April 11, 2014

Pay Your Passion at the Peace Center! 
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Novel program allows attendees to determine amount they wish to pay. 
 
GREENVILLE, S.C., (April 11, 2014) — The Peace Center is offering an out-of-the-ordinary ticket price for an extraordinary performance. The April 29 concert of internationally renowned gypsy violinist Roby Lakatos is being billed as a “Pay Your Passion” performance where patrons may attend by simply reserving a seat through the box office and at its conclusion asked to pay an amount equal to their enjoyment of the evening. CEO Megan Riegel says it’s just one of the many ways the Peace Center continues to be “The Place for Everyone.” 
 
Reservations may be made in person at the Peace Center Box Office located at 300 S. Main St., Greenville, SC 29601 and by phone at (864) 467-3000 or toll-free (800) 888-7768. 
 
“To keep the bar high for the Peace Center, we have to be willing to try new things and never settle,” explains Riegel. “The Roby Lakatos Ensemble is a perfect performance to test the ‘Pay Your Passion’ concept because it entices people to try something they may never have considered before. This group is so talented and powerful that we have every confidence those who come will passionately pay an amount equal to their experience.” 
 
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. 

Born in 1965 into the legendary family of gypsy violinists descended from Janos Bihari, “King of Gypsy Violinists”, 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 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 March 2004, Lakatos appeared to great acclaim with the London Symphony Orchestra in the orchestra’s “Genius of the Violin” festival alongside Maxim Vengerov. 

For additional information, visit www.peacecenter.org. 

Media Contacts:
Print/Online  Kara Dullea  864-275-3331  kara@detailspr.net	Broadcast  Betsy McMillan  864-804-4436  betsy@detailspr.net