If you like swing and flamenco and you like jazz, we’re confident you’re going to love Gypsy Jazz. The Metropolitan Club has invited Auckland’s premier practitioners of the genre, Voxnova, to play a closing concert for The Art of Death. We think it will be the perfect end to an exciting exhibition and series of events hosted at Highwic and as we need to keep something of the show in theme, we’ll be offering Earnest Hemmingway’s favourite cocktail, Death in the Afternoon, as part of the refreshment menu. Hemmingway spent a lot of time in jazz clubs as a young man and we’re sure he would have approved of gypsy jazz.

And don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of gypsy jazz before now or enjoyed a taste of it live, here’s your opportunity to get neck deep in it. Gypsy jazz is a swing style music and its genesis can be traced to Django Reinhardt. The Belgian-born, Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer met with Paris born jazz violinist Stephan Grappelli and formed the fantastically named Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934. They were among the first to play jazz that featured the guitar as a lead instrument with many of their most popular compositions becoming standards within what became known as gypsy jazz or Manouche because Django was a member of the Manouche group of gypsies.

And if you’ve ever wondered where the term gypsy comes from, it originates from the Middle English gypcian, short for Egipcien and was conferred on waves of Dalits arriving in various European nations as they travelled from their homeland in the Punjab district of India, under the assumption that they were Egyptians. In Spain the term became gitanos, and in Eastern Europe, Zigana. Now you know.

Talk about international! If that doesn’t sound like fun then we’re quite sure we don’t know what does and you can enjoy the exciting vintage sound in Auckland this October. Voxnova performs traditional Gypsy Jazz from various sources including Latin offerings from Venezuela and Argentina, as well as some great original material.

Founded in 1998 by Scottish-born percussionist Alan MacDonald, Voxnova has hosted musicians from all over the globe (Scotland, England, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Serbia, Greece, Chile, Peru, Columbia, Brazil, USA, Quebec plus locals) all of whom have left traces in the repertoire. When they’re not at Highwic, Voxnova enjoys a regular Monday night following at Caretaker Bar in Britomart.

To find out more about The Art of Death, please visit www.themetropolitan.club

To find out more about Voxnova, please visit www.voxnova-band.weebly.com