GHEORGHE ZAMFIR & JAMES LAST - LIVE PERFORMANCE (CIOCIRLIA LARK BIRD SINGING - ROMANIAN FOLKLORE) ............................................................. http://gheorghezamfir.ro/ https://www.facebook.com/GheorgheZamfirOfficial ................................................ Gheorghe Zamfir – The “King of the Pan Flute” again conquers the European stages His success story provides big headlines and record statistics: Over 200 albums and CDs released, over 40 million recordings sold, 90 gold and platinum records, countless awards, numerous tours on all five continents. Maestro Zamfir What reads like the biography of a rock star is the story of the most famous pan flutist in the world, Gheorghe Zamfir. An artist, whose name is synonymous with the instrument. The press and the public have anointed him as the “true virtuoso”, as the “maestro” and the “King of the Pan Flute”. Euphorically celebrated as the “Reincarnation of the God Pan”, he has been considered for decades around the world as an icon and already today as a living legend. With Zamfir, music lovers and music critics are in agreement: He is one of the most important representatives of a wind instrument that for a long time played only a minor role in music until Zamfir brought it to the great stages of the world and displayed his multi-faceted magic there. In the meantime, the famous pan flutist can look back upon 50 years on the stage. For Gheorghe Zamfir, a half century of completely spectacular stations. Since the 1960s, extensive concert tours have lead him with various ensembles and casts around the globe. Whether in North or South America, in China, South Africa or Australia, everywhere he finds an enthusiastic public that learns to appreciate the special character of the pan flute, its unique tonal “language” that absorbs the sometimes elegiac, sometimes temperamental pastoral tones like a new musical discovery into itself. In the German-speaking world, the concertgoers like to particularly recall his successful programme “Pan Flute and the Organ”, with which Zamfir was to be heard in the 1970s and 1980s in all the great churches and cathedrals of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The repertoire And praised again and again: The artistic breadth of the virtuoso. His repertoire is like a link between the different musical worlds. Zamfir’s love for the music of the gypsies, to the folklore of his fatherland, finds expression in his repertoire as does his appreciation for the classical works of Puccini, Verdi, Mozart or Schubert, which he often “interprets in a strange and bizarre dialect and thus obtains from them a subtlety that the tired originals had long since lost” (Christian Seidl in the Süddeutschen Zeitung [Southern German Newspaper]). Precisely this multi-dimensionality and creativity are what have brought the artist worldwide plaudits and awards. Zamfir received, among others, the distinctions of “Chevalier des Arts et Lettres de France” and “Most Popular Composer and Artist of the 20th Century”. Even his excursions into popular music, the expression of Zamfir’s pronounced love of experimentation, have been positively received by critics and fans. He plays music with the bandleader James Last, records the well-known title “The Lonely Shepherd” with him. More and more active as a composer – Zamfir: “Being creative is the most important thing to me” – , he regularly focuses upon film music. He writes the soundtracks to the films “Mourir à Madrid” and “Picknick at Hanging Rock” and, for the blockbusters “Once Upon a Time in America”, “Kill Bill” and “Karate Kid”, he has supplied modern film music, the melodies of which still ring today in all ears.The icon of the pan flute is alive – and the legend continues…