Christiaan Van Hemert: Arpeggiating Jazz

For anyone trying to learn to play Gypsy jazz, one of the main hurdles is becoming a fluent improvisor.

- Peter Anick

And improvisation is one of those mysterious abilities that even those who do it well have a hard time explaining. Fortunately for students of the genre, the recent resurgence of popularity in this dynamic string band music has inspired a new generation of teacher/performers to develop instructional materials and methods based on their own experience mastering the style. One of the most active educators is Christiaan van Hemert, a Dutch violinist and guitar player, who has developed an online instructional platform (rosenbergacademy.com) with Stochelo Rosenberg, one of the world’s top guitarists in the style of Django Reinhardt. In 2018, Christiaan joined the teaching staff at Django in June, the Gypsy Jazz instructional camp held each year on the Smith College campus in Northampton, Massachusetts (djangoinjune.com). During a break between classes, we found a quiet living room in one of the dorms to talk about Christiaan’s approach to teaching Gypsy jazz improvisation.