Biréli Lagrène, born on September 4th 1966 in Soufflenheim/Alsace, is a french Manouche Jazz-Guitarrist, composer and Multiinstrumentalist.The Sinto Biréli Lagrène has been playing music from his early youth together with his father Fiso and his brother Gaiti (french: Gaeïti); his first record he made at the age of 12 years.
The first years of his young carreer have been accompanied by the slovakian doublebassplayer Jan Jankeje, releasing Bireli´s first records on his own Label "Jazzpoint Records". In this time Bireli already played together with the US-american Basslegend Jaco Pastorius.
To some people Biréli Lagrène is the one „legal replacement“ of Django Reinhardt, interpreting his compositions absolutely exact and genius. But the more he expresses the same kind of creativity and virtuosity in his phrasing, nevertheless taking short excursions into other styles of Jazz, latin-american styles, classical music or even Rock.
In the pure Tradition of Sinti- or Manouches-Musicians Biréli Lagrène is a true Multiinstrumentalist; besides guitar he is playing Bass, violin and piano, as well as drums.
There is a long list of musicians that he has been playing with, here is a short collection: Al di Meola, Larry Coryell, John McLaughlin, Vic Juris, Stochelo Rosenberg, Babik Reinhardt (Django Reinhardts 2nd son), Sylvain Luc (french Jazzguitarrist), Gil Evans, Leon Redbone, Richard Galliano (Accordeon, Tangomusician), Didier Lockwood, Henri Salvador...and, and, and...
He has a bright Repertoire with compositions of Django Reinhardt as well as other compositions of Sintiswing- and Modern-Jazz, his own interpertations of Pop- and Rocksongs like for example "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper, "I Shot The Sheriff" by Bob Marley and some tunes by Jimi Hendrix. On the album "Blue Eyes" he even presents himself as a veritable Jazzsinger.
With the CD "Gipsy Project", on which he returned to his roots he is backed up by many greats of the JazzManouche-scene.
Michael Dregni wrote a critic in "Vintage Guitar Magazine" issue of December 2002, calling the Album Gipsy Project & Friends „a true masterpiece“ and furthermore the setup on the record (Biréli Lagrène – guitar, Thomas Dutronc – guitar, Holzmanno Lagrene – guitar, Stochelo Rosenberg – guitar, Hono Winterstein – guitar, Diego Imbert – doubleBass, Florin Niculescu – violin and Henri Salvador – vocals on track 7) a „Gypsyjazz-Lineup from heaven sent“. (Source: www.bireli.com)
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