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Katica Illenyi

On her concerts she plays classical pieces on the violin, jazz standards, world famous movie soundtracks and evergreens.

She was born in Budapest, Hungary, and comes from a classical music family. Her first teacher was her father Ferenc Illényi (1935-2007), who played in the Hungarian State Opera House. He decided to bring up all his children to become musicians. Her mother was a special education teacher but played the piano very well. The four Illényi siblings Katica, Ferenc, Anikó and Csaba started to play on instruments at the age of three.

"My dad played in the Opera Orchestra.. He used to take us to the Opera when we were young. We loved sitting in his place in the orchestra pit in the intervals. If there were free seats, we used to watch the performance from the front row. From there we could see the orchestra as well."

At the age of 14 she was admitted to Franz Liszt Academy of Music to the class of "Special talents" at the age of 14. During college years she wanted to sing and tapdance as well. She studied classical singing for years and applied to the National Entertaining Centre, where another style of music could be heard from each classroom: jazz, evergreens, musicals. During these years she started to learn tapdancing and acquired jazz dance and classical ballet. In 1991 she obtained her masters degree in violin at Franz Liszt Academy of Music.

At the very beginning of her carrier extraordinarily from a violinist she played many operettas and musical roles, but remained faithful to the violin. Besides classical music she trained herself in various genres like jazz, swing, world music... She discovers the uniqueness in the genres that she didn't get to know through classical music.

1995-2001, she played in Budapest Klezmer Band as a singer-violinist. They travelled around Europe, America and Israel and released five albums together.

She started her solo career in 2002.

Since than she has played every year success concerts always with new repertoire in the style of classical and jazz music.

In her performances she plays the violin, sings and dances.

She gave her first own show in 2003. In the same year, her debut album "Premier" has been released for which she received the biggest award (eMeRTon award) from the Hungarian Radio.

In 2004 she was on stage with a new repertoire in which she mainly played old favourites of Stéphane Grappelli. On that evening she played together with her brother, Csaba. Her second solo album originates from that evening's concert recording with the title: "Honeysuckle Rose".

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