Exposition d’instruments insolites au Château du Rivau

On a visit last week to the Château du Rivau we were fortunate to spend some time with the Kamil Tchalaev, a professional musician whose collection of instruments from around the world have been on display at the chateau this summer. Many of his eclectic mix of instruments are available for visitors to handle and to try for themselves.

Kamil explained to me that the role of professional musician can be an isolated one. His world became confined to the concert hall, the academy and the conservatory without really engaging with the public. Since 1999 he has made it his mission to bring music both to children and to the disabled and disadvantaged. He spoke of his interest in the chaos of sound and of creating structure from this chaos. Having learnt how sound is created he has been able to build his own instruments, some of which were also on display.

More about his life and work can be found http://www.myspace.com/kamiltchalaev

Kamil found us experimenting with these horns....

and stepped in to show how it should be done...

Almost ready to perform a duet... as daughter looks on barely able to conceal her amusement!

 Now it's on to the conch shell. That's the way to do it!

And now for the smaller version!

It was at this point that he gave us up as a bad job and moved on to other potential musicians!

I think I could actually get a sound out of that one!