Stéphane Grappelli

Stéphane Grappelli ( Paris , January 26 1908 - there, December 1 1997 ) was a French jazz violinist .

Grappelli was born in Paris, the son of an Italian philosophy teacher . His mother died when he was four years old. When World War I broke out and had summoned senior Grappelli Grappelli to an orphanage . After the war, father and son lived together again. They were very poor but Grappelli was thirteen when he was a violin from his father.He taught himself piano and violin. At fifteen, he worked as a piano accompanist for silent films to make ends meet. He then served as a self-taught violinist and pianistentrance exam for the Paris Conservatoire . He studied there from 1924 to 1928.

In 1934 he met guitarist Django Reinhardt in a nightclub in Montparnasse . They improvised a bit and quickly formed the gypsy jazz -formatie Quintette du Hot Club de France, along with Django Reinhardt's brother Joseph and Roger Caput on guitar and Louis Vola on bass . Then on September 1, 1939, the Second World War broke out, Grappelli was in London in the hospital. Reinhardt traveled to Paris and as the quintet fell apart. During the war, Grappelli formed a group with pianist George Shearing . In 1946, the quintet came together again, but it would not reach the tops of the war.

Grappelli then played with many greats of the jazz like Barney Kessel , Oscar Peterson , McCoy Tyner and Duke Ellington, but also with the violinist Jean-Luc Ponty andYehudi Menuhin , singer Paul Simon and mandolin player David Grisman . Menuhin remarked about his ability to improvise on "Stéphane is like a juggler who throws ten plates in the air and catches them all again."

Grappelli remained until well into the eighties violin. When he became 85, he wanted nothing of pension knowledge; Music was the only thing that kept him going. His last CD was published posthumously . He died at the age of 89 in Paris after a hernia -operation and was buried in the Parisian cemetery Pere Lachaise .