Track Listing

1. Summer (Vivaldi)
2. Nothing Else Matters (Metallica)
3. He's A Pirate ("Pirate's Of The Caribbean" Theme)
4. Smooth Criminal (Michael Jackson)
5. Csardas (Gypsy Dance)
6. Who Wants To Live Forever? (Queen)
7. Thunderstruck (AC/DC)
8. Ain't No Sunshine
9. Carmen Fantaisie with Paco Pena
10. Air (Johann Sebastian Bach)
11. Zorba's Dance (From "Zorba The Greek")
12. Chelsea Girl
13. Rock Prelude
14. Dueling Banjos (Dueling Strings)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #308 in Music
• Brand: GARRETT,DAVID
• Released on: 2009-06-02
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Album Description
Garrett's unique, and wholly individual style, pays as much homage to Metallica as to Mozart. His forthcoming record covers an incredibly diverse selection of repertoire, representing his love for many genres, and the ability to tackle each successfully. Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal," is cleverly reinterpreted, as is Queen's ballad, "Who Wants to Live Forever." AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" is given a memorable new twist, alongside, "He's a Pirate," from "Pirates of the Caribbean." Given his enduring commitment to his first musical love, David still includes some classical selections on his American debut, including the last movement of Vivaldi's "Summer" from The Four Seasons, and Bach's "Air". Not to be satisfied with only imaginative covers, David also displays his own deft writing skills with notable originals, including "Chelsea Girl."

Review
David Garrett is already the stuff of legend in him is enshrined an entire corpus of virtuoso violin art, expounded with a fearsome beauty beyond comprehension. --BBC Music Magazine

About the Artist
By the time he was thirteen years old, when most of his peers were whiling away their afternoons on their new PlayStations, the virtuoso violinist David Garrett had a classical music career that would make most artists of any age pea-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 the now 27-year-old 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. David Garrett is already a huge star in Europe, as well as the Far East. He plays nightly to thousands of adoring fans, particularly in Germany where he has already completed a sold-out arena tour, conquered the charts and garnered two gold discs for both of his records released there. On the famous Last Night of Proms in the UK, he played to a crowd of 40,000 people, and also appeared at the legendary Royal Albert Hall in an impressive six concerts in seven days. His sole album released in the UK became a Top 20 chart fixture.

Now, he's set to conquer a whole new terrain with his first American release, simply entitled, David Garrett. His international career is multi-faceted. With arresting good looks and charisma, David landed a deal as a global brand ambassador for Banana Republic in 2009, and has additional endorsements overseas with brands including Audi and Montblanc. Dubbed, "the fastest violinist in the world," by German paper Kolner Stadt-Anzeigere, the incredible violinist will be in the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records, as the fastest-ever performer of the Flight of the Bumblebee, clocking in at a blistering 66 seconds.

David has long been one to forge his own path in the world. As a teenager in Germany, with a glorious, but grueling, classical career of international symphony concerts and recordings, he ached to escape the confines of classical music. Without telling his parents, he fled to New York to at last sample the life of a "normal" adolescent, with every temptation imaginable at his fingertips. The classical violin was put aside as he discovered rock music, clubs and girls.

He eventually rediscovered his passion for the violin during his rebellious phase, and decided to audition at the world famous Juilliard music school. He was accepted, and to his surprise, taken on by the legendary violinist, Itzhak Perlman. While at Juliard, David began taking on odd jobs to pay the bills - moonlighting as a busboy and modeling in his spare time. Not surprisingly, he eventually landed in the pages of Vogue and the Fashion Week catwalks for Armani, all the while pursuing his musical dreams.

"Before Juilliard I'd lived in a shell, spending 24 hours a day with adults," he reflects. Living in New York and going to Juilliard opened David's eyes, and ears, to whole worlds he had been missing while he'd been off practicing the classical music canon seven hours a day. He says that coming into his own as a musician was a kind of liberation, one which freed him from the expectations of the small and insular classical music world. "Everyone told me not to make mistakes," he recalls. "But when I was eighteen I thought, `F*** it, I want to make mistakes!' At that point, I felt a little burned out with classical music and wanted to do something new and fun."

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.

Other influences on David include Queen ("the first non-classical album I ever bought was A Night at the Opera," the violinist recalls). The band's ballad "Who Wants to Live Forever" makes its way onto David Garrett, as does AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." The violinist draws on a fantastic array of other stylistic inspirations. "He's a Pirate" was taken from the score for the smash film franchise "Pirates of the Carribean." David says, "I've always loved film music, and this score just delivered the right amount of power and seriousness to counterpoint the rather funny story." Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" makes an appearance as well; it's been a longtime favorite which David always used first as a backstage warm-up before performances, and then as a staple in his dynamic live shows.

