Roland Dyens - Pixinguinha: "Rosa"

Filming and publication by Dimitrios Douros of DNWorks Films with full, expressed consent of the artists. NOTES ON ROLAND DYENS ====================== Comments below are a picture drawn from two excellent graduate dissertations on Master Dyens and his life’s work. These dissertations can be found at: https://www.rolanddyens.com/download/... http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora... As a composer, arranger and performer, Dyens has a body of work that firmly establishes his gravitas far better than any list of public accolades ever could! His works include over 35 compositions for solo and ensemble guitar, guitar with string quartet, and guitar/s with orchestra. His adaptations include classical pieces such as Villa-Lobos' Aria from 'Bachianas Brasileiras' no 5, and Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante defunte", to song adaptations such as the "26 Chansons Francaises" and five George Brassens songs. Dyens is a musician primarily motivated by emotional expression and sentimentality, not by technical prowess. His formidable technique is the vehicle with which he expresses the music, not an end in itself. "My basic ideas on music have been corroborated by the way Brazilian musicians organize their concert life; there is no musical frontier, they all participate in all kinds of classical or popular music. ... I try to present my concerts in the same spirit, mixing music that I like with only one guideline: quality, not history." Dyens has defined several of his musical influences, one being Heitor Villa-Lobos, saying that the Villa-Lobos' Twelve Studies, “represent for me the birth of modern guitar.” Claude Debussy (1862-1918) is another major influence, for his “refinement, delicateness, modernism” and for being “so French”! A third influence is the Spanish guitarist and composer Fernando Sor (1778-1839), whom Dyens claims as his “ancestor”. Dyens says that he feels so close to Sor's “so modern” approach to the guitar in his time, as exemplified in Sor's Methode Pour La Guitare” that “not a word written by him I could deny even today”. Another influence is Brazilian musician and composer Egberto Gismonti. Dyens describes Gismonti's “flexibility" as a perfect synthesis between ... Musica Popular Brazileira, Jazz and Contemporary music.” Gismonti's rather unconventional, ambidextrous approach to guitar-playing sparked Dyens' own adventurousness regarding the wider tonal and technical possibilities of the guitar including the use of scordatura. Dyens says that he finds in Gismonti, “as in Michel Portal, Gerry Mulligan, Keith Jarrett and myself – a care for nuance coming from classical studies. I like this transposition of education, from classical culture to other forms of music.”