ENTRANCING folk with blistering czardas, grief-stricken ballads and rollicking dances, the old Budapest Café Orchestra cast an intoxicating spell on all who experience their performances.

After two sell-out Artsreach tours, this smoking hot gypsy band re-emerges from the mists to stoke up the fires in Dorset once more.

Featuring pedigree musicians Eddie Hession on free bass accordion, Kelly Cantlon on double bass, Chris Garrick on violin, and Adrian Zolotuhin on guitar, sax and balalaika, the Budapest Café Orchestra is a bespoke village hall band that specialises in rural touring but one that boasts some of the country’s most revered international stars.

Eddie has accompanied Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, and was supreme accordion champion of Great Britain. Chris is one of Europe’s most celebrated jazz violinists and performs regularly with Dame Cleo Laine, as well as often featuring in Artsreach programmes.

The Budapest Café Orchestra Revisited play powerful and driving folk-based music from Eastern Europe.

These five fabulous performers play an impassioned but often tender mixture of Hungarian Czardas, Russian and Ukrainian folk songs and dances from Romania and Bulgaria as well as their own electrifying compositions. With fiery music evoking vivid images of Tzigane fiddle maestros, Budapest café culture and gypsy campfires…. the romance of the Budapest Café Orchestra will resume in rural Dorset.

You can catch the band tonight at Franpton Village Hall from 8pm (call 01300 320459 for full details and bookings) and Sturminster Marshall Memorial Hall tomorrow at 7.30pm (01258 857814).