Django in June

About Our Concerts & Co-Productions

Thanks for your interest in our offerings for the general public at Django in June this year. We'll kick things off as we have for the last several years, on Wednesday, June 19, with live music and a film at Amherst Cinema. (You find more on that at the bottom of this page.) That same night, Tom Reney will feature Gypsy jazz on Jazz a la Mode on WFCR.

Then on the weekend please join us for either or both of our concerts. We're excited to announce that in 2013, for the first time, those concerts will be held not at Helen Hills Hills Chapel (as they have been for the last decade) but at the historic Academy of Music Theater in downtown Northampton.

Below we'll provide you with an introduction to the artists who will headline each of the evening concerts. But here's the reality: no one—not me, not the artists, no one—knows exactly who you are going to see in what combination on either of these nights. Here's how it works: Django in June is first and foremost a music camp (that would be, what else, Django Camp). From Monday on, over 150 musicians from all over North America and beyond will have been studying, jamming and generally immersing themselves in this music on the Smith campus day and night. They are drawn here mostly by the quality of the artists we bring on board to coach, teach and inspire them. You can see a full roster of them on the Staff and Artists page of this web site.

Over the course of the week, those same artists are working together, jamming with one another, in some cases getting to know each other for the first time. And little by little the weekend concerts start to take shape. By several hours before the show we'll have a plan, but not much sooner!

So by all means, have a look at whom we've invited to headline our concerts this year. But know that by showtime we'll have much more in store, including combinations of artists who may never meet again.

Friday June 21: Adrien Moignard and Gonzalo Bergara.

Academy of Music Theater , Northampton. 7:30.
Tickets $24 advance / $28 door through the Academy of Music box office.

Those of us who were here for Django Camp in 2008 no doubt carry the image—captured in the photo to the left—of two young guitar wizards playfully having it out in the shady courtyard of the dorms we used that year. The curly haired kid in the foreground is Adrien Moignard who was here that year as featured soloist with Ensemble Zaiti; to his left in the striped pants is Gonzalo Bergara. (Between them is the great rhythm guitarist Mathieu Chatelain.) I may be wrong, but I think it was at our event that these two met for the first time. They have been good friends and musical sparring partners ever since.

I first encountered Adrien in 2003 when he started making waves in the campgrounds of the International Django Reinhardt Festival in Samois-sur-Seine, France. He was 18 years old at the time, largely unknown, and already demonstrating the sort of talent that could make a mere mortal toss his guitar in the campfire and sulk on home. I resisted that temptation and, instead, came back and started Django in June.

Since that time Adrien has gone from being a youthful sensation to being one of the very best and most sought-after guitarists on the Parisian Gypsy jazz scene. He has been featured on all the Selmer 607 releases, which claim to introduce a new generation of Gypsy Swing virtuosos to the wider public. In this case the marketing hype is accurate; the talent displayed on these disks is staggering to anyone who ever laid a finger near a fret. And yet even among this array of bright lights, Adrien shines.

Among his many other projects in 2012, Adrien recorded a duo CD with Gonzalo Bergara (to be released in 2013.) If you've been attending Django in June's concerts over the past 5 years, that name should be ringing a bell for you. Born and raised in Argentina, Gonzalo now splits his time between his home country, California and the road. We played host to the full Gonzalo Bergara Quartet several years ago, but almost every year he plays a major role in our concerts. That's because he's really good: as a composer, as a technician, as an improvising musician who can take any hot potato you toss his way and return it even hotter—and buttered, with garnish.

We can't recreate that first leafy-green encounter of Adrien and Gonzalo, but we can invite them to show us where their friendship has taken them since. And so we do...and invite you to join us too.

Adrien and Gonzalo (courtesy Patrus53): Django's Tiger

 

 

Saturday June 22: Tcha Limberger, with Robin Nolan and other special guests.

Academy of Music Theater , Northampton. 7:30.
Tickets $24 advance / $28 door through the Academy of Music box office.

Django in June, as an event, is wholly devoted to the Gypsy jazz tradition. This genre is not well understood by musicians or over-exposed to audiences in the US so it seems entirely justified that we carve out a time and place, at least once a year, where both can get their fill. That time is upon us, this is the place, and that is our intention.

