Biréli Lagrène

Biréli Lagrène, a French guitarist of considerable renown, has earned acclaim for his rich integration of swinging jazz, post-bop, and fusion. The thirteen-year-old prodigy first appeared on Routes to Django: Live in 1980 and was soon hailed as a successor to the Belgian-born Romani guitarist Django Reinhardt. He later expanded his palette to include Wes Montgomery, Larry Coryell, and Jimi Hendrix, as heard on Inferno in 1988 and Electric Side in 2008, yet he has continued to champion both straight-ahead jazz and Reinhardt-inspired traditions on Standards in 1992, Storyteller in 2018, and Biréli Lagrène Plays Loulou Gasté in 2024.

Born into a Romani family on September 4, 1966, in Saverne, Alsace, France, Lagrène received his first guitar instruction near the age of four from a father and grandfather who were themselves established players. Under his father’s guidance he immersed himself in the music of Django Reinhardt along with recordings by violinist Stéphane Grappelli and the Hot Club of France. By age seven he already performed with notable skill, and his profile rose throughout the 1970s after he received an award at a Strasbourg festival in 1978 and appeared on television during a gypsy jazz festival broadcast. He issued his solo debut, Routes to Django: Live, in 1981; the studio follow-up Fifteen arrived the next year and again spotlighted Reinhardt compositions alongside jazz standards.

In his late teens Lagrène embraced the electric guitar and absorbed the approaches of Wes Montgomery, John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, and Jimi Hendrix. He demonstrated this broadened vocabulary at the 1984 Django Reinhardt Tribute at Fat Tuesdays in New York, then signed with Blue Note and released the genre-blending Inferno in 1988, Foreign Affairs in 1989, and Acoustic Moments in 1990. The straight-ahead Standards, recorded with bassist Niels Pedersen and drummer Andre Ceccarelli, appeared in 1992.

My Favorite Django in 1995 marked a return to traditional jazz and swing, while subsequent years brought occasional fusion excursions alongside continued devotion to Reinhardt, straight-ahead jazz, and bop. Live appearances included a 1994 concert at Marciac and a 1997 engagement at New York’s Blue Note alongside Larry Coryell and Billy Cobham. In 1998 he delivered the Frank Sinatra tribute Old Blues Eyes with pianist Maurice Vander, bassist Chris Minh Doky, and drummer Ceccarelli.

Gypsy Project in 2002 again found Lagrène revisiting Reinhardt and the classic jazz repertoire, a direction pursued on Move in 2005, Djangology in 2006, and Just the Way You Are in 2007. Electric Side, leaning once more toward fusion, followed in 2008. That year he also formed Gipsi Trio with guitarist Hono Winterstein and bassist Diego Imbert, and he issued his own Summertime. In 2012 he recorded the straight-ahead set Mouvements for Universal with saxophonist Franck Wolf, drummer Jean-Marc Robin, and Hammond organist Jean-Yves Jung. The same year he joined violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and bassist Stanley Clarke for the violinist’s fiftieth-anniversary celebration; their onstage rapport led to the 2015 Impulse! album D-Stringz.

Storyteller, featuring bassist Larry Grenadier and percussionist Mino Cinélu, appeared in 2018. A collection of standards titled Solo Suites followed in 2022, succeeded a year later by Biréli Lagrène Plays Loulou Gasté, which interprets the catalog of French composer Loulou Gasté, among them the 1956 classic “Feelings (Pour Toi).”