From goats to concert halls

Press, 28 October 1981, Page 1

From goats to concert halls

Gheorghe Zamfir’s first musical efforts were heard by the goats he tended as a shepherd boy in his native Rumania; now he plays to audiences all over the world. The son of a vineyard owner near Bucharest, Gheorghe Zamfir used to play his accordion to pass the time as he guarded his father’s goats. Mr Zamfir was speaking in Christchurch yesterday. He is here for a concert at the Town Hall this evening at the end of a week-long tour of New Zealand. He speaks very little English, so his replies were translated from French by his manager. Gheorghe Zamfir wanted to go on playing the accordion and persuaded his father to enrol him in music school. But the accordion

classes were cancelled that year, so instead- he enrolled in the pipes of Pan class. From there, he piped his way to the top. Of about 40 people in the world who played the pipes of Pan well, he was the best, he said. “I am alone: I am Number One,” he said. In New Zealand, he had been most surprised at the number of people bringing their own pan pipes to his concerts. There had been someone at every concert, he said, who had come up to him afterwards and asked him for a few tips on how to play or how to tune the instrument. Mr Zamfir tunes his pipes with beeswax, but he said people used to tune them with bits of bread. “They are the most diffi-

cult instrument to tune," he said.

He carries four sets of pipes with him, each one a different size and with a different range of notes. Together, they range over 25 octaves, compared with nine on a piano. Each tube is capable of several octaves, and by pursing his lips he can vary the notes from each tube. He called it “bending” the notes. In addition, each set of pipes can be tuned to a range of keys. The one he was demonstrating was tuned in G major, but by dropping bits of beeswax into the bottom of certain tubes, he could change the key from major to minor, up and down the scale. Mr Zamfir plays Rumanian folk music on his pipes, as well as popular and classical music. The first half of his concert comprises the popular tunes he has recorded, while the second is . entirely Rumanian folk music. “You can play anything on a Pan flute — folk music, popular music, and Johann Sebastian Bach.” he said.

“You can get the pipes to sound like a human voice, and you can make them sound like an electronic synthesiser. There is no limit to the number of effects you can produce.” Mr Zamfir said the pipes of Pan were “as old as the earth. There has always been: bamboo, with the wind blowing across it.”