Stochelo Rosenberg

Stochelo Rosenberg was born in a Gypsy camp on 19 February 1968, the first son of Mimer Rosenberg and Metz Grunholz. He has four brothers and one sister. Stochelo has two sons Isaac and Pepito (Jazzy).

He started playing the guitar when he was 10 years old - rather late for a boy in a family which consists of all musicians. He learned to play the guitar from his father and his uncle Wasso Grunholz, but most of all he learned by listening to the records of his hero, Django Reinhardt. When he was twelve years old, together with his cousin Nous'che Rosenberg on rhythm-guitar, and Rino van Hooydonk on bass-guitar, Stochelo won the first prize in a children's TV-contest. Several record companies were interested, but Stochelo's parents wanted their son to grow up outside the world of the spotlights. He played throughout these years with Nous'che and his brother Nonnie on double-bass in churches and Gypsy-camps all over Europe.

Stochelo has developed from a talented but shy gypsy-kid into a world class artist and composer. He has written several beautiful pieces of music. In the beginning he played a Favino-guitar, and later he was able to buy an old Selmer guitar, number 504. The legendary Django played the same model of guitar with the number 503 - quite a good feeling for Stochelo! He uses D'Addario Silk and Steel strings and Galli-strings.

In 1992 he received a golden guitar from the magazine Guitarist as a reward for making the accoustic guitar so popular.

Like many of his contemporaries, Stochelo loves to improvise, and like many of his predecessors, he is searching for new challenges. He likes to try new ways of playing, but always with the solid underpinning of his first love: the music of Django Reinhardt. He colaborates from time to time with another gypsy great guitarist, Bireli Lagrene.

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