'Gypsy Jazz' of Legendary Django Reinhardt closes January Jazz Fest

HACKETTSTOWN — The Centenary Stage Company will wrap up their annual January Jazz Fest on Saturday, Jan. 24 at 8 p.m. in the Sitnik Theater with the music of the legendary Django Reinhardt by Fete Manouche.

The Sitnik Theater is located in the David and Carol Lackland Center on the campus of Centenary College.

Jazz Manouche — literally translated to “gypsy jazz” — is an exotic brand of swing music, born in France in the early 1930s. The Lord and Master of Jazz Manouche was Django Reinhardt, a gypsy born in Belgium in 1910. In 1934 Django began a series of recordings with a group called the Quintette of the Hot Club of France. These recordings have become the foundation for a massive group of devoted Django followers throughout the world, to whom Jazz Manouche is more than a kind of music: it’s a way of life.

Clarinetist Dan Levinson discovered Jazz Manouche while living in Paris in the early 1990s and was mesmerized. In 2004 he assembled Fête Manouche and since then has been keeping the Django legacy alive in the New York area, captivating audiences both young and young at heart. Equally at home as both leader and sideman, Dan's roster of musical associates includes such names as Mel Tormé, Wynton Marsalis and Dick Hyman. He has performed in Brazil with filmmaker Woody Allen's band, as well as in Japan, Iceland, Latvia, and eighteen European countries.

From 1990 to 2002 Dan toured with singer/guitarist Leon Redbone. Since 1993 he has been a member of Vince Giordano's Nighthawks, New York's preeminent 1920s orchestra, with whom he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio program.

Dan's successful Benny Goodman tributes have been presented both on the East Coast with James Langton's New York All-Star Big Band and throughout Germany with Andrej Hermlin's Swing Dance Orchestra. He has recorded more than 100 CDs, including nine under his own name. Dan can be heard on the soundtracks to the films "The Cat's Meow," "Ghost World," "The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond," and Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator," as well as the Grammy Award-winning HBO television series "Boardwalk Empire."

Tickets for Fete Manouche are $22.50 in advance for adults and $15 for children under 12. Tickets may be purchased on line at centenarystageco.org, by calling the box office at 908-979–0900 or in person at the box office directly. The box office is open Monday through Friday from 1 to 5 p.m. and two hours prior to all performance times. The box office is located in the David and Carol Lackland Center on the campus of Centenary College at 715 Grand Ave. Hackettstown. All ticket orders for concerts, jazz and special events increase $5 on the day of the performance. Fete Manouche is sponsored in part by Bea Nally’s Irish Pub in Hackettstown.