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You can take the boy out of gypsy-swing but you can't take the gypsy-swing out of the boy. Lulo Reinhardt's latest band was chosen to showcase the guitarist's responses to influences picked up on his world travels, and does so superbly. It's a beautifully tempered quintet that moves as one with Reinhardt as he plays pieces inspired by Argentina, Morocco and African desert tribes, and in a dedication to fellow guitarist Adrian Legg, essays a marvellous concoction of the Orient and what sounds like a bagpipe scale.
Reinhardt can't shake off – he possibly doesn't want to – his family ties, however, and at regular intervals here he acknowledged his grand-uncle Django, surmising what might have happened had his great forebear lent his two-fingered technique to bossa nova, playing a brilliant, clearly heartfelt version of Reinhardt Sr's ballad Django's Castle, and maintaining the Django tradition nominally as well as stylistically with Swing 2012.
This is never an exercise in nostalgia, though; Reinhardt makes everything he plays sound current through the zest of his attack, invention and phrasing, and in violinist Danny Weltlinger and pianist Winfried Schuld he has soloists of a similar persuasion. On the Moroccan-flavoured Magdalena, Weltlinger matched Reinhardt's oud-like African blues playing with stark passion and his violin solo on Swing 2012 all but activated the Queen's Hall's smoke alarms. Uli Kramer Ragusi's move from drum kit, alongside the quietly propellant bassist Harald Becher, to clay pot and then to water-enhanced gongs and shakers altered the backdrop, but the music's core of direct, exciting communication between players and audience allied to downright tunefulness remained centre-stage.
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