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It seems inadequate to describe jazz guitar-ist Biréli Lagrène as a virtuoso. He eats other virtuosi for breakfast. But that’s not the only thing setting him apart—he’s been releasing solidly impressive records since he was 13.

Born in 1966 to a Sinti gypsy family in the Alsace region of France, Lagrène took up guitar at age four. He soon became en-thralled by the music of legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt, father of the idiom known as “gypsy jazz.”

“Many gypsies loved the way Django played,” says Lagrène, from his present-day home in Strasbourg, France.

Through innate ability and tireless ef-fort, the boy became a convincing Django imitator, and thus a startlingly precocious student of jazz harmony and rhythm. Word spread across the pond with the release of Lagrène’s 1980 debut, Routes To Django. Jazz critic Gary Giddins traveled to Salzburg to interview the young wizard, who had not only mastered classics like “My Melancholy Baby,” but also written sophisticated tunes of his own. Giddins recalled Lagrène as “the only musician I’ve ever spent an afternoon watching cartoons with.”

Fast-forward to today. Lagrène, his play-ing aged like fine wine, is enjoying a career as one of jazz’s most distinguished, and frightening, plectrists. “I used to practice a lot when I was a teenager,” he recalls. “I don’t really nowadays, although I do try to play every day.” Not a problem, one imagines, given his busy touring and recording sched-ule. This year alone sees the release of three CDs, all on the Dreyfus label: To Bi Or Not To Bi, a live collection of Lagrène’s jaw-dropping solos; Djangology, a polished outing with the WDR Big Band of Köln; and It’s All Right With Me, a punchy small-group collaboration with jazz singer Sara Lazarus. “She doesn’t over-do things, she really stays with the melody,” says Lagrène of the vocalist. “It’s really great to hear someone like that today.”

If he seems picky about singers, it’s be- cause he is one: on Djangology, he croons “The Shadow Of Your Smile” and “The Good Life,” beautifully, in unaccented English. “I’m very much influenced by people from the ’40s and ’50s like Sinatra and Tony Bennett,” he explains. “It stuck with me since I was a child, and even more now that I’m getting older.”

Electric Gypsy

Biréli lagrène TAKES JAZZ GUITAR

INTO THE FUTURE

“The Good Life” (listed as “La Belle Vie”) appears on Lagrène’s solo disc as well, and for a poignant reason: “The composer, Sacha Distel, was a good friend of mine. He was a French cat, a singer and guitar player too. He passed away in 2004, so it’s like I’m singing to him.”

Lagrène has arrived at a fertile juncture, but by a circuitous route. He floored a capacity crowd at Carnegie Hall at age 18, appearing with Reinhardt’s chief musical partner, famed jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli. (This writer was in attendance.) But Lagrène had interests beyond gypsy jazz. He loved Hendrix. He loved the electric bass revolutionary Jaco Pastorius, with whom he appeared on the album Stuttgart Aria. Turning to jazz fusion, Lagrène signed with Blue Note Records in 1987 and issued the albums Inferno and Foreign Affairs, which weren’t particularly well-received. Still, he had reached the next level—no longer a novelty kid, a niche interpreter of a bygone style, Lagrène had entered an arena populated by modern guitar heroes like Larry Coryell and Al Di Meola. (His 1990 collaboration with the two is available on DVD as Super Guitar Trio And Friends.)

A few years on, Lagrène signed with the French label Dreyfus. The ’90s found him inching back toward straight-ahead jazz, most notably with the bebop-oriented 1994 trio disc Live In Marciac. The stunning Gipsy Project of late 2001, though, announced Lagrène’s full-fledged return to acoustic swing of the Reinhardt variety. Giddins penned a rave review in The Village Voice. Nailing down Django’s style as “a uniquely Gallic combination of jazz and sentiment,” he went on to praise Lagrène’s take as “fireworks and jubilation”: “He gets you by the short hairs with his knowing, percussive attack, tossing in lightning tremolos...combin[ing] melodic comets with delirious runs.” This was no longer imitation, but reinvention, the work of a mature and formidable artist.

By no means is Lagrène the only Django-influenced guitarist work-ing today. You could say he’s part of a new movement, one that in-cludes Dorado Schmitt, Stochelo Rosenberg and Angelo Debarre, not to mention several American groups modeled on Reinhardt & Grappelli’s original Quintette du Hot Club de France. The full flower-ing of the nouveau gypsy movement can be witnessed on Lagrène’s 2004 DVD release Biréli Lagrène & Friends: Live Jazz à Vienne. After a thrilling quartet set featuring Romanian gypsy violinist Florin Niculescu, Lagrène brings on a stellar rotation of guests, including guitarist Sylvain Luc and accordion master Richard Galliano. He tears through Reinhardt classics like “Blues Clair” and “Belleville” with stag-gering wit, lyricism and technique. But his talented guests won’t let him coast. “We are all buddies,” he says, disavowing any thought of competition. “I’ve known some of them for 25 years. We’re just a bunch of musicians getting together.”

With 2002’s Gipsy Project & Friends, 2005’s Move and the new European release Just The Way You Are, Lagrène has furthered his reputation as Django’s foremost heir and interpreter. But he’s found a way to integrate all aspects of his musicianship, drawing no hard dis-tinction between his acoustic and electric playing. Front Page, a 2003 power trio date with bassist Dominique Di Piazza and drummer Den-nis Chambers, is the best recent example. Dreyfus Night In Paris, an all-star encounter with fusion bass maestro Marcus Miller and others, features him in a similar vein. Even unaccompanied, Lagrène draws on the fullest range of tastes—his whimsical gloss on “We Are the Champions” and “We Will Rock You” makes that clear. “I was always a big fan of Queen, and the guitar sound that Brian May had,” he says. “Their stuff just comes out sometimes. I think if I played only one type of guitar or one style of music, I would get quickly bored.” ·