The only wee problem with this plan is that some of the finest artists among us are the hardest to pigeon-hole. So we are sometimes faced with the option of either excluding them on account of their very genius, or tossing our marketing materials out the window and allowing them to do with us as they wish. This year, in the case of Tcha Limberger, we choose the latter course. I for one just want to see him perform.

Not that Tcha doesn't have his Gypsy jazz bona fides in order. Au contraire! His grandfather, the Belgian violinist Piotto Limberger, was a contemporary of Django's and so among the 1st generation of performers to play Hot Club repertoire with a Gypsy twist. Tcha's professional career in music began as a clarinetist in the family orchestra that bore grandpa's name, The Piotto's. His father, Vivi Limberger, was a member of the now-legendary Gypsy jazz ensemble, Waso, with Fapy Lafertin and Koen De Cauter, and it was they who tutored Tcha on Django-style guitar. He's also a brilliant, if unconventional, swing violinist. So if you want legit Gypsy jazz, Tcha is triple threat. Here are samplings of two of them:

But I can't promise you he won't stray beyond the yellow lines of tradition by sharing some of his intimate knowledge of Hungarian or Transylvanian folk music. Or singing a Romanie ballad. Or, I don't know, performing Frere Jacques in the style of Tuvan throat singers. With Tcha, you never know what language is going to come out of his mouth, what instrument he'll pick up, what style of music he'll treat you to next. All you know for sure is that it will in fact be just that: a treat.

Tcha will no doubt perform with a number of the artists on our Django Camp roster over the course of the evening, but one pairing you can count on is a duo with Robin Nolan. Robin has a special place in our hearts at Django in June: it was the Robin Nolan Trio who helped us launch this event in 2003—then just a one-day affair—with a workshop and performance. It's only fitting that he should be here to help us celebrate our 10th anniversary.

From his adopted home in Amsterdam, Robin has been a central figure in this latest Great Awakening to the Gypst jazz tradition, leaving his mark on players and audiences alike through his excellent instructional materials, workshops, recordings and touring. In the video below from DjangoFest Northwest you get a taste for the spontaneity, humor and sophistication these two seasoned performers will bring to the stage, to you.

Tcha Limberger and Robin Nolan: Ma Premiere Guitare, DjangoFest Northwest 2012

 

 

 

 

Wednesday June 19, Movie & Music at Amherst Cinema

Whose Is This Song? With introductory live music by Tcha Limberger and Sergiu Popa.
Come for the music at 7:30. Film follows. $6.50 for members / $10 general admission. Tickets available through Amherst Cinema.

In what has become a popular annual offering, Amherst Cinema will again participate in Django in June this year by hosting a film preceded by live music performed by artists in town for our weeklong event. This year's film, Whose Is This Song?, has nothing to do with the Gypsy jazz tradition per se. But it has everything to do with the way music has the power to bind us to one another—and divide us. Since two of the artists on our staff this year, Tcha Limberger and Sergiu Popa, have deep musical roots in the Balkans where the film takes place, they seem a great fit for this fascinating documentary.

In her search for the true origins of a haunting melody, the filmmaker Adela Peeva travels to Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria. The trip is filled with humor, suspense, tragedy and surprise as each country's citizens passionately claim the song to be their own and can even furnish elaborate histories for its origins.

The tune emerges again and again in different forms: as a love song, a religious hymn, a revolutionary anthem, and even a military march. The powerful emotions and stubborn nationalism raised by one song seem at times comical and other times, eerily telling. In a region besieged by ethnic hatred and war, what begins as a light-hearted investigation ends as a sociological and historical exploration of the deep misunderstandings between the people of the Balkans.

Preview: Whose Is This Song?

That same evening, Tom Reney will be featuring an hour of Gypsy jazz starting at 8 pm on his Jazz a la Mode on 88.5 FM, WFCR. Tune in for select tracks from the masters of this tradition—including, of course, Django Reinhardt—as well as a sneak preview of the artists you can see in concert over the weekend.

 

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