Popular Austin bands Paris 49, Django’s Moustache and the Dave Biller Combo will join Angelo Debarre of Paris, the Robin Nolan Trio from Amsterdam, Holland; and U.S. bands, the John Jorgenson Quintet of Nashville, and The Hot Club of San Diego for shows at the Texas Union Theater and the Cactus Café on the University of Texas campus.

“With incredible performers such as Angelo Debarre flying in from Europe for the occasion, this promises to be a strong start to what I hope will be an annual music event in Austin,” said Olivier Giraud, founder of Paris 49. “Django Reinhardt’s music has had a great impact on the Austin music scene in the past few years, and national interest has spawned annual Gypsy Jazz festivals in San Francisco, New York, Seattle and Chicago. I think we can make Austin’s festival ultra-special. The set at the Union Theater will be like nothing seen before, something like a virtual Gypsy camp with lots of flowers: simple but unforgettable.”
By Jerry Mahoney

Information about the life and influence of Django Reinhardt is available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Reinhardt

JAZZ MANOUCHE (GYPSY JAZZ) - Michael Simmons of the Fretboard Journal

Once you hear it you can’t forget it. It is sophisticated, yet it has a sentimental quality. It is delicate, but the rhythms are played at breakneck speed. It has a swinging , jazzy feel but many of the songs are waltzes. It is Gypsy Jazz, and the popularity of this sometimes flamboyant, sometimes melancholic guitar music is growing around the world.

Aficionados around the world are forming bands, called Hot Clubs in honor of Django Reinhardt’s famous Quintet of the Hot Club of France. There are Hot Clubs in Norway, Tokyo, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and probably every country where the guitar is played.

It is through the playing of the brilliant Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt that most people are introduced to jazz manouche, as they call the style in its birthplace, France. Reinhardt is rightly hailed as one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived, but many people praising his accomplishments as a guitarist tend to overlook his roots in Gypsy culture and the musically fertile, polyglot Paris of the 1920s. Reinhardt and his companions used all these elements, along with American jazz, to create this new music, but the Gypsy heritage seems to be the most important ingredient.

In Paris, a city that loves songs, the Gypsies found a ready home. From the roughest dives to the most elegant cafes, the music of the city was played by Gypsies. One of the styles they took up with a special fondness was the musette waltz, a dance music that came to Paris from Auvergne in the 1860s. It was while playing this style of music that the young Django Reinhardt was first noticed. In 1930 Django heard some records that changed his life.

After hearing Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, Django realized he had heard the music he would play for the rest of his life. In the summer of 1934 while playing for tea dances at the Hotel Claridge in Paris, Reinhardt started jamming with a violinist named Stephane Grappelli. Soon the Quintet of the Hot Club of France was born. Before long, the violin of Stephane Grappelli and the guitar of Django Reinhardt were being heard around the world. The rest is history.....