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Gilles Zimmermann: Viola da gamba creating new world music.

Gilles Zimmermann is a composer and multi-instrumentalist dedicated to the viola da gamba. He creates an original form of contemporary improvised music, using elements from medieval, world, jazz, contemporary music, as well as various popular music, with no boundaries.

Gilles plays acoustic and electric viola da gamba over laptop and Live Ableton. Apart from Western culture (Bach, Satie, Ravel, Monk to Hendrix and Frank Zappa), his musical sources are European (from Ireland to the Balkans through Andalousia), and Arabian, Indian and African.

After nearly 18 years of blues/rock/jazz guitar and bass, Gilles lived 8 years in London, then moved to Bavaria and changed to the viola da gamba in 1993. It took him some years to (re-)gain the same level as on the guitar. The viola da gamba changed his vision of music completely. Though he does like some of the Baroque music for the viol, this music is not his world and he wants to show all the facettes of this wonderful instrument in all sorts of other musical contexts.

Gilles Plays with open-minded, mostly oriental musicians (Persian, Indian, Arabian). The album The Missing Link features modern viola da gamba with Indian and French musicians. Music comes from the muses, not the museums!

You can also find out more about Gilles on his website.

  Gilles Zimmermann

[The Missing Link by Gilles Zimmermann]

The Missing Link
Gilles Zimmermann lives in Egling an der Paar, Germany.

Tagged as: World, Classical, Renaissance, Viola da Gamba.

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