Photo by Casey Vock

(SOUTH ORANGE, NJ) -- Stephane Wrembel Quartet will perform at South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC) on Friday, September 12, 2025. Wrembel is a virtuoso guitarist hailed as "a revelation" by Rolling Stone and celebrated for reinventing gypsy jazz with a modern edge and boundless creativity. Showtime is 7:30pm.

Wrembel draws deeply from the legacy of Django Reinhardt while forging his own path—blending tradition and innovation in performances that captivate audiences worldwide.

Born in Paris and raised in Fontainebleau, the home of Impressionism and Django Reinhardt, Wrembel first studied classical piano, beginning at the age of four. But in his mid-teens, he discovered that he had an affinity for guitar. As a big fan of Pink Floyd, he “spent hours learning David Gilmour’s style,” he said. “So I had a classical background, a passion for rock music, and then I found out about Django. I fell in love with the very strong impressionist feel in his music.”

Wrembel’s technical brilliance and emotive playing infuse every note while adding his own contemporary flair for a sound that’s both timeless and fresh.

Tickets range from $29-$42 and are available for purchase online.  South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC) is located at One Sopac Way in South Orange, New Jersey.

Wrembel graduated summa cum laude from Berklee College of Music in Boston in 2002. That same year he released his debut album, Introducing Stephane Wrembel. Vintage Guitar Magazine praised the recording as “pure dazzle and dash, a stunning storm of notes that blankets the melody in a rain of arpeggiated notes.

Wrembel moved to NYC in 2003. Before long, word of this remarkable European transplant began spreading among fellow musicians and denizens of the teeming New York music scene. Both Gypsy Rumble (2005), which includes mandolin legend David Grisman, and 2006’s Barbes-Brooklyn found favor with critics. Oscar-winning director Woody Allen used one of Gypsy Rumble’s tracks, “Big Brother,” in his 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  Wrembel’s fourth album, Terre Des Hommes, was released the same year.

In 2003, Wrembel created his own annual event, Django á Gogo Music Festival & Guitar Camp, bringing together some of the finest musicians in the world to celebrate the Sinti guitar style to perform in prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall and The Town Hall.  This weeklong event held in his hometown of Maplewood, New Jersey and NYC is now being produced in Los Angeles, Canada and beyond.

Wrembel’s breakthrough came with his original composition “Bistro Fada,” a Django-influenced swinging waltz on his fifth album Origins that became the theme song for Woody Allen’s 2011 Oscar®-winning film, Midnight In Paris. It was included on the Grammy®-winning soundtrack for the film. Wrembel performed the irresistibly catchy “Bistro Fada” live during the 2012 Academy Awards® ceremony with an all-star ensemble led by Hans Zimmer.

And while Wrembel is now considered one of the preeminent master guitarists in the world specialized in the Django Reinhardt style, Wrembel revels in transcending and expanding. His music incorporates jazz, blues, classical, swing, flamenco and rock. All of these influences come together as a genre identifiable only as Stephane Wrembel.  

“I just play my own music,” he says. “I like to believe that it is beyond any one genre and that there is something in it for everyone. It’s not only for Django lover or jazz lover.  It’s for the music lover.”