Jean Reinhardt, known by his Romani nickname Django, was a Belgian-born Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most significant exponents.
George Washington Benson is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He began his professional career at the age of 19 as a jazz guitarist.
Stéphane Grappelli was a French-Italian jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around the world well into his eighties.
Kenneth Earl Burrell is an American jazz guitarist known for his work on numerous top jazz labels: Prestige, Blue Note, Verve, CTI, Muse, and Concord. His collaborations with Jimmy Smith were notable, and produced the 1965 Billboard Top Twenty hit Verve album Organ Grinder Swing. He has cited jazz guitarists Charlie Christian, Oscar Moore, and Django Reinhardt as influences, along with blues guitarists T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters.
Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans, known professionally as Toots Thielemans, was a Belgian jazz musician. He was mostly known for his chromatic harmonica playing, as well as his guitar, whistling skills, and composing. According to jazz historian Ted Gioia, his most important contribution was in "championing the humble harmonica", which Thielemans made into a "legitimate voice in jazz". He eventually became the "preeminent" jazz harmonica player.
The Rosenberg Trio is a Dutch jazz band consisting of lead guitarist Stochelo Rosenberg, rhythm guitarist Nous'che Rosenberg and bassist Nonnie Rosenberg. The band is influenced by Django Reinhardt, the gypsy jazz guitarist of the 1930s.
Biréli Lagrène is a French jazz guitarist who came to prominence in the 1980s for his Django Reinhardt–influenced style. He often performs in swing, jazz fusion, and post-bop styles.
Gypsy jazz is a style of small-group jazz originating from the Romani guitarist Jean "Django" Reinhardt (1910–53), in conjunction with the French swing violinist Stéphane Grappelli (1908–97), as expressed in their group the Quintette du Hot Club de France. Because its origins are in France, Reinhardt was from the Manouche clan, and the style has remained popular amongst the Manouche, gypsy jazz is often called by the French name "jazz manouche", or alternatively, "manouche jazz" in English language sources. Some scholars have noted that the style was not named manouche until the late 1960s; the name "gypsy jazz" began to be used around the late 1990s.
Christian Escoudé is a French Gypsy jazz guitarist.
Jean-Jacques "Babik" Reinhardt was a guitarist and the younger son of gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt by Django's second wife, Naguine. His elder half brother Lousson, who was Django's son by his first wife, Bella, was also a guitarist, but the two grew up in different families and rarely met. He was christened Jean-Jacques but generally known by his family nickname, Babik.
Joseph "Jimmy" Rosenberg is a Dutch Sinto-Romani guitarist known for his virtuoso playing of gypsy jazz.
George Cole is an American music producer, composer, lyricist, vocalist, session musician, and guitarist. He fronts his own Gypsy jazz/Uptown Swing band and since early 2014 has been the guitarist for the David Grisman Quintet. Before his acoustic music endeavors, he played electric guitar for the pop rock band Beatnik Beatch and Big Blue Hearts. He played on Chris Isaak's platinum Forever Blue album. Cole is also a teacher, and his students include Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt of Green Day; Ethan Roberts, and Danny Jones.
Paulus Schäfer is a guitarist, composer, and arranger from the Netherlands. A member of the Dutch Sinti-Romani, he considers Django Reinhardt his idol. He has worked with Stochelo Rosenberg, Fapy Lafertin, Tim Kliphuis, Jimmy Rosenberg, Dominique Paats, Biréli Lagrène, and Andreas Öberg.
David Lyttle is a jazz drummer, record producer, composer, songwriter and record label owner from Northern Ireland. He has released three solo albums and received nominations in the MOBO Awards and Urban Music Awards.
Boulou Ferré is a French virtuoso jazz guitarist, composer, arranger, and improviser. He is the brother of Elios Ferré, also a jazz musician, with whom he has recorded widely. His repertoire includes jazz and classical music. He is considered one of the greatest contemporary musicians of the manouche tradition and has contributed to the genre through his knowledge of both jazz and classical music and his interest in the contrapuntal music of J. S. Bach.
Franz "Schnuckenack" Reinhardt was a gypsy jazz musician (violinist), composer and interpreter. He was considered the "great violin virtuoso of Sinti music." He was a German Sinto; his music was mostly published and categorized under the contemporary names gypsy jazz or "Musik deutscher Zigeuner". He "made this music accessible to a broad public" and made the most significant contribution to the presentation of gypsy music and jazz in Germany into a concert form. He was the pioneer of this style of music in Germany and directly or indirectly inspired many of the succeeding generation of gypsy jazz players in that country, as well as preserving on record a great many folkloric and gypsy compositions for future generations.
Häns'che Weiss was a German gypsy jazz and modern jazz guitarist in the tradition of Django Reinhardt. From 1969-1972 he played with the Schnuckenack Reinhardt Quintett, after which he made five albums with his own ensemble playing acoustic gypsy jazz along with self-composed and traditional gypsy tunes. From the early 80s to his death he played in a more mainstream/bebop jazz style with other German jazz artists including the violinist Martin Weiss, and the double bass player Vali Mayer.
Ian Cruickshank was an English electric and acoustic guitarist most associated with the blues-rock and gypsy jazz genres, also well known in the U.K. as an educator, author and columnist, record producer and record label owner, festival organiser and promoter of artists in the gypsy jazz world. He achieved some success in the 1960s in the Keef Hartley Band playing electric guitar under the pseudonym Spit James before becoming enamoured of the gypsy jazz style originated by Django Reinhardt in the 1930s and devoting almost all of his energies to educating, performing and promoting activities in this area up till his death in 2017. He published several influential books on gypsy jazz, was producer and music co-ordinator for the TV Documentary Django Legacy, was the owner of the Fret Records record label, and organised the UK Gypsy Jazz Guitar Festival annually from 1997 to 2000.
Rêve Bohème is a Danish gypsy jazz quartet established in 1998 by guitarist and singer Jens Fuglsang and guitarist Robert Pilgaard.
"Django" is a 1954 jazz standard written by John Lewis as a tribute to the Belgian-born jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. It was a signature composition of the Modern Jazz Quartet, of which Lewis was the pianist and musical director.
