Well, we had fun over the weekend at two Jazz Festival concerts, even though it’s true that the quality of the music did vary. The concert Saturday night was performed by a group that at any one time had an ever-changing number of people. Think of it as a “cast of thousands” – they added and subtracted a violin, a cello, a saxophone, a clarinet, a guitar .. well, you get the idea. The bassist, the vocalist, and the drummer were the only constants. The changes were not always successful, but the group was young and earnest, and that made it enjoyable.

Last night there were 3 musical groups that performed different types of “gypsy” music, which covered everything from traditional gypsy folk music all the way to the Django Reinhardt jazz-styled variations. While the 3 groups had a couple of members that were shared, all were more experienced and polished than the ever-morphing group Saturday night.

All the sets were enjoyable, but the best by far was Gismo Graf and his trio. Wow, was he was good. We had heard a clip of his music on YouTube and made it a point to go check him out this year. Not only does he play the music by Django Reinhardt, but he also writes his own pieces in a similar style. All that, and he’s only 19 years old. He performed last night with his trio, which includes a guy on bass and his father on second guitar. You can hear some samples on their website by clicking here. The third one listed on that site is Tiger Rag, their closing number last night.

Gismo was truly amazing to watch in person – his fingers just flew over those guitar strings. We’ll have to see when and where he’s playing in our neighborhood again so we can check him out again some day.

Anyway, that alone was worth the price of admission and then some, IMHO. A fantastic finale to our experience at this year’s Tübinger Jazz & Klassik Tage.

*****

My title today is a play on the title of another one of my “crazy Broadway show tunes”. This time it’s a song from the musical Jelly’s Last Jam, which is about the self-proclaimed “Father of Jazz”, Jelly Roll Morton.  Here’s a clip of legendary tap dancer Gregory Hines and company performing the song That’s How You Jazz.