[Dixielandjazz] Stephene Wrembel

[Ron Wheeler]

Minor correction, Steve.  It's Stephane, not Stephene and here he is on
YouTube.

Stephane Wrembel performs Mont. St. Genevieve/Valse a Wasso

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhA_jKBpkZU&feature=related

If you like Django, and I do, this is great stuff.

Ron 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com 
> [mailto:dixielandjazz-bounces at ml.islandnet.com] On Behalf Of 
> Stephen G Barbone
> Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 11:02
> To: Ron Wheeler
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Stephene Wrembel
> 
> 
> For those in, or visiting the NYC area, Stephene Wrembel is worth a  
> listen. Especially if you are into Django Reinhardt and/or 
> Gypsy Jazz.  
> Wrembel is one of the hidden musical wonders of New York, He's been  
> performing there for years, largely unnoticed.
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
> www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband
> 
> November 25, 2008 - NY TIMES - By Ben Ratliff
> 
> 
> Swinging Through Melodies, the Gypsy Guitarist Way
> 
> Musicians tailor their art to a room’s dimensions, and Stephane  
> Wrembel’s is Barbès-size. For the last several years, almost 
> since the  
> opening of this Park Slope bar in 2002, Mr. Wrembel, a Django  
> Reinhardt-inspired guitarist, has been playing weekly gigs in 
> the back  
> room. On Sunday night, with his quartet the Django 
> Experiment, he tore  
> it up as usual, exploiting his home-court advantage.
> 
> Mr. Wrembel uses a guitar like the master’s, with a small, 
> oval sound- 
> hole and an almost metallic tone. The Reinhardt subculture is a  
> curious phenomenon: it’s extremely specialized — and the French-born  
> Mr. Wrembel has gained some fame within it — but no specialized  
> knowledge is required of the audience. (His slow, 
> habanera-rhythm song  
> “Big Brother,” which he played in the second set, appears on the  
> soundtrack of the recent Woody Allen film “Vicky Cristina 
> Barcelona.”)  
> Gypsy swing, gallant and charging, always leaning on a strong 
> melody,  
> doesn’t need any explanation.
> 
> The group brings some rock aggression and some Middle Eastern 
> tonality  
> to Gypsy swing. It’s a basic small-group setup: an acoustic bassist,  
> Ari Folman-Cohen; a drummer, Richard Lee, playing an 
> international kit  
> with a dumbek, a conga, a cajon for a bass drum and small 
> cymbals; and  
> two guitarists. The leader improvised against the locomotive 
> rhythmic  
> chording of Koran Hasanagic, who sometimes soloed himself, with fast  
> fingers but a quiet sound.
> 
> This was music mostly meted out in strict eight-bar chunks, as  
> Reinhardt and his groups would have done; though this is jazz for  
> sure, the band wasn’t conjuring radical changes to any song’s  
> structure. But Mr. Wrembel’s solos were radical enough: long, fast,  
> intense and full of charisma.
> 
> “A Child’s Dream,” a minor-key, slightly Arabic-sounding waltz from  
> his recent album “Terre des Hommes,” put the emphasis on the  
> “experiment” in the band’s name: the music became a cloud of drones  
> and frenetic strumming. By contrast, “All of Me,” taken nearly at a  
> run, was Reinhardt up and down. If anything, it was faster and  
> noisier, reveling in well-chosen, dissonant harmonies and the  
> knifelike force of the guitar’s sound.
> 
> The Django Experiment performs every Sunday at Barbès, 376 Ninth  
> Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn; (347) 422-0248, or  
> barbesbrooklyn.com.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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