Given his enduring commitment to his first musical love, David (who was dubbed "Formula One on the strings" by the major German newspaper, Kölnische Rundschau) still includes some classical selections on this American debut, including the last movement of Vivaldi's "Summer" from his hugely popular The Four Seasons ("keeping the original structure, but creating a new sound that captures the energy of rock"), and Bach's Air, which gets a daring modern twist. David argues that so much of Bach's music was based on the popular dance forms of his time, ones that he says are "actually quite similar to modern dance music"--why not give Air an R&B update?

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. " 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."

The lauded conductor and Kennedy Center Honoree Zubin Mehta put it best when he said, "David Garrett is surely going to have a resounding presence on the music world of the 21st century."

Customer Reviews

Electrifying blend of classical and modern
Wunderkind David Garrett grew up in Aachen, Germany and studied violin under Ida Haendel and Itzhak Perlman before graduating from Juilliard in 2004. As a child prodigy, he was subjected to a grueling rehearsal schedule of classical repertoire (he injured his back and shoulders recording Paganini: Caprices as a teen), but the freedom of NYC (including the huge music library at Juilliard and various clubs) opened up a new world of musical possibilities. David supplemented his income by modeling for print magazines like Vogue and Fashion Week for Armani while at Juilliard; his striking looks and broad crossover appeal have earned him the nickname "the David Beckham of classical music." Garrett's response? "He kind of drew a new audience to football, OK mostly female, but that's not a bad thing. I think that's why people actually say that because they know I really try very hard to get new audiences for classical music."

I first heard of David Garrett in a Barnes and Noble and was hooked. After watching numerous clips and interviews (both German and English) on YouTube, I was blown away by his utter confidence and poise. You can see at once that this is someone who truly loves music and his instrument (he plays both a 1717 Stradivarius and a 1772 Guadagnini, which he badly damaged after falling on it); just like growing up bilingually with a German father and American mother, he's equally at home as ambassador of classical and pop.

"David Garrett" is actually David's fourth solo album for Decca after Free, Virtuoso, and Encore, and most of the tracks are pulled from these three albums (I would have liked to see the inclusion of "Claire de Lune" from Encore). The themes run the gamut from Baroque (Vivaldi's "Summer" from the Four Seasons, Bach's "Air") to Romantic (Bizet's "Carmen Fantasie"), a dash of Italian Gypsy, modern rock (Metallica, Queen, AC/DC, Michael Jackson), film scores (Zorba the Greek, Pirates of the Caribbean), and original works ("Chelsea Girl," "Rock Prelude"). The album opens with a high-octane rendition of Vivaldi that might bring to mind Vanessa-Mae or perhaps the eccentric Nigel Kennedy, but David makes this all his own, and at breakneck speed.

My favorites are the uptempo tracks, particularly the "He's a Pirate" theme from Pirates of the Caribbean. This Hans Zimmer gem is a cross between sweeping score reminiscent of the Chieftains' score for TNT's "Treasure Island" with the stately delicacy of a bourrée. The xylophone echoes the violin, accented by triangle and harp. The intense "Smooth Criminal" opens with tympani mimicking a heartbeat...chilling and effective. David's aggressive bowing in the first part slides into a near-human wail as he duets with the electric guitar, then returns to the staccato melody. Queen and AC/DC are given similarly effective treatment. Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" also translates well to the violin medium, buoyed by the assertive piano bassline. I loved the rollicking "Zorba's Dance" but was a little underwhelmed by "Dueling Strings" (I just can't distance the song from Deliverance (Deluxe Edition)).

Overall, this is a fun, flashy album that showcases David's immense technical talent and will hopefully attract younger listeners to classical repertoire. Purists will likely not be impressed, but for casual listeners, this is a catchy album that does justice to familiar tunes (hey, if it gets today's youth interested in Bach and Vivaldi, that's a good thing). Be sure to check out David's charismatic live performance of these songs on David Garrett: Live In Berlin.

I became a fan
It was the TV commercial that got me interested. And then I listened to the snippets available on Amazon. So I bought the whole album. I have listened several times to it and will now be buying more of this exciting artist's albums. Hard to believe I'd ever be a fan of the violin.

Fantastic mix of old and modern brought together
I heard about David Garrett on NPR recently and thought I would give it a listen. I love the way this CD has a great mix of some older fantastic classical pieces mixed in with modern day songs. The arrangements are wonderful and exciting and his violin skills are amazing!