About
About – Jazzmanouche.de has been founded by guitarist Bertino Rodmann in 2007. Born 1958 into an artistic Family (his granduncle has been a violin-player in South-France, his mother has been a very talented painter), Bertino started to play the guitar at the age of just 13.
In the following decades he autodidactically tought himself playing music by listening to records and “try-and-error”-learning. Just after many years of playing he started learning to read and write music as well.
He has been playing in countless Live-Bands and working in recording-studios collecting lots of experiences. Mainly in Blues-, Rock- and Pop-Bands, before just in 1981 he first listened to the music of Django Reinhardt and the Quintette du Hot Club de France at a friends house and has become infected by this musicstyle ever since.
Bertino began to adapt and learn to play this style, the same way he had learned playing music before. Just by listening to the records, trying to gain access to certain melodies, chords or solos.
Ever since these days in early 1980ies the music of Gypsies, Manouches, Sinti and Roma has become a very important part of his life.
It was in 1982 when he founded the “Alex Rodmann Group” with two other friends interested in the style. With this Band they played many concerts in Germany, France and Corse, even for Manouches and german relatives of the Reinhardt-family in south-Germany. In 1985 their bass-player Billy Bilek died all of a sudden by heart-attack and after that the band split up.
But the love and devotion to this music never faded away, even if Bertino started to work in the field of recording and producing completely other styles of music much more intensive in the following years.
In 2004 Bertino decided to start his comeback to the style and founded his own band “Coeur du Bois” playing Gypsy-Swing, Jazz-Manouche, Jazz, Valses and Bossa – all in the style of the “Quintette du Hot Club de France“, above anything else ever since.
Since a couple of years before Bertino had the idea to create a website like “Jazzmanouche.de”. His love for old Gypsyjazz-guitars, especially the famous Selmer, Busato and Favino-Guitars finally made him take action and starting to build up the JM-Guitar-Gallery to have an archive for all these nice old guitars. Finally he created the website Jazz-Manouche.de for that purpose.
Meanwhile JazzManouche.de has become one of the most detailed websites on the net with lots of background-information all about Jazz-Manouche, Gypsyjazz and Django Reinhardt and the music of the Sinti and Roma, as well as JM-history of the style and the guitars.
Due to many inquiries for Lessons on Gypsy-Jazz and of his own participation on masterclasses of famous Gypsy-Players like Romane (2007 in Lyon/France), with Stochelo Rosenberg (2008 in Augsburg/Germany) and Angelo DeBarre (2009 in Samois/France), Bertino decided to organize his own masterclasses in the style to transmit his own knowledge to others. His Masterclass for Gypsyjazz-Guitar now take place almost half-annually.
Bertino is working and playing always in deepest respect to the great work of the Manouche-guitarrists who invented the style – grandmaster Django Reinhardt in first place, but also all the other players that were to develop the style until today.
In 2008 he started to put together all his knowledge into his own first workshop-series “Masterclass for Gypsyjazzguitar”, which is beeing held occasionly for different levels.
In the following years since 2009 Bertino started to play more and more alongside famous Gypsyplayers such as great guitarrist Jordan Weiss (a cousin of the famous Haennsche Weiss), Lulo Reinhardt (german grandnephew of Django Reinhardt), belgian Gypsyjazz-Grandmaestro and legend Fapy Lafertin, Robin Nolan and others more.
Above all that Bertino has put down his knowledge in the style into his first methodbook “Gypsyjazz Guitar – a tribute to Gypsyjazz“, which has been released in October 2011 in german, as well as in english in autumn 2013 with Alfred Music Publishing, Cologne (ISBN-10: 3-933136-86-5), available here.
The second Edition is in the making and expected to be released soon.