I had the pleasure of performing with Stephane Wrembel at the Empire Hotel last night. Stephane plays gypsy jazz guitar in the style of Django Reinhardt. As slow as Tin Pan can play a blues is how fast Stephane plays almost every dang song! Wow. It’s is an exhilarating experience to play with him in that every song is a kind of challenge. He is an amazing virtuoso of the instrument and his ideas seem almost endless. To play with him is just to commit to pouring out a string of ideas at a break neck pace. Towards the end of the gig I was beginning to feel like I could just relax and the stuff pour out of me. Afterwards I felt like I’d been talking for 16 hours straight with nothing left to say!
Both Stephan and Pascal, the bassist – also very gifted and being articulate at 90,000 mph – are native French speakers. By the end of the night my French brain had caught up to speed and I felt that I could converse without needing to translate in my mind between english and French.
The club itself is very elegant. It’s on the 12th floor of a building right across from Lincoln Center over on 63rd Street. We were inside but there is a very nice patio set up and when the Spring time rolls around again there is going to be some fun to be had in the evenings up there. It’s a stunning space. Here’s the view from the patio…
