It's been a long time since I had such an unusual and memorable experience and it happened while we were looking at the cathedral in Strasbourg. A guy sitting on a stool started playing an instrument (called a bouzouki) and singing. He is pretty large guy and has several tattoos on each arm. You look at him and expect a real husky voice. To begin with his voice was pretty low and slowly started crescendo. What was astonishing was the power and pitch of his voice. He is labelled as a "Countertenor mezzo-soprano". For myself and maybe others this means he got to really high notes and was able to hold them at great ease ! I didn't have anything I could use to record him and although a friend recorded the voice on a phone, the quality isn't good. To describe the overall style I suppose I would say medieval or Shakespearian, a really beautiful moment and after searching on the Internet I can only tell you that the disc is not yet available on the Internet anywhere. The guy is called Luc Arbogast and from what I understand he also plays with his wife Mélusine who wasn't there on this occasion. The name that appears on the CD cover is 'Domus' and the album is called "Fjall D'Yr Vinur" as you can see here :
Before he started singing there were maybe five or six people in front of the cathedral and when he finished I would guess there were over fifty in a semi-circle around him. He switched from German to French with great ease after singing, talking to people wanting to buy his CD. He has a French father (from Strasbourg) and German mother. If you happened to hear him like I did and missed the opportunity to buy his CD (silly me) you can most probably get one by contacting him at domus.atelier@laposte.net although many say that they have had no responses.
I would love to be able to post twenty or thirty seconds of the song I heard in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral at Strasbourg or a link to such an extract so if you hear of anything (or a place that is selling the CD) please post a comment 🙂
Edit : Well you will see in the comments that there is a great link to an extract of the guy singing : Luc Arbogast singing at Strasbourg thanks to "Pumpkin". Do take a look and enjoy the extract while you're waiting to meet the guy in the flesh ! 🙂
Click on the image below to see Pumpkin's video
Addition : I just came across this video of Luc in the church of Savigny, again a wonderful experience :