Podcast

Talk and music with Frank Vignola

Courtesy of Jefferson Center

Frank Vignola Quintet

Audio

• Check out this podcast and others from Inside Out by using an IO Jukebox
• Download the podcast in .mp3 format

More

• Listen to more podcasts

Related

• Who: Frank Vignola Quintet; with opening act from Morwenna Lasko & Jay Pun
• What: Jazz Club
• Where: Jefferson Center's recital hall
• When: 8 p.m. Friday
• How much: $24; $12 for children 12 and younger
• On the Net: jeffcenter.org, frankvignola.com

Gypsy jazz music is as exciting as ever, nearly a century after its birth in France.

On Friday, Jefferson Center's recital hall hosts one of the genre's brightest acolytes, Frank Vignola.

Vignola and his quintet aren't performing only the standards, such as "Minor Swing" and "Nuages." Go to his MySpace page, myspace.com/frankvignolaquintet, to hear the absolutely smoking originals "Luke," "Spaz in the City" and "Salad and Donuts." You won't hear a Django Reinhardt clone on these cuts, but instead a stylistically diverse player who has developed his own sound, whipping his right wrist like a hummingbird over his manouche-style guitar.

And he's not stingy with the solos -- everyone in the band gets some, and it's clear that they all deserve their time to burn.

If Vignola's name sounds familiar, you might've heard him play with fiddle monster Mark O'Connor and mandolin master David Grisman. He has also recorded with Madonna, Leon Redbone and Ringo Starr, Donald Fagen, Queen Latifah and Wynton Marsalis, according to his online biography.

Go to this story at roanoke.com to hear a podcast with Vignola and some of his songs.

-- Tad Dickens