Cello and Beyond

Gaspar Claus is a young French cello adventurer. Some good examples of his work can be found at http://www.myspace.com/gasparclaus.

Then yesterday, I discovered his series of collaborations with long-time classical flamenco guitarist, Pedro Soler, when they visited the French-Spanish border in some explorations earlier this year:












This stuff is almost perfect for me.  In college, I became hooked on flamenco.  Two or three years ago, I converted some of my precious Carlos Montoya to digital form from its 1959 - 60's era vinyl state.  And for a brief period in LA,  I had a roommate, Michael, who once aspired to be a concert pianist.  When we found that we both had a great fondness for the music of J.S. Bach, he persuaded me to drive him to a small, fourth-floor recording studio on Hollywood Boulevard where he had been offered a piano for the taking.  Michael went down on the street and convinced a nearby street person to help, and we lugged it into the elevator and onto my old '65 Ford pickup.   Listening to him night after night play his incredible live-right-there music gave rise to all sorts of musical confessions.  Among them was not only that I wished I had kept playing piano in my youth, but that the instrument that I really might have wanted to take up would be the cello, and I dug out my recordings of Pablo Casals.  Michael then told me how Casals had devoted one year of his life to exclusively studying each of the Bach Cello Suites -- an idea that stuck in my mind ever since.  So cello + flamenco guitar ... how cool is that?!