CLASSICAL flautist Jane Rutter wants to show kids that classical music “doesn’t have to be boring”.
The world-renowned musician combines poetry and theatrical elements in her show An Australian in Paris, hoping to inspire young players and others less familiar with the genre.
Rutter infuses her show with French poetry and anecdotes from her early experiences in Paris, now her “second home” after Sydney.
“When I was a young woman I lived in Paris for three or four years to study. I was quite often lonely and would walk around the neighbourhood.
“Sometimes I’d go to a local café and imagine I was going to have coffee with Picasso, Cole and Linda Porter, Ernest Hemingway or Gertrude Stein,” Rutter mused.
“In my imagination I spent quite a lot of time breathing in that history.”
Rutter said she studied with two of the world’s greatest flute players, Jean-Pierre Rampal and Alain Marion, who believed in “music without barriers”.
“It was not considered in any way damaging to be playing a classical concerto one night at appearing on the Muppet Show with Miss Piggy the next. But my teachers were very anti-dumbing down.
“There’s no need to have drum and disco beats underneath Mozart for children or audiences who haven’t been exposed to tertiary-level music education.”
Rutter considered her flute a part of herself, treating her music as a “voice” and incorporating dance and movement.
“I try to portray that I’m really a singer, just singing through my flute. Some things I do in the show are slightly choreographed but I don’t beat myself up if I don’t get the right step in the can-can,” she laughed.
A public concert on Monday at Geelong Grammar School will feature Poulenc, Gershwin, Debussy, Ravel’s Bolero, Cole Porter’s I Love Paris, Piaf’s La vie en rose, Charles Aznavour’s She, Le CanCan and other “luscious French favourites”, Rutter said.
Geelong jewellery merchant Charles Rose was instrumental in bringing Rutter to Geelong.
Tickets available from www.trybooking.com/42169. More information about the show is available by phoning 5273 9275.
