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Muse Memo - Entertainment - Music Classical - David Garrett
David Garrett


To: Smitten
From: Entertainment Muse
Date: Noteworthy Days
Subject: Accomplished

With movie star good looks & rock n' roll attitude, virtuoso violinist David Garrett is an entertainment sensation.

David's Bio - By the time he was thirteen years old, David Garrett had a classical music career that would make most artists of any age green with envy. Born in the German city of Aachen to an American ballerina mother and a German father who was a lawyer, David was a true child prodigy. At age eight, he was being booked to play as a soloist in front of some of the world’s greatest orchestras, including the London Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Russian National Orchestra. When he was twelve, he was performing alongside legend Yehudi Menuhin. When he turned thirteen, he was signed to one of the most famous and prestigious classical music labels in the world, Deutsche Grammophon, as a solo artist.

With the demands of his fast-burgeoning career and an ultra-intense focus on classical music, David had barely heard any rock or pop music until he was a teenager. “I’d listened to nothing but classical music until the age of fourteen,” says David, who was home-schooled until that age. “So when I started going to regular school, and started to be exposed to all this pop and rock, it was a revelation.”

As a result, David has carved out a unique and wholly new artistic path, one that pays as much homage to Metallica as to Mozart. His daring journey from classical wunderkind to mature and highly adventurous artist has been fulfilling not just for him personally, but clearly resonates with an enormous worldwide audience.

You know you’re in for a different kind of violin experience as soon as you hear David’s cover of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.” At an after-hours party at David’s New York apartment one night, someone shouted out a special request for this song when David was improvising for his guests, and the violinist took on the challenge. He is perhaps the first person to draw a parallel between Michael Jackson and Mozart’s writing styles: “I was working on the Mozart A Major violin concerto around the same time I was working this out, and I couldn’t help but notice an underlying harmonic pattern in ‘Smooth Criminal’ that was similar to the famous Turkish march from the last movement of that Mozart concerto.” At the end of the track, he skillfully combines the two works.

Not to be satisfied with just doing innovative and imaginative covers of music from such a wide variety of genres, David also displays his own deft writing skills with notable originals, including “Chelsea Girl,” which was inspired by an on-again/off-again flame.”

In The Artists' Words - David says that in many ways David Garrett is the ultimate result of his musical journey. He calls it “one hell of a project,” but he means that in the best way. “I’ve put everything into it,” he recounts, “my time, my emotions, my musical integrity, my technical playing, my arrangements and new pieces-everything.”

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