Sunday, December 14, 2008

Li Jie is Godlike

I have never seen such mastery of an instrument of any kind. And at such a young age, it is breathtaking. It is almost embarrassing to watch acclaimed masters of classical guitar who have been playing and studying all their lives get soundly outdone by a 14 year old girl. What is truly staggering is that Li Jie did not even start playing the guitar until she was 11 years old! That gives her about 3 years of practice to become a literally peerless performer. Her guitar looks huge compared to her tiny body. When I was transcribing from her video I kept thinking that the 4th fret was the 5th because of how her tiny hands have to stretch so far to reach it, yet she pulls it off perfectly. 

She is currently 27 years old. I have searched and found no information about what she is doing now. The thought came to mind that maybe she decided that after 3 years of practice she had already become the best classical guitarist that has ever lived, and maybe she took up another hobby. Seriously, what else is there to be done? She could compose her own music, but I've seen no evidence that she has. One of the sad things about some of my favorite virtuoso guitar heros is that they don't compose. I don't know if it is because they have no imagination or because they don't feel like they have anything to offer. I guess this separates the greats like Paco de Lucia from the crowd. 



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As of 2006, she was playing in a quartet called the 4-Angels, if that helps. Here's a link
http://www.almaguitar.com/htmlboard/board.php?func=view&dbname=notice&pagecount=&uniqno=2875&no=93&subno=1&searchtype=TITLE&keywd=

Aaron said...

What, then in 2007 she realized she could play the other three parts using her feet and no longer needed the quartet?