Guitarist Stephane Wrembel presents the Django a Gogo festival, honoring Django Reinhardt, in Maplewood and New York, March 1-6.
This year’s Django a Gogo festival, celebrating the music of gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, will include two concerts at The Woodland in Maplewood.
Django a Gogo organizer Stéphane Wrembel — who is widely recognized as one the world’s leading Reinhardt-style guitarists and has released five albums under the name “The Django Experiment” — will lead a show titled “The Django Experiment” at the Woodland, March 3 at 8 p.m. Other performers will include violinist Daisy Castro, guitarists Josh Kaye, Raphaël Faÿs, Sébastien Félix and Laurent Hestin, saxophonist and clarinetist Nick Driscoll, drummer Nick Anderson and bassist Ari Folman-Cohen.
Then, March 4 at 8 p.m., The Woodland will host a concert titled “Django New Orleans” that will merge New Orleans and gypsy jazz musical traditions. Performers will include Wrembel along with New Orleans-based artists Russell Welch on guitar and Aurora Nealand on saxophone and vocals, plus tuba player Joe Correia, drummer Scott Kettner, washboard player David Langlois and others.
There also will be two New York Django a Gogo shows. Wrembel, Faÿs, Félix, Hestin, Welch, Nealand, Langlois, Anderson, Folman-Cohen and guitarist Thor Jensen will perform at The Town Hall in Manhattan, March 5 at 8 p.m. and Barbès in Brooklyn will host a jam session, March 6 at 6 p.m.
In addition, there will be a guitar camp all week, starting March 1, at various Maplewood residences and venues, with instruction by Wrembel and many of the concert performers.
“The whole thing is to restart that spirit of community, that spirit of playing,” Wrembel said last year.
Django a Gogo has been an annual event since 2003 and kept going during the pandemic, with smaller, modified versions in late 2020 and the summer of 2021. This year’s festival will include the first Django a Gogo concert at The Town Hall since April 2019.
For information, visit djangoagogo.com.
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