Michel Godard

Who thought up this instrument? Curvy like a snake, the serpent’s wooden tube twists its way from mouthpiece to bell. As big as a human torso! While it closely resembles the reptile in shape and name, the sound of the serpent has nothing in common with a venomous hiss. In fact, it pleasantly murmurs along in the lower register, its smoky sound soothing on the ears.

The French musician Michel Godard is renowned as a serpent conjuror. He elicits the sweetest of sounds from the instrument, makes it coo and sing, whistle and whisper. Together with an ensemble that is at home in both baroque and jazz, he devotes himself to music that glitters like gold: “Light the Earth” is the name of the program in which Godard juxtaposes melancholic arias by George Frideric Handel with his own works. Here, echoes of baroque sounds reverberate: Godard wraps bass lines or early music melodies in luminous robes of sound.