfather was a violinist and a conductor while his great-grandfather was a violist. His father plays cello and contrabass. From his maternal side, grandfather was a contrabassist, great-grandfather was a violinist, his mother and sister are pianists. He has started to play cello from the age of 6, and at 8 he was permitted to enter the ”rajkó art school” led by Gyula Farkas, who was one of the leaders who made ”the golden ages of Gypsy music.” Then, he started to tour around the world with his orchestra. In the”rajkó art school” he learned music from Gyula Farkas, Tivadar Mészáros, Ferenc Mocsár and Károly Szegfű.
After that, he became a member of bands led by world-famous Gypsy violinists like Ferenc Sánta, Sándor Déki Lakatos or Károly Puka. He was also enrolled in the orchestra of the famous Honvéd Dance Theater as a solo cellist for 10 years, on the request of Antal Szalai.
Not only as a Gypsy cellist, but also in the field of classical music, he played at Bell Canto Restaurant with opera singers every day. In the band of Antal Szalai, he had played at the Opera of Sydney and the Carnegie Hall in New York. Recently he is a regular visitor of Japan. Last year, he led a band at Alte Liebe, an elegant restaurant in Yokohama.

Dezső Balogh – Jazz pianist

Born in Budapest. After learning music for 10 years at Bartók Béla Music Technical College and Gymasium, he became a student of the world-famous jazz pianist, Béla Szakcsi Lakatos.
From the age of 16, he started to play in more and more jazz clubs inside and outside of the country, and in 2000, his group called Trio Heaven became the champion of the International Jazz Festival in Budapest.
From 2004, with the group named Second Floor Jazz Quartett, he played at the American Bar on the top floor of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo, and also in Monaco’s other casinos, cabarets and jazz clubs, especially at the famous Monaco Sporting. In March, 2012, the group was invited to the birthday ceremony of Prince Albert of Monaco. In the same year, he was invited by Sándor Lakatos Jr. to their 3 month long Europe tour and played all genre of music from classical to saloon. Also the same year, in October he was assigend as a solo pianist of the Great Circus of Budapest which has a long history.