Thibault Cauvin is considered "the most successful guitarist in the world" according to the label Sony, which has just released his latest album FILMS. This is quite strong stuff even considering the further Sony announcement that the young Frenchman has traveled "in more than 120 countries giving almost 1500 performances." Guitar aficionados can think of one or two other guitarists who are quite good and quite successful. Apparently, you have to stir up a lot of dust today in order to be heard. Thibault Cauvin doesn't really need to do that, since his guitar skills speak for themselves anyway.

Born on July 16, 1984 in Bordeaux, France's Wikipedia notes that Thibault Cauvin began playing guitar at the tender age of 5 with his father Philippe Cauvin, himself a guitarist and composer. He then continued his studies at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Bordeaux and at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris in the class of Olivier Chassain, graduating with honors. Parallel to this classical training, Thibault Cauvin grew up in an environment of contemporary music, thanks to his father and his family environment, which consisted mainly of jazz, rock or world musicians. These are all, of course, optimal conditions for gaining a foothold in the guitar world, from classical to jazz. And Thibault Cauvin has fully exploited these conditions, as can be heard from his latest album FILMS.

FILMS wants Thibault Cauvin to be understood as a declaration of love for film music, and he assembles on this album film music from the great classics, animated films and more recent films in a colorful sequence. To do justice to the wide spectrum of film music, he transforms his classical guitar into a guitar of the future, enriched with effects and novel sounds. This basically bears the danger that the music gets short-changed in front of all the effects and sound shows. However, Thibault Cauvin cleverly manages to evade this danger and allows just enough technical frenzy so that the message does not get lost, which is to lovingly remember well-known film scores, some of which have become famous. The trick might be to carefully match the arrangements to the variety of styles of the film scores and to use just enough and such sound effects that the core of these pieces of music is thereby clearly worked out. In addition, the guitarist relies on his enormously broad palette of colors, which he derives from his classical guitar, to achieve the goal of lovingly presenting the listener with his take on a colorful bouquet of film scores, without merely slightly altering the original. The guitarist succeeds in this throughout and in addition there is the joy of full commitment to achieve the goal.

FILMS proves to be an ambitious and innovative project executed by an excellent guitarist who is already on an extensive tour to share his exciting view of film scores live with his fans.

Thibault Cauvin, classical guitar
Lucienne Renaudin Vary, trumpet
Nadia Tereszkiewicz, voice