JÖEL GRARE Des Pas Sous la Neige

A self-taught child of rock and drummer-percussionist, Grare is fascinated by the cultures which line the Silk Road, early 20th Century French and Russian music and, curiously, the harpsichord!

Over time and from his travels, Grare has collected an ‘instrumentarium’ creating both soft and clamorous sounds. These instruments range from Madagascan straws to Japanese drums, not forgetting the unique chromatic fan of round steel cowbells from Chamonix, covering four octaves.

Today, Grare likes to travel light with a small hand-luggage of castanets, tambourines, mini woodblocks, wooden frogs, toy pigs (!) and other idiophones which stimulate the imagination.

Owing to his insatiable curiosity, Grare and his instruments travel through time and space. He has performed baroque music with the Poème Harmonique, Patricia Petibon and Amarillis, flamenco with Daniel Manzanas and ‘world symphonic’ with Yvan Cassar. He has also profited from a decade-long collaboration with Jean-François Zygel, experimenting with iconoclastic improvisation in concert and on stage for silent films. Zygel and Grare were also joined by Didier Malherbe, forming a trio under the evocative name ‘Around the World in 80 Minutes’.