For the first time since its 2001 beginning, the man behind the music of DjangoFest Northwest won’t be at the Langley event that runs through Sunday.
Festival founder and artistic director Nick Flynn Lehr died earlier this year.
His contributions live on, however, because he’d already selected this year’s line up before his March 30 death.
Whidbey Island Center for the Arts has planned several tributes for Lehr, including a Tuesday evening opening community concert and a Sunday evening closing Djam session named in his honor.
“He was a visionary. He could see the potential,” said Stacie Burgua, who recently retired as executive director of WICA but who’s staying on to help oversee this year’s DjangoFest.
Dutch native Simon Planting, a renown gypsy jazz bass player now living in San Francisco, is this year’s artistic director. Various musicians will be introducing bands, one of Lehr’s many tasks as master of ceremonies.
Burgua met Lehr in the year 2000 when he first approached her with what she thought was a far-fetched, crazy idea.
“Truly, his instincts were spot on,” she said. “It was impossible to imagine how much this festival would grow in 18 years.”
DjangoFest Northwest celebrates gypsy jazz and attracts top musicians from around the globe. It’s a celebration of Django Reinhardt, born in Belgium in 1910 to a Romani family, who introduced a new style of jazz centering on solo guitar, as well as other string instruments, to the night clubs of Paris and beyond.
The acoustic guitar-oriented music is fast and fluid and requires fingers that fly at lightning speed.
Reinhardt invented his signature two-fingered playing style out of necessity. His right side and his left hand were badly burned in a fire when he was 17 years old. Reinhardt spent more than a year recovering in a nursing home where he developed a new guitar fingering sequence.
Considered one of the largest and finest showcases of gypsy jazz in North America, Langley’s music festival started as a small two-band, two-night affair after Lehr made Burgua an offer she couldn’t refuse.
It’s also one of Langley’s biggest draws, attracting some 3,000 visitors and musicians who pack hotels, restaurants and stores and spend an estimated $180,000. The event costs about $100,000 to produce.
Lehr has been described as a tireless and passionate promoter responsible for introducing gypsy jazz to countless crowds across the country. After launching DjangoFest Northwest, he produced similar festivals in Denver and Mill Creek, Calif.
“Nick was a very gung-ho person, a very generous person,” said Troy Chapman, who’s performed in numerous jazz bands and attended or played at every Langley DjangoFest. “He could be difficult if things were not going the way they should. But he was concerned about getting the best musicians and the best music for the festival.”
The idea for DjangoFest Northwest first struck Lehr when he attended the annual Festival Django Reinhardt in Samois-sur-Seine, the small commune in north-central France where the revered musician once lived. There, he ran into jazz guitarist Robin Nolan. Both agreed a similar event was needed in the United States, where gypsy jazz was not well known but beloved by a small and growing circle of devotees.
“In the late 1920s and 1930s, American jazz was Dixieland kind of music — horns, trombones and tuba,” explained Chapman, who will be playing guitar with his group, Hot Club of Troy, Wednesday night on WICA’s stage.
“Django Reinhardt’s music became so compelling because it was played strictly with guitar, bass and violin,” he said. “It gave jazz a whole different flavor.”
With violinist Stéphane Grappelli, Reinhardt formed the Paris-based Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934. He went on to play with many American jazz bands before dying of a stroke at age 43.
The toe-tapping, finger-snapping, joyful music is conducive to spur-of-the moment gatherings. DjangoFest Northwest is known for its Djam sessions that happen around Langley’s restaurants and outdoor patios. A new feature this year is a separate area for musicians to camp and play at Island County Fairgrounds into the wee morning hours.
It all began in the year 2000 with a phone call and a bold offer.
It’s a story that Burgua, newly hired to oversee WICA to figure out how the nonprofit could meet its mission and debt, has retold many a time.
“I was sitting in this little hole of an office and I get a phone call,” Burgua recalls. “The person on the other end tells me, ‘I’d like WICA to start a DjangoFest.’”
Burgua didn’t know who was calling. And she hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.
Django Reinhardt? Never heard of him.
Gypsy Jazz? What’s that?
The voice on the other end of the line was Nick Lehr. He suggested that WICA book two gypsy jazz bands, Pearl Django from Tacoma, and the Robin Nolan Trio from Amsterdam, for two nights in a row and two workshops.
“Like, that’s going to sell,” Burgua remembers thinking. “He was nothing if not persistent. He kept calling and I kept avoiding him. One day he just shows up in the office and tells me, ‘I will guarantee any loss.’ Then I watched him drive away in his beat-up car.”
The following year, WICA produced the first DjangoFest in the United States.
“This is the one that started it all in North America,” Chapman said. “Nick and Stacie built DjangoFest Northwest into what it’s become today.
“But forever and ever, this will be Nick Lehr’s festival.”
• For more information go to www.djangofestnw.com
Nick Lehr
