Genius of gypsy style guitar playing Django Reinhardtand the violinist Stephane Grappelli made joyful music which truly swung and Grappelli went on to enjoy a long and distinguished career stretching over sixty years in a wide variety of musical settings. The Quintette itself became popular in London before the war and Grappelli decided to stay, recording with his Hot Four, with Hatchett’s Swingtette, named after the famous nightclub, with full orchestra and later with Sir Yehudi Menuhin, the classical violinist. This album includes several favourite compositions "I Found A New Baby", "Alabamy Bound", "Viper's Dream", "Dinah", "I Saw Stars" and "Body & Soul".
Stephane Grappelli and guitarist Diz Disley lead this elegant Hot Club session from 1975. Nice variety of compositions without ever leaving the style.
For twenty years Stephane Grappelli resisted repeated attempts to reconstitute the old Quintette - resisted because there was only one Django, could never be another, and the Quintette without Django would be at least as unthinkable as the Venuti Blue Four without Eddie Lang. Finally it was the persistence and perception of a Canadian-born graphic artist and acoustic guitarist Diz Disley, that persuaded Stephane to revive the two guitars/string bass rhythm section. Since then, Stephane Grappelli and the Diz Disley Trio have been playing mostly to packed houses in Britain, Europe, America and Australia and building a huge following for their special sound.
Violinist Stéphane Grappelli (1908-1997) was honored in 1998 with this 22-track tribute slapped together by the Giants of Jazz label. Covering a time span from September 30, 1935, to January 21, 1943, this pleasant potpourri of classic continental swing sessions samples his early Hot Club of France recordings and follows the fiddler into temporary wartime exile as he collaborated with young George Shearing and a talented array of British jazz musicians. The collection opens with two delicious duets with Django Reinhardt, then shuffles together recordings made in Paris and London that were released under Grappelli's name. The Hot Four (heard performing W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" in 1935) actually added up to a quintet as the violinist interacted with bassist Louis Vola and three guitarists: Django and Joseph Reinhardt and Pierre Ferret…
These two 1975-1976 LPs reunited on 1 CD are to say the least very enjoyable. This is not the usual songbook devoted to the composer. Grappelli manages to play with those Porter tunes and ends up winning in the process to make them sounds his own with his instrument. It's a good example of the way a musician can pay tribute to a composer and let his personnality express his true musicianship, without losing grip of the general focus of the project.
Yehudi Menuhin was a dazzling virtuoso from childhood who became a key humanitarian in addition to being a celebrated concert artist.
The legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin was the eldest child of Russian-born Hebrew scholars who met in Palestine, emigrated to New York City, and moved to San Francisco soon after their son's birth. After just three years of violin study, Yehudi made a legendary debut at age seven with the local symphony. His Carnegie Hall debut three years later, in the Beethoven Violin Concerto, garnered praise that likened him to Mozart as a prodigy, whereupon the family (which now included sisters Hephzibah and Yaltah) lived gypsy-like in hotels wherever Yehudi was engaged at enormous fees…
The fifth in a series of recorded meetings between Stephane Grappelli and Yehudi Menuhin is one of the more disappointing efforts. Although Nelson Riddle was a renowned arranger, the arrangements of memorable songs from the 1930s (most of which were strongly associated with Fred Astaire's performances in films) by the likes of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Vincent Youmans lean more toward easy listening and are frequently handicapped by the inclusion of a bland electric piano. The jazz violinist switches to piano for both of his original compositions, which were written to feature Menuhin's violin. There's nothing wrong with the playing of either Grappelli or Menuhin, and bassist Niels Pedersen has several excellent solos, but one hearing is probably enough for even the most ardent fans of Stephane Grappelli.
Violinist Stephane Grappelli will forever be remembered as musical partner to the immortal Django Reinhardt - certainly not a bad thing, except that it conveniently overlooks the nearly half-century's worth of music that Grappelli made without the Gypsy guitar great. When this one-hour performance was recorded in 1989, the elegant, urbane Frenchman was already in his 80s, but he had lost none of his exceptional technique and flair. He's joined here by two exceptional guitarists (Martin Taylor and Marc Fosset) and a bassist; the lineup is much like that of the original Reinhardt-Grappelli Hot Club quintet, and they even play some of that group's standard material ("Honeysuckle Rose," "Daphne"), along with more modern fare like Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" and Chick Corea's "Armando's Rhumba"…
This is the first of Stephane Grappelli's sessions as a leader during the 1950s to be issued on CD, which is rather surprising given the availability of his work from the last two decades of his life. Grappelli is heard exclusively in a quartet with pianist Maurice Vander, bassist Pierre Michelot, and drummer Baptiste Reilles, except for two takes of "Someone to Watch Over Me," when Vander makes an ill-advised switch to harpsichord. The violinist is not nearly as aggressive as he would become in the decades to follow, seemingly concentrating more on achieving a beautiful tone than dazzling listeners with his considerable abilities as an improviser…