Saturday, October 18, 2003
A Direct Line to Django & Stephane
Thanks to Zipf's Law, you can hear in-f*ing-credible music in intimate little rooms. SMART Person Francois Rouseau emailed me last Thursday to say he's coming to Montclair NJ from Montreal for a weekend of gypsy jazz with Parisian guitarist Patrick Saussois, and Vitali Imereli, a Georgian violin player. (Imereli is from the Georgia near Russia, not the one near Alabama.)
We arrived in the middle of Friday's first set. The club had a dozen or fifteel people in the audience -- not good for a Friday night at 10:00 PM. Saussois was picking a complex Gypsy melody on his guitar, playing left handed with the high strings on top. Rouseau was chunk, chunk, chunking away behind him, driving an inspired rhythm. Then Imarelli stepped up and as he leaned into his violin I found it hard to catch my breath. Whew.
Imereli used to play with Grapelli. In the break, Saussois told me was born in '54, the year after Django died, but he was a band-mate with Babik Reinhardt, Django's son. The music was a direct channel. In my memory, there's a small handful of musical miracles that I cherish -- last night now joins this set. You don't need to go to no stinkin stadium to hear the most awesome music.
Trumpets is a real-thing jazz club. The club owner sat in on chromatic harmonica with Saussois, Imereli and Rouseau on a couple numbers -- he was good. As we were leaving, around midnight, the musicians were arriving from their gigs, with their guitars over their back and their trumpet cases under their arm. Was the third set awesome? (Did the Yankees beat the Sox?)
Francois Rouseau's day job is at Voiceage, which provides codecs and middleware for VoIP and audio Internet apps. Thanks Francois! We'd have never known without you!
We arrived in the middle of Friday's first set. The club had a dozen or fifteel people in the audience -- not good for a Friday night at 10:00 PM. Saussois was picking a complex Gypsy melody on his guitar, playing left handed with the high strings on top. Rouseau was chunk, chunk, chunking away behind him, driving an inspired rhythm. Then Imarelli stepped up and as he leaned into his violin I found it hard to catch my breath. Whew.
Imereli used to play with Grapelli. In the break, Saussois told me was born in '54, the year after Django died, but he was a band-mate with Babik Reinhardt, Django's son. The music was a direct channel. In my memory, there's a small handful of musical miracles that I cherish -- last night now joins this set. You don't need to go to no stinkin stadium to hear the most awesome music.
Trumpets is a real-thing jazz club. The club owner sat in on chromatic harmonica with Saussois, Imereli and Rouseau on a couple numbers -- he was good. As we were leaving, around midnight, the musicians were arriving from their gigs, with their guitars over their back and their trumpet cases under their arm. Was the third set awesome? (Did the Yankees beat the Sox?)
Francois Rouseau's day job is at Voiceage, which provides codecs and middleware for VoIP and audio Internet apps. Thanks Francois! We'd have never known without you!
Comments:
Post a Comment
