Stéphane Grappelli

French violinist , two reasons, from the outset, for not being what he was until the end, until his eighty-eight years, a great of jazz , all categories combined, supreme and infallible soloist of a music that he had discovered in the 1920s and that he had long practiced at heights never before reached on this side of the Mississippi in the company of a brilliant gypsy artist, Django Reinhardt .

Stéphane then, and for half a century, pursued a constantly ascending career, from semi-oblivion to international glory which had led him to all imaginable musical encounters, from Earl Hines to Menuhin , Solal and Petrucciani , without never alters his joy of playing the happiest music in the world.