What a wonderful questions are your n°2 & 3, Tracy.

• The musicians I particulary admire ? Well..Hard to say. One name comes to my mind right away, very spontaneously : Django Reinhardt. It doesn't mean he is the one I admire the most but...his name came to me all of of a sudden at least. I adore - in all genres and times - Bach (even God owes a lot to him :), Lenny Bernstein, Egberto Gismonti, Maurice Ravel, Ravi Shankar, Joao Gilberto, The Beatles, Glenn Gould, Enrique Granados, Frédéric Chopin, A.C.Jobim, Charlie Parker, Leo Brouwer, Céline Dion, David Oistrak, Thelonious Monk, Astor Piazzolla, Jacques Brel, Pixinguinha, Mozart and.. Britney Speers let say :) :) :). And so many others actually ; they all enchant me even if some of them aren't instrumentalists at all (I don't mind since they all deserve the rewarding and noble name of "musicians", I do admire and love them all. Why ? Cause, if you note well, none of them screams to express themselves. Their music is "rare" and precious to my heart. Plus something else : they all get their own "label" actually. In fact, who can claim he gets the privilege to get identified from the 2 first notes ? A few artists only have their own signature.

• What qualities do I prize most in musicianship? Silence actually. The more I'm living, the more I'm playing and composing, the more I'm aware of the nesessity - "emergency" should I say - of silence in music. I know, Tracy.. It's not an issue for young musicians (nothing but normal to be too fast and too "talkative" when you are 20 somehow ). But the day I realized how crucial was silence in music, then everything changed in my approach of life and emotion in music. For this reason I love Thelonious Monk, the sculptor of silence. My father was a painter and for this I love paintings since I'm a kid. Silence in music equals blank spaces in Art : we do need them to appreciate all the rest, including the notes :).

• I try to transmitt this prize of silence to my students (not only this of course, don't misunderstand me :) :) (I'm a Silence Teacher actually. Or even better : a "Silentologist" ! ). Clarity is also essential in counterpoint and voicings, a clean playing counts a lot as well. I try to teach them not to cheat or imitate or over-doing things but just to stay "honest" towards music and its potential listeners. You will probably laugh if I say that I spend much time being very demanding with tuning (the key, the 1st "flight ticket" for emotion to my opinion).

Voilà, ma chère.

And sorry for being....so talkative myself (I'm not a great silentologist actually !).

                                         Love.

                                                       Roland