Jack Brown
Jack Brown (rhythm guitar) has been a student and stylist of Gypsy Jazz since first discovering the music in the mid-nineties. A driving accompanist, he has dedicated himself to the art of rhythm guitar, providing the pulse so characteristic of the music. Well known in the Gypsy Jazz community, he acts as moderator for several forums at The Django Swing Page ( www.hotclub.co.uk) and Djangobooks (www.djangobooks.com), is a contributing editor at Djangology.net, and teaches private lessons in the style to a growing roster of students.
Born in Rhode Island during the early seventies, Jack spent most of his life pursuing artistic interests outside of music. Always an avid reader, he considered studying literature and creative writing, but an early aptitude for visual art-for many years he planned on a career in editorial cartooning-led him to enroll at the Hartford Art School on the Regent Scholarship. Studying under Deane Keller, he discovered his passion for figure drawing, becoming one of only two drawing majors at the school; his drawings and paintings were selected to represent the University in several exhibitions, and remain in the collections of several Hartford and West Hartford families. At the same time, he'd never lost his love of books, and in his junior year began a program of study in the English department under the late Clayton Hudnall. At the end of his first semester, a panel of prominent poets named him Connecticut State Student Poet for the year, and he traveled to colleges across the state to give readings and meet with fellow writers.
During these years, he shared an apartment with several of Jackie McLean's students from the performance program at Hartt School of Music, which led him to discover a new love: Jazz. Enticed by this mysterious music, he began to seek out Hartford's small jazz clubs and nightspots, where he could listen in person to what he'd only heard before on records. He also began hitching rides home to Rhode Island whenever his musician friends were playing in Providence or Newport, and was fascinated to see them learn tunes (by ear) on the trip, only to hear them play them that very night. More and more, music became a central focus for him, though at this point he only imagined writing about it, or somehow incorporating it into visual art.
A move to Brooklyn followed graduation, and it was there that he discovered Django Reinhardt. It was a serendipitous week: One friend gave him the classic Blue Note Best of Django Reinhardt album, and another paid him for a housesitting job with an old acoustic guitar. The next few years were filled with heady hours of intense study as he tried to unravel the secrets of Reinhardt's mesmerizing style of jazz. After a last move to Western Massachusetts in the late nineties, he was able to find like-minded musicians to explore the music with, finally meeting Matthew in 2004. Since then, the two have worked together to bring their own influences to the music, and create a new 'gypsy jazz' all their own.
