Fiery yet light, sad and joyful at the same time

With a blend of Sinti swing, jazz, and Gypsy tunes, the Zigeli Winter Quartet transports listeners to the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Their warm, impulsive music oscillates between harmony and melancholy.

The Zigeli Winter Quartet blends the music of European Gypsies with the American swing of the 1920s and 1930s. With a lineup featuring violin, solo guitar, rhythm guitar, and double bass, the musicians revive acoustic sounds that have long been forgotten, modernizing them for today with many original arrangements. The ensemble brings the music of Django Reinhardt back to life, a major influence on almost all musicians in this genre.

After several years as a quintet, the jazz band led by Zigeli Winter, who comes from a Sinti family, now performs as a quartet, resulting in an even more compact and precise sound. Alongside Zigeli Winter (whose father once sang with Gerhard Wendland) on the violin, Mano Guttenberger plays the solo guitar, Joschi Graf sings and plays the rhythm guitar, and Branko Arnsek plucks the double bass. Except for Arnsek, all members of the group are self-taught. Their songs have no written scores; they are passed down from generation to generation, from fathers to sons – a fact that is clearly evident in their unacademic, but soulful and empathetic performance.

Fiery yet light, sad and joyful at the same time, this handcrafted music comes directly from the heart: a warm, impulsive music that still places trust in harmony and sheer joy of life, even though it is often tempered by melancholy.