The Hot Club of San Francisco is a band of outstanding and versatile musicians who pay tribute to Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli’s pioneering Quintette du Hot Club de France. The Hot Club of San Francisco’s music, which is often referred to as Gypsy jazz, has mesmerized listeners all over the world for more than thirty years. With performances in Mexico, Hawaii, France, and North America, The Hot Club of San Francisco is preserving this classical music. Hearing to the band takes the listener back to the 1930s and the small, smokey jazz clubs of Paris or the sophisticated lounges of the famous Hotel Ritz.
The band adopts the original Hot Club’s all-string instrumentation of three guitars, violin, and bass, but adds fresh vitality to the music with unique arrangements of old classics and original compositions by the group’s exceptional lead guitarist Paul Mehling.
PAUL “PAZZO” MEHLING “Leader, Guitar, Violin, Bass, Vocals”
As the leader of the HCSF, the Le Jazz Hot, and the Ivory Club Boys, Paul Mehling has been referred to as “the godfather of American gypsy jazz.” In grammar school, he discovered the music of Django Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, and it was decades later that the music that had taken root in his young spirit finally bore fruit and flourished.
Paul “Pazzo” Mehling has been playing for almost 40 years. The Hot Club of San Francisco, which he founded and led as a guitarist, specializes in Gypsy-Swing music, and he is the group’s founder and guitarist. Fifteen CDs have been released by them, and they have performed at jazz manouche festivals across the globe.
Mehling toured with Dan Hicks’ Acoustic Warriors and performed on Austin City Limits and other stages as a skilled multi-instrumentalist (guitar, violin, bass, plectrum, and tenor banjos, mandolin). To supplement his work with the Hot Club, Paul provides clinics and individual lessons and is a contributing staff writer for Frets and Flatpicking Guitar publications. He has also received a citation of excellence from the International Jazz Educator’s Conference.
EVAN “ZEPPO” PRICE “Violin, Melodica, Guitar”
Evan Price is swiftly establishing himself as a leading jazz violinist. Born in Detroit, MI, he has dedicated his talents to a number of musical genres. He was the U.S. Scottish Fiddling Champion, Canadian Junior Fiddling Champion, and Canadian Novelty Fiddling Champion when he was a young fiddler. His musical collaborators have included such legends as Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, as well as Johnny Gimble, Buddy Spicher, and Claude “Fiddler” Williams. He has also performed with a wide range of pop stars as well as the comedian Steven Wright.
Evan studied music at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Berklee College of Music before joining the Wellesley College music department.
Evan has been a member of the Turtle Island Quartet for 10 years. Evan performed over 500 times in concert halls from Latvia to Australia and collaborated with musicians such as Cuban clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera and pianists Dr. Billy Taylor and Kenny Barron. He released five CDs with Turtle Island, two of which won GRAMMY® honors in 2006 and 2008 in the Classical Crossover category.
Evan has been a member of The Hot Club in San Francisco since 1998, a renowned gypsy jazz band. With Evan playing violin on six CDs, they have delighted audiences from Iceland to Mexico and throughout the US.
JORDAN SAMUELS “Rhythm Guitar”
The renowned guitarist Jordan Samuels has been studying, playing, and teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area for twenty years. At San Francisco State University, he studied composition with Ronald Caltabiano and Richard Festinger while also studying jazz with Andrew Speight and John Calloway.
Samuels has been in demand as a jazz guitarist since 2010, routinely playing with the Hot Club of San Francisco, Erik Jekabson’s Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, and his own band Certified Organic. In addition to Doug Martin, he has worked with Paula West and Wil Blades.
Conclusion
In addition to the excellent level of musicianship and innately appealing features of each song, Price adds that the Hot Club of San Francisco’s sound incorporates heart, mind, and guts in equal measure. Each of their performances is a well-balanced feast of pleasure, grief, comedy, predictability, and unpredictability that they have never forgotten it is their duty as musicians to provide. It is their mission to please both their audience and themselves at the same time. That applies to both live and recorded performances.
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