Bireli was a child prodigy in gypsy jazz circles, but he's even better now. His Gypsy Jazz Project are really good live - in this Django composition he quotes some Mozart!

If you play guitar, you might find my other hub Guitar- advanced and jazz chords useful.

• Jimmy Bruno has his own Guitar Institute where anyone can sign up and study online. I like his teaching method, which is very well presented and explained. Here he is playing with Joe Beck, a great player with a very good guitar instructional DVD. There are sample lessons available at Jimmy Bruno's site, which is linked below. You can learn a lot just watching the relaxed way he plays, switching between pick and fingerstyle, with a nice clear tone.
  

• I've been working through Larry Coryell's DVD series. It goes a bit fast most of the time, but he is obviously a terrific player and there is a huge amount of good info for the aspiring jazz player.

• Ed Bickert is another of my favourite players. You can download tracks from i-tunes, and he covers a lot of jazz classics.

• Ted Greene was also an amazing player, with a series of excellent instruction books that are highly recommended. Check out his baroque and jazz improvising on Youtube.

• Mike Stern is a top player, with Rock and blues influence. I especially like his album "Voices", which for me has some strong compositions as well as great guitar.
• Wes Montgomery - one of the best players ever, though some of his recordings are marred by poor orchestration. Smokin' At the Half-Note shows his playing at its best.
• Bireli Lagrene - one of the best gypsy jazz players, technically brilliant and always very entertaining. This video is a Django Reinhardt composition.
• Jim Hall - a master of understatement and an all-round great player. I really like Concierto, which is his jazz version of the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo. An amazing piece of music anyway, the jazz version is so good.
  

Another great player with some excellent DVDs on playing jazz and blues.

Django was the original brilliant jazz guitar soloist, and my other hub Django's legacy includes some of his playing and has some info on Gypsy Jazz. Essential listening for all guitar players, as he has been a major influence on everybody else in the field since the 1930s.

A lot of the tone of jazz guitar is down to the use of archtop guitars - guitars built with carved wood tops in some cases. Gibson 400, Gibson L-5, Benedetto guitars are kind of the Rolls-Royces of the guitar maker's world. You might want to start saving now.

An i-phone application is The Real Book, two volumes of jazz standard chord charts you can download to your phone. Nice gift for the jazz guitarist in your life, and cheap!