The Bagpipe Society

Review: Chabretas #2 - Eric Montbel

Last time I saw Eric Montbel in concert, he was playing some seriously weird stuff with even weirder pictures from Brueghel and Bosch on the big screen behind him and electronic gurdies in the mix, so I wasn't quite sure what I'd find on his latest CD.

What I found was pure joy. Small in scale, with quite sparing arrangements, but not at all limited in ambition, a CD in which the chabrette is the focus of a music mix that includes voice, lute, guitar, percussion, and a number of other wind instruments. It has the feeling of a Sunday lunchtime session where all the musicians are good friends, particularly when Guy Bertrand starts singing in Occitan, but there's also a sensitivity and emotional variety that lifts the music well out of 'let's play a tune' territory.

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