Tatiana Eva-Marie & The Avalon Jazz Band: Django Birthday Celebration - New York City Article

Tatiana Eva-Marie & The Avalon Jazz Band:
Django Birthday Celebration
featuring guitarist Olli Soikkeli
Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola
Jazz at Lincoln Center
Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall
Broadway at 60th Street, 5th Floor
Tuesday, January 22

Almost 110 years after his birth (and nearly 70 years since the end of his tragically short life) the name and icon of Django Reinhardt continues to be a magical beacon in contemporary jazz. Not surprisingly, most of the important living Djangologists are, like The Great Man Himself, guitar players; still, there’s at least one major singer and bandleader currently based in New York who brilliantly, swingingly, and charmingly carries the Django legacy forward. Tatiana Eva-Marie, the French-Roumanian vocalist has, for the last ten years or so, consistently delighted audiences with her buoyant style and effervescent personality, all of which fit firmly into the vintage jazz manouche genre that Django pioneered. Her ongoing ensemble, the Avalon Jazz Band, echoes Django’s Quintet of the Hot Club of France as a template and thus leans heavily on guitar and violin, spotlighting two of the most impressive young players around on both instruments, Olli Soikkeli and Gabe Terracciano, respectively; still, the singer herself is always the band’s focal point. Her sets usually include a wide range of both chansons Francais and standards Americain (as well as delightful obscurities like “Take a Picture of the Moon” - thank you, Baby Rose Marie), but in honor of the birthday of the patron saint of Romani swing, it’s a sure bet that she’ll focus on a more specifically Djangocentric repertoire. (Such as, for instance, the rarely-heard lyrics to “Nuages” and “Swing 42.”)

Vocalist and leader, Tatiana Eva-Marie, violinist Gabe Terracciano, guitarist Vinny Raniolo, upright bassist Wallace Stelzer, guitarist Olli Soikkeli.

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