Sylvain Barou – Solo Album

I recently purchased French flute player Sylvain Barou’s self titled debut album and have really been enjoying it these past few days.

Surfing for John Doyle clips on Youtube one day I came across this video of him and fiddler Liz Carroll playing with a flute player I had never heard of. I’ve watched this clip over and over, often wishing for better audio quality. The second tune is one of John’s called Evening Comes Early, off his first solo cd of the same name. I have only heard it as a flatpicked guitar tune, but as Sylvain capably demonstrates here it sounds great on flute as well.

Then sometime last fall one of my Facebook friends linked this video of Sylvain’s upcoming solo album. I filed it away in Evernote under my “things to check out” notebook but promptly forgot about it. A few days ago I was going through cleaning out old notes and happened upon the link I filed away. The video is a trailer for Sylvain’s then upcoming album, showing the different musicians and playing cuts from the album. Among a mixture of Breton and Irish music I was super excited to hear an actual studio recording of the Youtube clip I had watched so many times. It includes John Doyle and Liz Carroll and titled simply JD’s reels.

Sylvain BAROU Nouvel album-New album teaser from Sylvain Barou on Vimeo.

I went home and promptly bought the album from iTunes, which was great. Sometimes with these international releases can be harder to get. I then spent an hour that night learning Evening Comes Early on the flute. Now to just get it up to speed.

You can stream clips and purchase Sylvain Barou’s album here. I highly recommend it for lovers of celtic and world music.