For over 25 years, The Hot Club of San Francisco celebrates the music of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli’s pioneering Quintette du Hot Club de France with innovative arrangements of classic gypsy jazz tunes from 1930s Paris, contemporary songs,  and original compositions from the group’s superb lead guitarist, Paul Mehling and featuring the silken violin of twice GRAMMY Award-winning Evan Price.

More than just a walk down musical memory lane, the band continues to reinvent themselves with groundbreaking concept shows that are at once entertaining and enlightening. For the 2025-26 season the band again offers their popular show Cinema Vivant, and a groundbreaking and timely show called Vive la Liberté.

 Cinema Vivant is an evening of silent films accompanied live by the group’s original gypsy jazz scores. The show is a celebration of imagination, innovation and nostalgia that revives the lost French tradition of gypsy musicians playing beneath the stars, matching every movement on the screen with characteristic virtuosity, passion and humor.

The band’s newest show, Vive la Liberté, explores the ways in which Django Reinhardt and other jazz musicians resisted fascism during WWII. Music by Reinhardt and his contemporaries along with stories and imagery show the personal and political risk these artists assumed in the name of freedom.  Vive la Liberté combines the joy of music with important reflections on the role of music and art when the threat of fascism looms large.