PROJECT PRESENTATION

Fifty Plugged Guitars is a musical concept imagined by guitar player Renaud LOUIS-SERVAIS *.

It is a fifty electric guitar players orchestra for which Renaud Louis-Servais wrote modern arrangements of « classical sounding » tunes. In this new orchestra, accompanied by a « rock » rythm section (bass/drums), overdriven guitars take the place of symphonic traditional strings instruments (violin, cello, double bass, piano). Some bass parts are played with electric bass, some other with double bass and a bow.

For Renaud Louis-Servais, Michel Legrand’s** music always been a magnificent starting point for new arrangements, as it is lyrical, at the crossroads of classical music and modern music… In short, timeless !

Contacted, Michel Legrand gave his full support and agreement for this project.

The project’s first step is an HD video recording of the whole Fifty Plugged Guitars playing a Michel Legrand’s tune arranged by Renaud Louis-Servais, "What are you doing the rest of your life?", the 28th of october 2018 in L’Empreinte (a theater in the suburb of Paris), without any audience. Once edited, this video will be shared on the main video hosting websites (YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo…) and social medias (Facebook, Twitter…).

The second step is to contact producers to involve them into a full show production, including numerous Michel Legrand’s songs arrangements. Nowadays, a beautiful YouTube video is really helpful to convince producers of a project’s relevance.

This volunteer project needs a money raising to pay the video filming team, sound engineer, tee-shirts making, fifty guitar players greeting and food, etc… through a crowfunding campaign and with the financial help of sponsors.

PROJECT ‘S ORIGINALITY

Even if managing large guitars ensembles is not a new concept, part of the project's originality is about the symphonic approach of it.

Moreover, the idea to combine in one project guitar fans as well as Michel Legrand’s music lovers is really new.

And last but not least, a part of this project’s originality comes from the players themselves. The fact that they are coming from the professional field as well as from the amateur field is really new. This is allowed by the particular arrangement writing, conceived so that each player only plays relatively simple « note-for-note » parts. The final harmony is the result of all those intricated guitar parts, with several difficulty levels, so that some guitar parts are really "playable" by not necessarily professional guitar players and some other parts are much more difficult to play.

So, for sure, what we have here is an « outside of the norm » project !

* The French Renaud Louis-Servais is one of the most accomplished guitarists of the jazz-rock-fusion stage with every type of guitars (electric, classical, folk, jazz, guitar-synthe…). Renaud likes to surprise and transcend musical divides. His first album “ILUNA” (2011), recorded and mixed by Steve Prestage (Gino Vannelli, Gary Moore, Peter Gabriel...) mirrored what had always been driving him musically: the pleasure to move freely between ‘metal’, progressive music, jazz and rock, with a lot of attention paid to composition and sound quality.

In 2015, he released the album “EPIC CIRCUS”, recorded and mixed between France, United States and Australia. Real artistic achievement, well-known international musicians take part in the album, as Virgil Donati (Steve Vai, Allan Holdsworth, Scott Henderson, Frank Gambale...), Philippe Saisse (Al Di Meola, Chaka Khan, Al Jarreau, David Sanborn...) or Christophe Cravero (Billy Cobham). The music video Epic Circus shot in Los Angeles is available on YouTube and well reflects this style fusion / progressive rock that Renaud’s fans enjoy so much.

Fond of musical pedagogy, he took part in different methods and regularly hold Master Classes about improvisation, technic, pedal using and fusion play. He taught the guitar to more than 500 students in 20 years, such as Callum The Heavy Metal Kid (11, finalist of Australia Got Talent), Manou Rao (13, India) or Tina S (18, 100 millions views on her YouTube channel). Renaud posted also numerous videos demonstrating his guitar solos, covers and compositions on his own YouTube channel.

** Born in 1932, Michel Legrand is a French prolific musical composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist, having written over 200 film and television scores, in addition to many memorable songs. He is best known for his often haunting, jazz-tinged film music. His celebrated scores for the films of French New Wave director Jacques Demy, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), earned Legrand his first Academy Award nominations. Legrand won his first Oscar for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). He has also recorded more than one hundred albums with international musical stars and worked with such diverse musicians as Ray Charles, Neil Diamond, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan and Shirley Bassey.

Renaud Louis-Servais dirige 50 guitaristes sur une œuvre de Michel Legrand !