Jazz Articles about Pearl Django

About Pearl Django

Album Review

Pearl Django's very name should give you a pretty strong clue about where the group derives most of its influence. Indeed, the band's eighth release, Chasing Shadows, continues to mine the fertile territory laid by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. As always, the playing is expert, with a palpable sense of joy evident in the exploration of music these players obviously love.

A melancholy mood pervaded the recording of Chasing Shadows, owing to the death of founding member ...

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Interview

Pearl Django: A Decade of 'Hot Club' Jazz

by Jason West
January 15, 2004

It’s a crisp, autumn evening on the streets of Fremont, but inside Bouchee restaurant it’s toasty warm with standing room only to hear Pearl Django perform barn-burning gypsy jazz tunes, medium-swing melodies and lush string ballads—all of which recall the era of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli, when post-war Europe was rapidly adopting jazz into it’s musical vocabulary.

Pearl Django features guitarists Neil Andersson, Dudley Hill and Greg Ruby, double-bassist Rick Leppanen, and Michael Gray on violin. Their quintet is ...