Pearl Django, Friday and Saturday at the CVG
The Djano Reinhardt-inspired Hot Club six-piece gypsy jazz band returns with their typical swagger, for back-to-back nights at Collective Visions Gallery in Bremerton.
For a few years running, the group had played a two-day set, by popular demand, for CVG’s usually one-show-per-month Concerts in the Gallery series. This past year when they were only scheduled for one date, a few Django-fans took notice.
So this year, Collective Visions’ coordinator Alan Newberg said, they’ve brought it back — Jan. 16-17.
Newberg remembers a concert about six years back, their first at the CVG, was Pearl Django’s first show anywhere in the county. Ever since, the Northwest gypsy jazz three-piece — born in 1994, now a six-piece more than 15 years and nine albums later — has played numerous Kitsap venues, including summer festivals, banquets, galleries and Bainbridge.
In Bremerton, Newberg and the CVG have been reaching out to top-notch jazz and classical, ambient and globally sonic groups and soloists for years to stock the gallery’s annual concert series.
Each month’s musician plays their concert amongst the gallery’s featured artist’s exhibit — making for what can sometimes be quite an eclectic evening of art. Pearl Django’s gypsy jazz will be paired with Impressions of Place by Grapeview-based artist/realtor Jackie Bush Turner and steel and ceramic sculpture in the downstairs gallery by Michael Kilgore.
The two concert nights will be the final two evenings of Kilgore and Turner’s exhibits before the gallery begins preparation for next month’s second annual CVG show.
Tickets are $20 in advance, $24 day of the show, 7 p.m. Jan. 16-17 at Collective Visions Gallery, 331 Pacific Ave. in Bremerton. Info: www.collectivevisions.com, www.pearldjango.com.
QUARTETTO GELATO Saturday at the Admiral
In similar fashion, the Admiral Theater brings back cleverly named, immensely talented Canadian new classical quartet — Quartetto Gelato.
I’m a bit rusty on my Italian, but I believe that means frozen quartet.
Which must be an ode to the band’s frigid homeland because it is far from frozen in any sort of time period or genre or instrumental sense. It’s known for its versatility.
Collectively, the group owns chops on eight different classical instruments from cello to accordion to clarinet. With a modern-day, well-kempt, fashionably dressed gypsy style, the group wields a mix of masterworks from operatic arias to tangos, gypsy jazz to classical and salon music along with folk songs from around the world.
It’s music for today’s “Renaissance listener,” they say, evidenced in part by a picture on the band’s web site of Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk holding a copy of a QG CD, aboard the space shuttle Columbia.
Tickets are $24 on the main floor, $12 in the balcony, $57 for pork dinner at 6:30 p.m., followed by the show at 8 p.m. Jan. 17 at the Admiral Theatre, 515 Pacific Ave. in Bremerton. Info: www.quartettogelato.ca, www.admiraltheatre.org.
ALSO CHECK OUT: “Portraits & Self-Portraits” the next Bainbridge Performing Arts chamber concert featuring sonic portraits of Mendelssohn, Brahms, Chopin, Gershwin and Beethoven through solo piano and a trio of violins at 3 p.m. Jan. 18 at BPA, 200 Madison Ave. on Bainbridge.
