Anouck Andre-Serge Lopez Duo Album; En Tren Del Sur

French female guitar player, Anouck Andre, has been releasing a duo album with
guitarist Serge Lopez called El Tren Del Sur. It's an acoustic guitar album that to me,
it appears as a surprise since I know that Anouck is a jazz fusion electric guitar
player. Curiosity then caught me up that drove me to take a look at this album a
little deeper. So this time, I'm gonna show you my opinions about the songs in the
album plus an interview with Anouck herself.
1. Jacky
The intro of the song is interesting. It locks the listener to listen the next
composition. I love the harmony that comes when the solo collaboration is up. I
cant help myself to dance at 02:02. The rhythmical pattern is just so nice with the
upbeat thing that makes my body moves along with it. Its pretty obvious that
Anouck and Serge are trying to show the classic-modern elements altogether in this
song.
2. La Familia
I love the classic vibe in La Familia. The sequence is nice since I can feel the warm
and relaxing feeling. The collaboration between the duo are just stringently united
that I might say this, La Familia is a natural piece which comes up as an idea from
two guitar players that play music in harmony.
3. Toulouse
It seems to me that this song is such a nice country-pop acoustic composition. I can
feel the theme there. The notes come to my mind so smoothly that I might recall
them up every time I want to hum it. I feel like I am walking around a village and
waving my hand to the people who are doing some farming and some kids playing
kite then followed by some adults going to a church holding their bible.
In my opinion, the whole album clearly states the true inner feelings of the two
guitarists toward their musical concept. I was lucky enough to have an interview
with Anouck Andre and asking her a couple of questions about her new album with
Serge Lopez.
1. Who did initiate this duo?
Serge is the one who initiated the duo.We firstly met for a guitar lesson cause I was
kinda bored with my playing, I felt stuck in my automatisms and I thought it would
be great to learn something fresh so I decided to ask Serge for a guitar lesson. He
usually doesn't accept students cause he has more the soul of a musician than a
teacher (it's what he thinks but actually he's a good teacher!) but he told me that
we could met for one lesson. We met a couple of times and we quickly felt a strong

musical connection and so he asked me to try to find a second guitar over one of his
songs called Viajando.

2. How do you collaborate your music with Serge Lopez?

Usually Serge send me a mp3 file or a video of the song I have to work on, and I try
to write my parts on my own, trying as many things as possible. When I think I'm
getting close from something which may work we try it together and most of the
times, our guitars are agree with each other :)
Then we rehearse a lot like 3 times a week cause we both are really passionate
and involved in this duet.
3. Do you have plan to conduct a tour to promote this album?
A tour would be fantastic but at the moment nothing is planned. We have isolated
gigs but no tour yet.
We are thinking about being at NAMM next year if we can manage to get some
other concerts in the same period, may be we can arrange some kind of mini tour in
the US.

4. It is a bit surprising to know that you are also interested in playing some kind of
flamenco guitar since you're well-known for your jazz-fusion guitarist. It shows your
versatility in playing guitar. How did you come up with this idea?
Actually I do not play Flamenco and my guitar parts are not really Flamenco. I 'm
still playing with a pick and I play a Lg Tramontane Custom Bdarieux which is a
Folk guitar with steel strings and I guess it is the blend between Serge's nylon
strings and my steel ones which makes the colour of or music and the specificity of
our sound.
So we cannot really say that this album is an album of Flamenco otherwise purists
will send you a bomb! :)
Serge doesn't claim himself as a Flamenco player either, even if his biggest
influences come from this style of music.
To answer the second part of your question, I didn't even know that I could bring
something interesting over some spanish oriented music. When Serge asked me to
try I was a bit worried and I thought it would be a mess. And I came back my my

guitar parts over Viajando and it worked pretty well, actually it worked so well that
Serge didn't wanted to stop to play the tune, so we played the song again and again
during 4 hours this day! And we felt that we really had something to do together.
5. What do you feel collaborating with such a talent like Serge Lopez?
I felt completely afraid at the beginning because I thought I won't be able to fulfill
his expectations but in the other hand I knew it was an incredible chance for me and
that I will learn a lot from him. Before I met Serge I was pretty shy with the music,
and was doing my Youtube videos, I had a gig from time to time but I thought I was
not ready yet to expose myself. And the thing is that you're never ready, there will
never be a good time, you won't never awake one day saying yourself 'Now my
playing is strong enough so I can expose myself'. And Serge gave me the little push
I needed to gain confidence and it was a precious help.
He never miss an occasion to play guitar and tells that we have to be ready
anywhere anytime.
And so I understood that life was the best school to learn music. So the fear I had
not make mistakes in my playing has been replaced by the desire to give the best of
me no matter the circumstances.
6. What can you say to your fans and fellows about this album?
It's not easy to answer this one because I know that people who follow me are
mostly interested in my electric guitar playing and to be honest I never thought
that my first album experience would be with an acoustic guitar!
But it's a project that is very near and dear to my heart. My guitar playing in this
music may not be the most technical or impressive but I really like what we have
done here.
So, people can discover and support the our duo here
http://willingproductions.com/el-tren-del-sur-new/
and here is our Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/Serge-Lopez-Anouck-Andr%C3%A9-El-tren-del-Sur592251907579028/
Courtesy of http://guitaronsky.asia/