BRATTLEBORO — The Gonzalo Bergarra Quartet will perform at the Vermont Jazz Center (VJC) in the “Hot Jazz for Warm Homes” Winter Benefit Concert, which will assist Windham County families and individuals struggling with unmet fuel assistance needs.
The performance will take place on Saturday, March 10 at 8 p.m. at the VJC's performance space at 72 Cotton Mill Hill.
Proceeds will be donated to Southeastern Vermont Community Action (SEVCA) and the Windham County Heat Fund, both of which provide emergency fuel assistance to low-income households.
The quartet includes Gonzalo Bergarra and Jeff Radaich, guitars, Leah Zeger, violin and Brian Netzley, upright bass.
Gypsy jazz is a style of music made famous in the 1930s by the enigmatic, Belgian Romani Django Reinhardt.
“The life of this brilliant guitarist is the source of hundreds of colorful, legendary stories, but simply put, Reinhardt is a highly-regarded, major figure in the history of jazz,” the VJC writes in a press release.
“His personal developments in this nascent music established a style that is still being re-created around the world,” it continues. “He was able to accomplish this with only three fully functional fingers in his left hand.”
In 1946, Reinhardt traveled to the United States, where he performed two nights at Carnegie Hall and appeared as a guest artist with Duke Ellington. He also recorded and performed with jazz legends Rex Stewart, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Dizzy Gillespie.
“Gypsy jazz is very accessible and uplifting; it typically uses the melody of a given song as inspiration for virtuosic, improvisational forays over a steady, driving beat,” the Jazz Center writes.
According to the center, the standard repertoire of Gypsy jazz includes popular songs of the 1920s and 1930s made famous by Reinhardt with violinist Stephan Grappelli during their years as the Quintette du Hot Club de France. It includes such melodies as “How High the Moon,” “Night and Day,” “Honeysuckle Rose,” and ballads like Hoagy Carmichael's “Stardust.”
Reinhardt was also a composer, and several of his songs - including “Djangology,” “Minor Swing,” and “Nuages” - have become jazz standards.
The typical instrumentation of Gypsy jazz, emulated in Bergarra's quartet, is two guitars (lead and rhythm), violin, and acoustic bass. Its beat is propelled by la pompe - a unique strumming technique - of the rhythm guitar and the driving quarter-note swing of the acoustic bass, its soaring, polyphonic melodies are a delicate mesh created by the simultaneous, complementary lines of the lead guitar and violin.
Native Argentinean Gonzalo Bergara is a guitar virtuoso who has forged his own style of progressive Gypsy jazz.
While heavily influenced by Reinhardt and the Hot Club of France, Bergara's “blazing quartet” (JazzTimes) performs meticulous arrangements of standards from the Gypsy Jazz canon as well as originals. Bergara's latest album, Simplicated, was released in 2011.
Organizers say that the money raised from Hot Jazz for Warm Homes is especially critical this year, in light of funding cuts to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) at the federal level, in spite of the fact that the demand for fuel assistance his risen dramatically.
Tickets are $20 or $15 for students with valid ID, with 100 percent of the proceeds divided between SEVCA and the Emergency Heat Fund as the two organizations best see fit. Additional donations to the cause will also be gratefully accepted.
To purchase using a credit card, visit www.vtjazz.org. Tickets can also be purchased at In the Moment in downtown Brattleboro, or can be reserved by calling the VJC ticket line at 802-254-9088.