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Jimi Hendrix led a group called A Band of Gypsies. This quartet of Paris-based Gypsy guitarists is the real thing: Steeve LaFonte (left channel), Yorgui Loeffler (center), Chriss Campion (right channel) and bassist Gino Roman. They came together to reverently revive the always swinging legacy of the great Belgian-Gitano Django Reinhardt, and update his music with new twenty-first century inventions and dimensions.

Of course, since the death of Django Reinhardt, Gypsy jazz has never ceased to evolve, writes Michel Mercier in the CD liner notes. The musicians that play on this album have decided to keep in mind the essence of its brilliant creator: a unique capacity to tell a story with music, an unquenchable thirst to play for the mere pleasure of playing, an ingenious style that never sacrificed emotion or sensitivity for the sake of technique. To achieve this, these four musicians have spent two full months together in Paris, playing music, working and enjoying Parisian nights.

The fruit of their efforts is aurally evident on this magnificent, fourteen-track masterpiece that was the brainchild of Campion. Of course, the maestro Reinhardt s compositions from the thirties are featured, including, the Gallo-bop paced Nuits de Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Pêche à la mouche, and the locomotive Rythme future. Other compositions from the swing era the Eddie Durham chestnut Topsy, the Harlem Globetrotters theme song Sweet Georgia Brown, and the Isham Jones/Gus Khan number. I'll See You in My Dreams, highlight the foursome s plectro-centric pulsations the span from the Mediterranean to Manhattan, along with riveting and romantic renditions of Michel Legrand s score for Jacques Demy s 1964 musical film, Les parapluies de Cherbourg, and Chick Corea s 1986 pop-fusion ditty, Got A Match, from his Elektric Band LP. Roman s Romano is an Afro-Cuban/bossa nova type of Gypsy jazz that could lead to the birth of a new genre.