<<  -- 4 --  Jennifer I Paull    A MUSICIAN WITHOUT BORDERS

I was born with music inside me ... Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my liver, my kidneys, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me -- like food or water.
-- Ray Charles (1930-2004), songwriter, musician and singer

The same is so obviously true of Gilles, one of the quartet of Apap brothers, all of whom he introduces in the first film. His talent is amazing, his superb phrasing and sense of rhythm as flawless as a perfectly cut diamond.

To wear white tie and tails and travel around the world 'playing the Mendelssohn thirty times a year? Great for some, but not for me!' Individuality would fly out of his window as speedily as monotonous performances and dollars would fly in. This is not a musician of compromise. Gilles is a philosopher as much as he is an artist. One has only to watch his face as he talks about music or as he plays. His infectious smile, his intoxication with all styles of music, his delight in his journey through his art; these ingredients are hypnotising.

Everyone listening to him is smiling. The DVD, Apap Masala is as full of smiles as it is inspiration. It's impossible to watch it without smiling! Gilles sits on the floor to learn from a great Indian Master. He interviews and questions another in the chapter 'Bonus' -- which is an additional portrait gallery. The DVD is in English and French with subtitles whenever he is speaking the other language.

Gilles Apap can talk about music, teach it, study it and joke about it whilst having fun with it. He smiles his way through Bartók Sonatas caressing each and every note. How many Western musicians look as though they are in a mediaeval torture chamber in performance; be they orchestral or solo?

There are two basic styles of Indian music, the Carnatic and the Hindustani. He drinks in either nectar sitting alongside a nineteen-year-old Indian violinist or talking to a Great Master. He is humble; he wants to learn. Everything Gilles Apap assimilates affects what he already knows and how he distils anew each aspect of his repertoire.

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