VIN · JAZZ
An Evening
in Paris
Dinner, gypsy jazz, and the Paris of a moveable feast — one night at Battery Park Book Exchange.
There was a time when every young painter, writer, and musician who wanted to feel alive got themselves to Paris. They were broke and they were happy, and they filled the cafés and the little bookshops of the Left Bank with cheap wine, cigarette smoke, and the sense that making art was the only thing worth doing. Hemingway called that Paris a moveable feast.
For one night, we're bringing that Paris here. Battery Park Book Exchange — a bookstore and a champagne bar, which is about as close to Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company as this town gets — becomes a Left Bank café for the evening. There's a French spread laid out like a Left Bank table — charcuterie, cheeses, dips, and chocolate truffles — a glass in your hand, and the music Paris made its own: gypsy jazz in the Django Reinhardt tradition, and the chanson of Piaf and Trenet, sung by our special guest, Lynn Beach Smith.
You don't need a word of French, or a thing about Django, to belong here. You just need to come hungry, in the old sense — the way a young artist in Paris was hungry for the whole of life.
Three Movements
Curated wines and the French spread — charcuterie, cheeses, dips, chocolate truffles — with acoustic gypsy jazz filling the room the way it filled the cafés.
The room quiets for Lynn Beach Smith and the songs of Piaf and Trenet — the voice of Paris between the wars. The part everyone talks about afterward.
Reinhardt standards and hot club swing, played the way the Quintette played them. The energy lifts, the glasses refill, the night opens back up.
Tickets are live.
Thursday, September 17 · doors 6:30 PM · 75 seats
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Gypsy Reverie
Gypsy Reverie is an acoustic ensemble rooted in the 1930s Django Reinhardt tradition — the gypsy jazz born in the dance halls and cafés of Paris, played with a ferocious, elegant intensity you won't find anywhere else in Asheville. They've drawn full houses at City Winery and the Avalon Theater. For this one, they're on home ground.
"Unparalleled musicianship."
Singing the chanson of Édith Piaf and Charles Trenet — the songs Paris carried with it through the century.
"An Evening in Lisbon was wildly successful — truly beautiful. It's the beginning of something very special for Asheville."
"I'm a world traveler, but I don't get to travel much these days — this gave me a chance to connect with that part of myself again."
The Rest of the Year
Same room, same 75 seats, a different city each time. Save the dates.
Dates are set; tickets for each go on sale closer to the night.
Music by Gypsy Reverie · gypsyreveriemusic.com