About me

Born in 1958 into an artistic family (a grand-uncle worked as violinist in south-France, my mother a painter) i started to play guitar at the age of 13.

cdb bertino 2018 Starting in the early 1970ies i learned the instrument really autodidactic by listening to the records of the famous guitarrists of my youth, Blues-Guitarrists like B.B. King, Muddy Waters and others more.
Later on switching to the hip Rock/Pop-Guitarrists, Musicians like Roy Buchanan, Richie Blackmore, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Carlos Santana and many more.

One day in the early 1980ies, already after countless experiences with Live-Bands and working as a Studiomusician (mainly with Rock and Pop-Musik), i listened to a record of „Django Reinhardt et le Quintette du Hot Club de France“ for the first time.
From this day on the music of Django Reinhardt and his heritage, the „Jazz-Manouche“, becomes a very important part of my life.

Meanwhile i am a well trained musician of this style myself and have been taking part on workshops with Gypsy-Legends like Romane, Stochelo Rosenberg and Angelo DeBarre, as well as learning from my friends amongst other Sinti-musicians.

In 2007 i started giving Workshops/Masterclasses for Gypsyjazz-Guitar and in 2011 released a guitar methodbook with the title „Gypsyjazz Guitar - a Tribute to Gypsyjazz“ at worldwide distributor Alfred Music Publishing (Cologne), in german and english language (ISBN 978-3-933136-86-2).

After years of training (and still continuing to be learning), i meanwhile have had the great honour to play countless concerts alongside with many great Gypsy(jazz)-musicians like Lulo Reinhardt, Jordan Weiss or Fapy Lafertin or play some concerts with other famous musicians like Robin Nolan, Dario Napoli and other well known players of the Gypsyjazz-Scene.

I am running the following Websites of my own formation www.coeurdubois.de , then www.jazzmanouche.de which is a Community-Website with many Infos on old Gypsyjazz-Guitars and news as well as the education website for Gypsyjazzguitar www.gypsyjazzworkshop.net
with online Workshops and lessons also from other known players.