Gypsy jazz innovator Django Reinhardt would have celebrated his 100th birthday last Saturday.
But when one of the world's leading proponents of Reinhardt's music, guitarist John Jorgenson, performed recently in Culver City, Calif., it wasn't his illuminating anecdotes and back stories about Reinhardt's life and songs that fascinated the audience.
It was his hot-jazz quintet's performance of Reinhardt's singularly ebullient music, pure and direct, that pulled them in, the same way that it has continued to win new audiences since his death from a stroke in 1953.
"I never thought this was anything I would do for a main gig. It was what I always did for fun," said Jorgenson, 53, who spent seven years in the '90s in Elton John's touring band and a half-dozen more with Byrds founding member Chris Hillman fronting the Desert Rose Band.
This year's Reinhardt centennial — he was born Jean Baptiste Reinhardt in Belgium and grew up in Gypsy camps outside of Paris — has spurred a wealth of live performances and recordings celebrating his spirited translation of American jazz into a hard-swinging pan-European-flavored potpourri.
"I love to play Gypsy jazz," Jorgenson said, "because it has the elegance and virtuosity of classical music, the fire and romanticism of Gypsy music, the swing and improvisation of jazz, the string-band sound of bluegrass and the energy of rock, all in a very accessible package."
It's all the more impressive considering Reinhardt lost the use of two fingers on his left hand in a caravan fire when he was 18, yet he became one of the most dazzling instrumentalists of the 20th century and the composer of more than 100 songs.
Jorgenson has two Reinhardt-centric albums coming out next month: One Stolen Night, a work featuring his combo modeled on Reinhardt's ground-breaking Quintet of the Hot Club of France and consisting largely of Jorgenson's original tunes; and Istiqbal Gathering, an ambitious collaboration with Orchestra Nashville of Jorgenson's symphonic compositions for Gypsy jazz guitar and full orchestra. Two of his pieces also feature the genre-busting Turtle Island String Quartet.
Jorgenson will have company. On Tuesday, New York guitarist Frank Vignola released 100 Years of Django, consisting of 10 of his favorite Reinhardt compositions.
"It's very infectious music," Vignola said from a tour stop in Missouri. "There's a tremendous amount of passion he had in his playing. A lot of guitar players, I think, when they hear Django and emulate him, they just want to emulate his speed. But you listen to old Django records, and he was playing with such great sense of melody and expression, his use of vibrato and the way he bends notes. It's very passionate music."
