Van Django presents Cool Yule: A Swingin' Yuletide Show on Saturday, Dec. 19, 8 p.m. at Mt. Seymour United Church, 1200 Parkgate Ave., North Vancouver. Tickets: $24/$20 at eventbrite.ca and at the door.
There's no shortage of festive concerts to take in this season, from chamber choirs to carolsinging crooners, but Van Django might just be the only act in town serving up Christmas tunes with a gypsy-jazz flavour.
The acoustic string quartet brings Cool Yule: A Swingin' Yuletide Show to North Vancouver Saturday night, capping off its 2015 holiday tour. Expect a mix of nostalgic favourites, jazz standards, sing-alongs, pop songs and classical pieces all delivered in the band's signature gypsy-jazz musical style made famous in France in the 1930s.
"It's a real mix of stuff," says violinist Cameron Wilson. "We all kind of just chipped in our own favourites and it just became this eclectic mix of songs."
Rounding out the quartet are guitarist Budge Schachte, guitarist/cellist Finn Manniche and bassist Brent Gubbels. For their Christmas tour, they've joined talents with vocalist LJ Mounteney and North Vancouver harmonica player Keith Bennett.
Songs will range from "Blue Christmas," "Baby It's Cold Outside," and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" to "Silver Bells," "What Child is This?" and selections from Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. Seasonal favourites that Wilson contributed to the set list include "Let it Snow" (played in a minor key so it sounds like a tango) and "Skating" from A Charlie Brown Christmas. "It's not heard very often so it's nice to play that live because it's a great piece," he says.
Van Django first performed a Christmas concert at Vancouver's Rogue Folk Club in 2013. Buoyed by the success of that show, they went on the road in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island in 2014 with their Van Django Bells holiday tour. Fans of this year's Cool Yule show can bring Van Django's seasonal sounds home with them the band released a Christmas album earlier this month, which was recorded back in August with Mounteney and Bennett.
"Every musician should make a Christmas record, just one," Wilson says.
Van Django formed in 1998 and released their debut album Tiptoe Trip in 2006, followed by Waltz in the Shape of a Tree. They are a Hot Club of Franceinspired ensemble. "It was kind of invented by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli back in the 1930s in France," Wilson says of the musical style they play.
"Django was a gypsy, genius, prodigy guitar player and he couldn't read music," Wilson explains. "Stephane Grappelli was this sophisticated, classically trained violinist, and when the two got together it was kind of this perfect chemistry because they created this genre of music that had never been heard before."
The pair founded an all-string jazz ensemble called the Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934. While Reinhardt died in 1953, Grappelli remained active in music into the 1990s. Wilson heard the legendary violinist in concert when he was 13 years old.
"It was one of those moments that changes your life," says Wilson, who recalls his younger self thinking "Oh, the violin can sound like this?" The instant fan began imitating Grappelli's recordings, then forged out on his own, creating music inspired by gypsyjazz.
"For me personally, it's a style of music that really suits my playing. I really like the music."
Also a composer and arranger, Wilson plays violin in the National Broadcast Orchestra, Joe Trio and The Hard Rubber Orchestra. Up next for Van Django, he says listeners can expect the group to stray slightly from their musical roots.
"We're not strictly a gypsy jazz group. We're kind of trying other things as well within that acoustic swing genre," he says.
