[Dixielandjazz] The Spirit of Django Reinhardt - A performance at Lincoln Center NYC.

[Steve barbone]

Django lives. Especially interesting to us reed players is the note about
Paquito D'Rivera who sat in on clarinet. He is a MONSTER.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Jazz Review | 'Spirit of Django Reinhardt'

A Six-Stringed Storm of Runs and Rhythms

By NATE CHINEN July 29, 2005 NY Times

During his lifetime, Django Reinhardt was the guardian of a jazz guitar
style so distinct as to seem inimitable. But the half-century since his
death has seen a parade of imitators, great and small. At Alice Tully Hall
on Wednesday night, the third annual "Spirit of Django Reinhardt" concert
brought a few of them together, in a brotherhood of blistering fretboard
runs and brightly swaggering rhythms.

The guitarists - Angelo Debarre, Samson Schmitt and Joscho Stephan - have
common cause for their obeisance. They're all products of Western Europe,
Reinhardt's old turf. Each was raised on Djangology; Mr. Debarre shares his
hero's Manouche Gypsy heritage, while Mr. Schmitt and Mr. Stephan both have
fathers who play guitar in the Reinhardt idiom. (Dorado Schmitt would have
appeared in the concert had he not broken an arm; Gunter Stephan backed his
son with conventionally chunky chords.) Of the inheritors present, Mr.
Debarre was the most accomplished, and it showed; his variations on the
ballad "Fantaisie" amounted to a kind of lacework, delicate, intricate and
fine. 

On the plentiful up-tempo tunes, all three guitar soloists heeded a
more-is-more philosophy: more notes, in tighter clusters, at greater speed
and volume. Sometimes these pyrotechnics made for a satisfying frisson;
sometimes they had a numbing effect. The most flagrant technician in the
bunch was the young Mr. Stephan, whose overstuffed runs could easily be
repurposed for a certain kind of stoner-metal - an impression he playfully
reinforced at one point by quoting scraps of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the
Water" and Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love."

While the six-stringed storm raged on, some of the concert's best music came
from other instruments. The violinist Florin Niculescu, filling the role of
Reinhardt's old partner Stephane Grappelli, provided a melodic foil as well
as a solo voice; he responded to the loping swing of "Heavy Artillery" in a
crisp double time. The accordionist Ludovic Beier was no less proficient,
interspersing chirruping single-note flurries with the occasional squeezebox
sigh. In the rhythm section, a washboard interlude by David Langlois lent a
whimsical complement to the steady thump of bass and drums.

Oddly enough, the most sparkling presence of the evening was an interloper,
Paquito D'Rivera. Beginning with his first chorus on "Honeysuckle Rose," Mr.
D'Rivera fashioned jaunty statements on clarinet that were logical in their
contours but unpredictable in their patterns. On each of his guest turns, he
hinted at qualities of Reinhardt's music that the others onstage generally
lacked: rhythmic buoyancy, melodic caprice, judicious timing and a touch of
romance. He also managed to toss mischief into the mix, most obviously
during a string of giddy four-bar exchanges with Mr. Niculescu.

The problem with appropriating Reinhardt's music is that, while it may not
be inimitable, it is stubbornly immutable. It will always be the sound of
Paris in the 1930's; Reinhardt himself had to struggle to transpose it to
another place and time. The musicians here had their hands full just trying
to keep up, which left little room for nuance or thoughtful revision. They
attacked their subject lustily, and with clear ambition. But for a show with
such high standards of musicianship, the spirit of Reinhardt remained
maddeningly elusive.