Nuages de Jazz

Bireli Lagrène and Dorado Schmitt (guitar and violin) are the two giants of the "French manouche jazz", created by the great Django Reinhardt. They are playing on this album Django's most known title: Nuages (the singer is Olivier Kirsch). They are surrounded by the best young jazz musicians in France. Bireli Lagrène was born on in Saverne, Alsace, France, into a Romani family and community. His father and grandfather were guitarists, and he was raised in the gypsy guitar tradition. He started playing at age four or five and by seven was improvising jazz in a style similar to Django Reinhardt's, whom his father admired and wanted his sons to emulate. In 1980, while in his early teens, he recorded his first album, Routes to Django: Live at the Krokodil (Jazzpoint, 1981). Dorado Schmitt was born in Saint-Avold, Lorraine, France on May 29, 1957. He started playing guitar at the age of seven with his father as his teacher. His father also introduced him to violin. Schmitt composed his own pieces, incorporating improvisation and challenging techniques, among which Bossa Dorado which has become a jazz standard. He eventually became as comfortable with swing and gypsy waltz as with bossa nova and flamenco. He established the Dorado Trio in 1978 with Gino Reinhardt on double bass and Hono Winterstein on rhythm guitar. Later, guitarist Claudio Favari joined the group and performed at the Burghausen Jazz Festival in 1983. He recorded the albums Hommage a la Romenes and in 1984 Notre Histoire. The first remained a jazz best-seller for several weeks in Germany