With regular performances at the national Gypsy Jazz Festival, regional jazz festivals, and Hotel Congress, this band has quickly become a leading force in their genre. The Hot Club of Tucson plays Django Reinhardt inspired acoustic gypsy jazz, French jazz, folk, jazz manouche and music from American Tin Pan Alley. Hot Club of Tucson is often seen performing original arrangements of well-known tunes all the way from Lady is a Tramp (R Rodgers) and My Melancholy Baby (E Burnett, G Norton) to Honeysuckle Rose (F Waller) and Manoir de Mes Reves (D Reinhardt)! The ensemble was formed in 2004 and is comprised of guitarist Matt Mitchell, violinist Nick Coventry and bassist Evan Dain.
EVAN DAIN: A San Francisco native, multi-instrumentalist Evan Dain started at age 6 on the guitar, and picked up the bass, banjo, and mandolin in high school. Evan studied music at Laney College in Oakland, California, and afterwards served in the U.S. Navy. Picking up the trombone and Tuba along the way, Evan launched a musical career that has encompassed traditional, modern, and latin jazz, rock n’ roll, bluegrass, pop, and country-western. Evan is currently back home in Tucson after spending nearly two years on cruise ships.
MATT MITCHELL: Born in Phoenix, guitarist Matt Mitchell started on classical piano at the age of 7, and picked up rock guitar, and later jazz and classical guitar, in high school. Matt received a Bachelors of Arts in Classical Guitar Performance in 1995 from the University of Arizona. He is lucky enough to be one of the few who get to make a living doing what he loves. Matt has played 200+ gigs a year for 20 years.
NICK COVENTRY: Nick Coventry started playing violin at an early age and after hearing a Stephane Grappelli tape at the age of 12 he began in earnest to learn the swinging style of Gypsy jazz violin. At 18 he studied classically at the University of California Santa Barbara, at 20 he started his first gypsy swing band, “Les Gendarmes du Swing” and began writing and performing around his hometown of Goleta, California. In 2005 he travelled to the famous Djangofest at Samois-sur-Seine, France to meet and play with the best European musicians of Gypsy jazz. This resulted in a series of tours around Spain, England, Scotland and Denmark with the Hot Club of Galicia. At home, Nick has performed at the Djangofest in San Francisco with Gonzalo Bergara, as a guest with the John Jorgenson Quintet, Stephane Wrembel trio in New York, and with Alfonso Ponticelli and Swing Gitan at Chicago’s Green Mill.