Damian Drăghici

Damian Drăghici, born in Bucharest, Romania, 1970, to a Roma family that had nurtured musical talent for seven generations, is a virtuoso musician particularly associated with the Romanian Pan pipes (nai, pan flute), one of the most noted exponent of his particular instrument in the world, has focused new international attention on the ancient Romanian pan flute.


He started playing at age of 3. By the age of 12 he started performing in restaurants and clubs and defying clichés - from the age of 12 till 18 he won 5 times the first prize of the National Festival of Romania. By the age of 14, Damian had performed the European classical works of Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach on national television. The musician became known for his impressive technique on the pan flute, and Romanians nicknamed him "the Speed of Light" because of his ability to play complex, challenging music at fast tempos. At 18, he clandestinely crossed the border with Yugoslavia and get to Greece. There, he busked in the streets before landing a nightclub gig playing keyboards. In 1996 he auditioned for faculty members visiting Athens from the Berklee College of Music in Boston.


Damian Draghici - Beyond the Black Sea
Berklee offered Drăghici a full scholarship. Following the granting of a visa for the United States, he began to study under George Garzone. After only a short time in America, he has become recognized for his outstanding ability and talent. Following graduation from college with a Magna Cum Laude majoring in Jazz Performance he relocated to Los Angeles and is currently working with major Hollywood composers. In 2004, Drăghici joined as one of the headliners, James Brown, Joe Cocker, reggae star Shaggy, Cyndi Lauper, Zucherro, Gypsy Kings, Roger Hodgson (Supertramp) and The Pointer Sisters for one of Europe's most esteemed musical events the Night of the Proms tour.


Damian & Brothers
Back in Romania, Damian Drăghici had an ideal biography to become a national hero: he opposed the communist regime; escaped the country without a dollar in his pocket and worked hard his path to the stars; started as just another poor Roma musician and ended as the great Romanian prodigy. In November 2001 he made a big return to his native country. With a 150-piece orchestra he played in front of 72,000 people at the notorious Civic Center in Bucharest. A strong symbolism: the grand boulevard that Ceauşescu modeled on the Champs-Élysées as a monument to his rule was for the first time in its history used to its full potential by – in a way - the most successful opponent to the very same regime.


Damian Draghici - Unreach
In 2006 Drăghici decided to come back to his roots, by putting the bases of a new group with “his gypsy brothers” as he likes to called them. One of the purposes of “Damian & Brothers, Filarmonika Rromanes” is to change the international perception and the stereotypes over Roma (Gypsy) minority through their music. The impact and the huge popularity achieved until now are a confirmation of their common effort.


He still lives in California and often visits Bucharest. Damian won a Grammy, in 2007 he released his 18th album. The official recognition of Drăghici’s efforts and dedication to promoting Roma minority came on 20th of March 2007 when he was designated by the President of Romania, as Romania’s Ambassador for the Roma minority in the 2007 European Year of Equal Opportunities for All and in 2008 as the Ambassador for European Year of Intercultural Dialogue.


Filarmonika Romanes - Saraiman
His recordings - many of which are instrumental, although he sometimes features vocalists - could be described as world music, but he certainly doesn't limit himself to any one style of it. Damian, a gypsy, is unpredictable, and the musician has been influenced by rock, pop, jazz, new age, and classical as well as Eastern European, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Latin music (especially Spanish flamenco, although he has also acknowledged Afro-Cuban salsa and South American/Andean music).

The Virtuoso

Gheorghe Zamfir (born April 6, 1941, Găeşti), Romanian musician widely known as The King of the Pan Flute.

Although initially interested in becoming an accordionist, at the age of 14 he began his pan flute studies. He continued his education at the Bucharest Academy of Music where he was a student of Fănică Luca at the Conservatory of Bucharest, Romania in (1968). He currently resides and teaches pan flute in Bucharest. Zamfir came to the public eye when he was discovered by Swiss ethno-musicologist Marcel Cellier who extensively researched Romanian folk music in the 1960s. Largely through television commercials, he introduced the folk instrument to a modern audience and revived it from obscurity; in the United States his commercials were widely seen on CNN in the 1980s.


Already in 1966, Gheorghe Zamfir had released his first record. The 1970s and 1980s see an artist who tirelessly changes sound studios, great concert halls and continents. In 1974, he composes the first Mass for Peace for the pan flute, choir, organ and orchestra. In 1976, his single Été d’Amour becomes one of the hits of the year. Zamfir makes stylistic and exemplary recordings with organ accompaniment, small ensembles and large orchestras that produce self-composition, classical and religious works, ethnic and popular music with the yearning tone color of the pan flute. He gives legendary concerts in New York’s Carnegie Hall, in Royal Albert Hall in London, in Paris’s Olympia, in Shanghai, Tokyo and Cape Town. He is to be found upon the “great parquet”, is received by the Japanese empress and heads of state throughout the world, chitchats on the talk shows of David Letterman and Johnny Carson and gives the pope a sampling of his art form at the Vatican.

What reads like the biography of a rock star is the story of the most famous pan flutist in the world, Gheorghe Zamfir. An artist, whose name is synonymous with the instrument. The press and the public have anointed him as the true virtuoso, as the maestro and the Master of the Pan Flute. Euphorically celebrated as the Reincarnation of the God Pan, he has been considered for decades around the world as an icon and already today as a living legend. With Zamfir, music lovers and music critics are in agreement: He is one of the most important representatives of a wind instrument that for a long time played only a minor role in music until Zamfir brought it to the great stages of the world and displayed his multi-faceted magic there.

This wind instrument: the pan flute, panpipes, flûte de Pan, Pan's pipes, syrinx, pandean pipes, or Romanian "nai", was said to have been invented by Pan, the god of nature in Greek mythology. Zamfir is known for playing an expanded version of the traditional Romanian-style pan flute (nai) of 20 pipes to 22, 25, 28 and 30 pipes to increase its range, and obtaining as many as nine tones from each pipe by changing the embouchure.


And praised again and again: The artistic breadth of the virtuoso. His repertoire is like a link between the different musical worlds. Zamfir’s love for the music of the gypsies, to the folklore of his fatherland, finds expression in his repertoire as does his appreciation for the classical works of Puccini, Verdi, Mozart or Schubert, which he often “interprets in a strange and bizarre dialect and thus obtains from them a subtlety that the tired originals had long since lost”. Precisely this multi-dimensionality and creativity are what have brought the artist worldwide plaudits and awards. Zamfir received, among others, the distinctions of Chevalier des Arts et Lettres de France and Most Popular Composer and Artist of the 20th Century.

Even his excursions into popular music, the expression of Zamfir’s pronounced love of experimentation, have been positively received by critics and fans. He plays music with the bandleader James Last, records the well-known title The Lonely Shepherd with him. More and more active as a composer – Zamfir: “Being creative is the most important thing to me” – , he regularly focuses upon film music. He writes the soundtracks to the films Mourir à Madrid and Picknick at Hanging Rock and, for the blockbusters Once Upon a Time in America, Kill Bill and Karate Kid, he has supplied modern film music, the melodies of which still ring today in all ears. His success story provides big headlines and record statistics: Over 200 albums and CDs released, over 40 million recordings sold, over 120 gold and platinum records, countless awards, numerous tours on all five continents. In 2008, the Malmö Science Institute (Sweden) published the results of a two-decades research about the world's greatest cultural personalities: Gheorghe Zamfir was ranked first, with over 1,500,000 votes!