The thrilling Django Festival Allstars, currently on tour with Veronica Swift to celebrate 25 years of the Django Reinhardt NY Festival, are excited to announce a new chapter in their fabled history. After a change in leadership in 2018, recovering from the loss of a band member in 2023, and the addition of an essential new player, the group has emerged revitalized. Having tightened personal bonds within the group and committed to expanding touring beyond their established North American circuit, they landed a multi-album deal with the GRAMMY®-winning Motéma label and teamed up with a world-wide booking agency. It’s all part of the EVOLUTION they are celebrating with the February 13, 2026 release of the Festival’s fifth album, and the Allstar’s second quintet studio recording of timeless, all-original ‘nouvelle Gypsy Jazz’.

Soulful, kinetic and brilliant, the Django Festival Allstars ensemble, led by Manouche Gypsy jazz legend Dorado Schmitt from its founding in 2002 until 2018, constitutes a 21st century response to the seminal Hot Jazz innovated by Manouche Sinti guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli’s ‘Quintette du Hot Club de France’ which was all the rage of Paris in the 1930s and ’40s. Ludovic Beier, a founding pillar and spokesman for the Allstars relates, “Reinhardt’s Hot Gypsy Jazz was the first answer to American jazz in Europe. We respect Django’s giant legacy while moving the music forward, which Django would have wanted.”

Having shaped and internalized Evolution’s repertoire at dozens of concerts prior to their 2024 recording sessions, the Allstars play from the heart, fully accessing the astonishing prowess that once provoked jazz icon Grady Tate to remark “They are true concert masters who do what is almost impossible on their instruments.”