Yep, that’s what I know him for. It’s the only thing.
As I alluded to earlier in the thread, there was a two-part episode about the proliferation of Peruvian flute bands. Having never seen one before or sense, it seemed pretty random to me.
I hope you love it as much as I did. Please note that Kenny G produced at least one other album of Christmas music, and the one I’m referring to is the original “Miracles: The Holiday Album”. I cannot vouch for the other(s).
That might be more apt if Zamfir were Peruvian or ever played Incan-style flutes.
Oh yeah, I remember the commercials. The music was inoffensive enough, but damn there was one at least every half hour on some stations. Kinda surprised he’s still walking the earth.
Ehh, a different instrument doesn’t really equate a different genre. I’m not sure I’d put them in the same genre if I were a journalist. But if I were stocking records in a record store and we had an “easy listening” section, I’d be comfortable filing both of them there.
Heheh, I somehow missed the (completely unrelated) Peruvian flute band invasion. I was kinda checked out from popular culture in the late naughties.
LOL, a guy I was friends with in the early 80s lent me one of his cassettes. We found each other attractive, and if we both hadn’t been in other relationships, we might have ended up together.
And like @Johanna I wasn’t watching TV at the time, so I never saw any of the commercials, and I didn’t know that he was cheesy. The friend who lent me the cassette was into classical and baroque music, and introduced me to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. The Zamfir cassette was pretty good, Hommage à Mozart
I was reminded of Zamfir relatively recently, when an episode of the most recent season of The Amazing Race, set in Romania, featured a task in which the contestants had to assemble and play a traditional Romanian pan flute, called a nai.
That led me to look up Zamfir, discover that he is in fact Romanian (his full name is Gheorghe Zamfir), and that he is still with us.
I definitely remember the rather cheesy TV commercials for his albums back in the 70s, which billed him as the “Master of the Pan Flute.” Those commercials seemed to be on a constant rotation on the independent channels, where I watched things like Underdog and Tennessee Tuxedo. His Wikipedia article indicates that his actual musical career has been more distinguished than those commercials would suggest.
I only remember him in the context of Weird Al Yankovic’s “Achy Breaky Song:”
You can clear the room
By playing Debbie Boone
Or crank your Abba records until dawn
Oh, I can even hear
Slim Whitman or Zamfir
Don’t mind a Yoko Ono marathon
I remember those commercials as well. Does anyone remember the Freedom Rock ad? It’s been living in my head for almost 40 years now.
Damn. Ya beat me to it.
What I find interesting is that he seemingly was marketed in the USA just as (his last name) Zamfir, while in Germany the commercials always were for Gheorge Zamfir.
The Americans recognized his genius and dubbed him worthy, like Prince or Charo, of The Honorific Of The Single Name.
That is a haunting piece of music.
I would imagine it’s a difficult instrument to play well… snapping your head around playing arpeggios and such.
I’ve always thought of Zamfir as sort of a minor league version of Andreas Vollenweider.
Yeah, that’s the harp guy! I also remember him, and he belongs to that category of easy listening instrumentalists. Though I don’t remember him being advertised on TV, this was more of a New Age thing. And I abhor any music labelled New Age, shudder.
I definitely remember the ads.
My sister had a picture framing shop / gallery in a town and was near the town marina.
Since the place was near the parade route and a good place to watch fireworks I’d often visit for 4th of July. For some reason at the marina the town had a Peruvian Pan Flute group perform for the “weekend”.
IIRC they didn’t play during the parade, but the sound got pretty old listening while waiting for the parade to start…
Brian
Yeah, same here, “who’s going to be disputing him?”
Well, there was that guy in Aguirre The Wrath Of God.
Zamfir also famously played the pan flute for all of the orchestral incidental music in the Karate Kid movies. He wasn’t completely self-aggrandizing, he was actually an in-demand musician if that was the sound a composer was looking for.