27 ROMAIN LELEU & THOMAS LELEU The recital ends with a traditional Irish folk tune, Down by the Sally Gardens. There have been many arrangements of this air, which is now associated with a poem by the Irish writer and dramatist William Butler Yeats. It’s one of the great standards of Irish folk music. Did you look for a specific sound or timbre to bring out the Celtic origins of the piece? Romain Leleu: Whichever instruments it’s played on, this music will always remain quintessentially Irish. We had no desire to change the ensemble by adding a guest musician. For this piece, I use the flugelhorn,2 and the melody flows between the two of us. It’s a tribute to a theme we liked, and even though we’re not specialists in Celtic music, I don’t think we’ve betrayed its spirit. Thomas Leleu: We simply let the melody carry us along. It can stand on its own two feet. When we play, we don’t think. We’ve done our thinking beforehand. 2 An instrument with a very gentle, mellow sound, widely used in jazz.
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