<<  -- 5 --  Jennifer I Paull    A MUSICIAN WITHOUT BORDERS

Just as Cathy Berberian was always experimenting with different folk music and styles, so Gilles goes from being a master of one to being an apprentice, then a learner, then performer of another. His first step along this road was into Jazz. This newly found self-expression led him through Romany Music to Bluegrass, Folk Music and the liberty to fly free!

Menuhin said of him:

The different folkloric music (particularly that of people who sadly, are on the path of extinction) -- it's up to us to assimilate it; it's up to us to be inspired by what it has to offer by its characteristics and to grant this music a new resurgence by way of the creative imagination of musicians who are able to play anything. For me, you are the example of a musician of the 21st century. You represent the direction in which music should evolve; on the one hand, the patrimonial respect of the precious classical works, presenting them in the correct style and with the intense communication that was appropriate to their time; on the other hand, the discovery of contemporary [popular] music and its creative element, not only in the improvisation, but also in the interpretation.

This DVD is a musical delight. How many performers would allow themselves to be recorded in the wind and miserable acoustics of the sand dunes, a swinging hammock really live, no overdubs? Musical reality is what this musician is all about.

He is in China as I write. Somehow I feel certain that he is about to discover another musical flavour and add it to his menu of Gilles, à la carte.

... the chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), author
The Sign of the Four