Gypsy Jazz with Matt Holborn & Ducato Piotrowski

Starts 20:00

Gypsy jazz in The Cave, from two players who have spent years at the front of the London scene.

Matt Holborn is one of the finest jazz violinists working in Britain. Trained at Leeds Conservatoire and schooled further by Tim Kliphuis and Tcha Limberger, he has taken this repertoire to Ronnie Scott's, the London Jazz Festival, Pizza Express Jazz Club, Torino Jazz Festival and the Festival Django Reinhardt at Samois, the pilgrimage gig for anyone who plays this music. He comes to us fresh from this summer's Edinburgh Fringe.

His debut album For Stuff, a tribute to the violinist Stuff Smith, was called "celestial" and "rapturous" by the i, while Jazzwise said it "sheds a little sunlight on a rather neglected patch of jazz". Away from the stage he teaches thousands of players through his jazz violin school, which tells you something about how well he understands this music.

Alongside him on guitar is Ducato Piotrowski. Born in Poland to a Roma family, he was shown his first chords by his father at ten and taught himself the rest. Hearing Django Reinhardt changed the direction of his life, and he is now one of the most sought-after rhythm guitarists in the country, the engine that makes this music swing. Both play with the London Django Collective, which Matt co-founded in 2019.

Violin and guitar, nothing to hide behind. It is fast, funny, romantic music, built on a hundred years of players trying to outdo each other, and it belongs in a small room where you can watch the hands move.

The Cave is our intimate venue with a very limited capacity. Georgian wine at the bar, khachapuri out of the oven, and two musicians who have played the big rooms doing it close enough to touch.