What is Artie’s ?

In our atypical journey as musicians, we have built our musical career around travel. For the past 11 years, we have had the opportunity to work in more than 50 countries, including states that are not on classical musicians paths. I am thinking of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, India, Malaysia and so on. We had fun developing a project based on friendship, kindness, curiosity.

Who do you mean by “we” ?

The Artie’s family is a very large family of musicians. There are about sixty of us who have been involved in the project since the beginning. Actually, we’re a bunch of friends. No one belongs to the company that is Artie’s.

"Certainly, my job remains to play serious quartets but why not convey the image that music is music, and that you don’t need to be a specialist in this or that universe to appreciate it."

Gauthier Herrmann

How the Artie’s World Tour project was born ?

We once said to each other, “We’re going to travel all over the world.” The trips followed one another, sometimes in trios, sometimes even the orchestra. We thought: “Since we do all these trips, why don’t we bring them all together under one project, called Artie’s World Tour, a world tour in 80 concerts?”

Gauthier Herrmann

How do you rate the appreciation of your music abroad?

Our job is to make classical music. But I don’t really like this split between classic, baroque, jazz, pop, fusion. Obviously, my job is to play Beethoven, Ravel, Fauré. But if we play in Saudi Arabia, we do it with Saudi musicians and we try some fusion music. If we play in India, we play Bollywood. If we play in China, we add some Chinese pop tunes. The idea is to be able to bring people together and say that music is a whole. So certainly, my job is still to play serious quartets, but why not in the same concert convey the image that music is music, and you don’t need to be a specialist in this or that universe to appreciate it.

"For us, it’s very funny to find ourselves with setlists that have already toured the world and to come and play them in this magnificent Parisian Cortot hall."

Gauthier Herrmann

You play a lot abroad but rarely in France…

The Artie’s adventure is an adventure that has really developed internationally. We’ve been doing 80 concerts a year for the past ten years. Finally, it’s quite amusing that we play relatively little in France and very little in Paris. For us, it’s very amusing to find ourselves with setlists that have already toured the world and to come and play them in this magnificent Parisian Cortot halle. It’s really something nice because we play in front of our friends, family, people we know and who see us with a box on our backs without really knowing what we do for a living. So tonight is the opportunity to come and tell them: “When we call you and we’re on the other side of the world, this is what we actually do.”

Tell us about this concert.

Tonight is a classical music concert but, like what we are doing with Artie’s, we will mix genres. That is to say, I have invited four musicians who are on violin, violacello and piano and we will play Brahms, Korngold, Mozart. I asked two cabaret musicians to come and join us to talk about the topics that interest me. As it happens, tonight’s topic is travel and death. Death is not a happy topic, but with these two friends, it is a very funny way to address it.

Artie’s at Cortot concert hall, Paris

Why this particular theme?

We will open the concert with a piece that was composed, freshly composed, which was dedicated to me by a composer friend called Eros Babylone. This piece is called The Death of Lovers and is part of an oriental tale we composed following a visit we made to AlUla in Saudi Arabia in January. The oriental tale has twelve pieces and this is the third one.