Beating Silver
by Titus Gee
Flautists hold up your heads. The flute has a new champion dedicated to giving embouchure holes some mojo in the ‘hood.’ Greg Patillo polishes the image of one of the worlds oldest instruments by playing tunes like the Mario Brothers theme and “Flight of the Bumblebee” while simultaneously laying down a percussion track with his mouth.
“I grew up with the flute being something that’s not cool, and I kind of internalized it … I’m particularly interested in making flute cool again,” Patillo told David K. Randall of the New York Times in May.
Randall found New York’s pied piper playing in a Bronx subway tunnel. RedFence found him at YouTube where his videos have been viewed more than 20 million times in the past year.
Many of them show nothing more spectacular than the flautist in a t-shirt and jeans standing before a black background, yet they can be captivating. Patillo attacks each piece in a single, unedited take. He heaves and sways like a rapper in mid flow. His quick, aspirant breaths — used by flautists to fuel long passages — disappear into the beat-box rhythms, leaving a solid double track of sound that sometimes strains credulity as two instruments proceed from one mouth.
Patillo’s subway credentials balance a more traditional resume. According to an online biography, Patillo earned a master’s degree from Cleveland Institute of Music and played as Acting Principal Flute for the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, of Guangzhou, China.
He moved to San Francisco, helped found a group called “Collaborative Arts Insurgency”, and developed his beatbox savantry at artist gatherings on a street corner in the Mission District. He also joined a genre-bending jazz band, called “Project,” with cellist Eric Stephenson and bassist Peter Seymour — also Cleveland Institute graduates and given to extraneous percussion while playing. Both groups recently cut CDs. Project’s debut album, “Winter in June,” is available from cdbaby.com.
If the recording achieves the mesmerizing quality of the group’s videos, then the gangstas best hold onto their bling. The flautists are hitting the street.
