As if to justify their booking on the La Jolla Music Society’s ongoing Jazz Series (a sellout Feb. 3 at Stephen and Mary Birch North Park Theatre), the Roby Lakatos Ensemble waxed jazzy near the end of two hours plus.
It was brilliant, Latin-tinged jazz, but it was the Gypsy music that roused the soul over most of the evening as performed by Lakatos and his band of not so merry men, who were seriously intent on introducing familiar and unfamiliar melodies, then morphing into double-, triple- and quadruple-time versions of same.
The predictable practice resulted in virtuoso cascades of notes played by two violins (Lakatos and Laszlo Boni), cimbalom (Jeno Istvan Lisztes), double bass (Robert Feher) and piano (Frantisek Janoska). Hardly a soul was not stirred; many a foot tapped; and hundreds of hands clapped time and fairly accurately so. Just about the time ennui set in, Lakatos introduced an amazing klezmer singer named Myriam Fuks, who tore the joint up big time. With her brassy basso, she gloriously out-Piafs Piaf.
Lakatos said that when Gypsies and Jews meet, the big argument is who stole whose music. The answer, of course, is they had a tremendous influence on each other’s music. Definitively, it’s the quandary of which came first, chicken or egg. No matter. Just enjoy, especially when Lakatos lays into Michel LeGrand’s “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” from the film “Yentl,” and when Fuks sings “My Yiddishe Mamme.” Language is no barrier.
It was the first San Diego appearance of the Roby Lakatos Ensemble, named for its star, a middle-aged Hungarian in leather pants and long morning coat. Lakatos is the real thing. It was gratifying to walk to the car afterwards, hearing Eastern European languages of all kinds; to know that La Jolla Music Society has found its audience.
The Jazz Series at the Birch continues March 17 with Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester. They specialize in re-creating German dance and film music of the 1920-1930s.

Also of interest

Isaacs in East County
At 3 and 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 25, Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater participates in “Invitation to the Dance: Dances of Time” at East County Performing Arts Center, 210 E. Main St., El Cajon. Other artists are the Grossmont College Orchestra Women’s Choral and Afro-Cuban Ensemble. Randall Tweed conducts.
Works by Isaacs, a professor of dance at University of California, San Diego (UCSD), include the complex “Dances of Time” as well as a revival of Isaacs’ three duets titled “Romeos and Juliets,” danced to Grossmont Symphony’s live performance of Prokofiev’s “Suite No. 2, Romeo and Juliet.” For tickets ($14-$18), visit www.ecpaclive.com or call (619) 440-2277.
Following the current quarter, Isaacs retires from UCSD to concentrate her energies on DancePlace and her company.

Monks in North Park
At 8 p.m. Friday, March 9, an evening of chant will be presented by the Gyuto Monks Tibetan Tantric Choir at the Stephen and Mary Birch North Park Theatre. Doors open at 7:30. A sellout is anticipated. For tickets and information, visit www.birchnorthparktheatre.net or call (619) 239-8836. Further information is available at www.gyutocenter.org.

Tresnjak in NYC and London
Of interest to San Diego theatergoers: Old Globe Shakespeare Festival artistic director Darko Tresnjak directs F. Murray Abraham in “The Merchant of Venice” at New York’s Duke Theatre, a production of Theatre for a New Audience. “Merchant” plays in repertory Feb. 4 through March 11 with Abraham’s Barabas in Christopher Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta.” Tresnjak’s production then travels to London for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works Festival. It plays March 22-31 in the Swan Theatre.