Le Jazz Hot (quartet, trio, or sometimes a duo) plays in the style and spirit of Django Reinhardt—never failing to dazzle and delight!

Program

To be announced from the stage.

Free

This Shinkoskey Noon Concert is made possible with support from the Joy S. Shinkoskey Series of Noon Concert Endowment.

About the Players

Paul “Pazzo” Mehling, the leader of HCSF, has been dubbed the godfather of American Gypsy jazz. He discovered the music of Django Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France in grammar school, and decades later the music that took root in his young soul finally bore fruit.

“I was born in Denver and grew up in what is now Silicon Valley when it was all fruit trees,” Mehling recalls. “My father was a record collector. I grew up with the music of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and all the swing era bands.

He’d come home and turn on the stereo and, at a year old, I’d sit in front of the speakers and soak up the music. To this day, I get a sense of déjà vu whenever I hear a song I heard back then. When I was older, I became a discipline problem because I wanted to stay up all night and listen to records. Being exposed to swing at an early age predisposed me to playing this kind of music.”

Evan Price is steadily becoming one of the most respected jazz violinists of his generation. A native of Detroit, MI, his musical background includes some earnest dues-paying in a variety of genres. As a young competitive fiddler, he won his share of awards, having been named the U.S. Scottish Fiddling Champion, Canadian Junior Fiddle Champion, and Canadian Novelty Fiddling Champion. He also performed with some of the masters of fiddle lore—Stephane Grappelli, Johnny Frigo, Claude “Fiddler” Williams, Johnny Gimble, Buddy Spicher, and Vassar Clements—as well as a diverse array of pop icons from Stevie Wonder and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Robert Plant to comedian, Steven Wright.

Evan’s college career included stints at both The Cleveland Institute of Music and at Berklee College of Music and has himself served as a member of the music faculty at Wellesley College.

Evan is a ten-year veteran of the world-renowned, paradigm-shifting jazz ensemble, the Turtle Island Quartet. During his tenure in Turtle Island, Evan gave over five hundred performances in concert venues from Latvia to Australia and had the opportunity to collaborate with many musical luminaries, such as Cuban clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, and pianists Dr. Billy Taylor and Kenny Barron. He recorded five CDs with Turtle Island, two of which “Four + 4” and “A Love Supreme: The Legacy of John Coltrane” received GRAMMY® awards in 2006 and 2008 in the Classical Crossover category.

Jordan Samuels is an accomplished guitarist who has been studying, performing, and teaching throughout the San Francisco Bay Area for the last twenty years. While at San Francisco State University, he completed his formal training in music composition under the guidance of Ronald Caltabiano and Richard Festinger while simultaneously pursuing a jazz studies curriculum directed by Andrew Speight and John Calloway.

Since completing his studies in 2010, Samuels has become an in-demand jazz guitarist and can be seen performing regularly with the Hot Club of San Francisco, Erik Jekabson’s Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, and his own trio Certified Organic. He has also appeared with Doug Martin, Paula West, Wil Blades, Smith Dobson, Adam Theis, Matt Clark and Bobby Watson among many others.

Dexter Williams is an upright bass player living in San Francisco, California whose style is heavily informed by traditional jazz, swing, gypsy jazz, and bebop. He was immersed in the world of jazz from an early age and consequently took to music naturally, learning violin at age 6 and guitar at age 11. Finally in highschool band, he took on upright bass and shortly after developed a love for jazz, starting to play his first professional gigs at age 16. Since then, he has dedicated his time to broadening his understanding of different styles of jazz, working on rhythmically and harmonically supporting a band, and all the while dialing in his technical ability on the upright bass.

Dexter currently makes his living performing locally with a wide range of bay area artists as well as traveling for interstate and international music festivals. Lately, he has been immersing himself in the world of gypsy jazz and playing consistently with The Hot Club of San Francisco and Le Jazz Hot, committing himself to melding with the group and learning its repertoire. His sound has been described as highly lyrical and melodic, showing a deep familiarity with the styles and vocabulary of jazz.