Octave on his real name Octavian Teodorescu (born 29 January 1963)[1][2] is a Romanian vanguard musician, composer, music arranger, songwriter, music producer, performer, multi-instrumentist (guitars, keyboards, programmable instruments) from Bucharest, Romania. Pioneer of Electronic Sound and using of the computers and synthesizers in music in Romania, with Science Fiction touch.[3]
Bucharest is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, at 44°25′57″N26°06′14″E, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than 60 km (37.3 mi) north of the Danube River and the Bulgarian border.
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the southeast, Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, and Moldova to the east. It has a predominantly temperate-continental climate. With a total area of 238,397 square kilometres (92,046 sq mi), Romania is the 12th largest country and also the 7th most populous member state of the European Union, having almost 20 million inhabitants. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, and other major urban areas include Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Iași, Constanța, Craiova, and Brașov.
His first mainstream success was the 1992 album "The Secret of Pyramids", part of a trilogy which also include 1993 "At The Gates of Love" and 1994 "Sweet Freedom". The whole Work (102 minutes) appears unified on a double CD (the first of this kind in Romania) in 1995.
Mainstream is the prevalent current thought that is widespread.
History
Early life, influences, first contact with rock
He was attracted as child to all kind of instruments and music generally. His parents noticed that, but did not encourage him along this line. When he was 16 he attended his first rock concert: Suzi Quatro 1979 Live in Bucharest. The impact was tremendous for Octave like teenager and this kind of artistic achievement – Rock – will become the landmark of his future artistic career.
Susan Kay Quatro is an American rock singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and actress. She was the first female bass player to become a major rock star.
The effect was one year later augmented by his 1979 encounter with "The Last Waltz", the movie of Martin Scorsese. The film presented as a farewell concert of "The Band" was perceived by him like an homage to the whole generation who in the 70's brought Rock at its height. The Atmosphere of the movie and especially the words of The Band's guitarist, Robbie Robertson, profoundly resonated in the conscientiousness of the future Octave
The Last Waltz was a concert by the Canadian-American rock group The Band, held on American Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. The Last Waltz was advertised as The Band's "farewell concert appearance", and the concert saw The Band joined by more than a dozen special guests, including their previous employers Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan as well as Paul Butterfield, Bobby Charles, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, and Neil Young. The musical director for the concert was The Band's original record producer, John Simon.
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American-Italian filmmaker and historian, whose career spans more than 50 years. Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian-American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, faith, machismo, modern crime, and gang conflict. Many of his films are also known for their depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity.
Jaime Royal "Robbie" Robertson, OC, is a Canadian musician, songwriter, film composer, producer, actor, and author. Robertson is best known for his work as lead guitarist and primary songwriter for The Band, and for his career as a solo recording artist.
In many of his biographical narrations is pointed this moment when he understands that rock means more than music. He begins to perceive it "like a way of being, of thinking, of social behaviour, of conceiving life itself, a philosophy which by far could not accommodate what he at the time was taught in school under the cultural isolation of the communist regime".
1980
In 1982 he was drafted. He took along his guitar. Rigid military rules and the lack of freedom provoke him all the more to dream the day when he would come back home and would create his own band. That day came in June '83. Afterwards he became a student at the Bucharest Institute of Buildings, which he abandoned after two years to become a professional musician.[4]
In November 1985 he founded his first group and play only in small clubs Soft Rock bearing influences from bands like Eagles or Dire Straits. After a short time the group disintegrated and from now on he activated under the name of Octave.
The Eagles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1971. The founding members were Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner. With five number-one singles, six number-one albums, six Grammy Awards, and five American Music Awards, the Eagles were one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s. Their albums Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) and Hotel California rank first and third, respectively, among the best-selling albums in the United States, with 38million and 26million album units in sales. The Eagles are one of the world's best-selling bands, having sold more than 200 million records, including 100 million albums sold in U.S alone. They were ranked number 75 on Rolling Stone's 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Dire Straits were a British rock band formed in London in 1977 by Mark Knopfler, David Knopfler, John Illsley, and Pick Withers. They were active from 1977 to 1988 and again from 1991 to 1995. The band became one of the world's best-selling music artists, with album sales of over 100 million.
1990
After the Romanian Revolution in December 1989 he is dedicated to instrumental music only, her major idea being to compose a Rock Opera: The Octave Trilogy. In June 1992 the first contract with the Electrecord Label for the first part of the Trilogy was signed. On 27 August the same year, was released the album "The Secret of Pyramids".
2000
Since 1997 is among the first Romanian artists who declared his intentions to be online.
On 15 April 1999, he launches the CD-ROM "www.octave.ro Free Online Music" which includes his career in multimedia format: all the musical material from his albums in MP3, videoclips in MPEG, photos, texts in five linguistic variants (Romanian, English, French, Italian, German) representing among others the stories of the albums, biography, scanned selections from press and fans letters. The CD-ROM points the total move in Multimedia. From that point on, Octave wanted to be found anywhere but by Internet. The CD-ROM was a hybrid one. There were presented like bonus two tracks from a forthcoming album The Only One
Because of the low acceptance of the Romanian public at those times regarding the internet, the whole project fails and remained unreleased but retrospectively looked, it was an important step for the ones who full used this new communication form later. The project was an open door to the future
The CD-ROM contained a text written by Octave called "Multimedia Pleading" which proved now looking back the novelty spirit of this project. And extract from this text:
"It is a new field, which is born nowadays, and we would define pretty clear its final forms not far than the following years. For a better understanding of Multimedia phenomenon let's extrapolate the things through artistic field. Imagine, for instance, that in near future you will not be able listening to the music without watching pictures or reading a story, all three of them having a common concept and being in a closer interdependence. It is like you are a musician, a painter and a poet in the same time; a sort of Leonardo da Vinci."[5] He lives in Germany, since 2001.
Discography
Studio albums
1992 – The Secret of Pyramids (27 August) LP Vinyl Electrecord Label ST-EDE 04168
1993 – At The Gates of Love (3 December) LP Vinyl Electrecord Label EDE 04287
Cristian Botez defined in 1991 in "Momentul" newspaper Octave's music as: "a terrible sound and an avant-garde rock, located at the crossroads of the styles hard rock, new wave, progressive, heavy and symphonic rock. With a compact sound of large coverage, at the same time with melodic passages, easy to remember" Florin Filimon from Fan Radio Bucharest said about the song "The Eyes Of The Planet" from the album "The Secret Of Pyramids" in 1992: "It is a composition that comes with easiness from the classic patterns which our ears are normally accustomed, announcing a long-awaited widening horizons of Romanian musical creation and not only. You are carried from the symphonic music to the metallic one, the result being a cosmic melody, creator of the image of the infinity"
Ciprian Tanasescu mentioned in a review from 1992 of the album "The Secret Of Pyramids" in "Săptămâna" magazine concerning the same composition "The Eyes Of The Planet": "The somewhat exotic sonorities of the song prepare us for what's coming. Alternating the riffs of the guitar with the instrumental melodic lines overlaid with a visible (or perhaps I should say audible) tendency to grandiose." The same author made reference to Octave's sound in another article in the same magazine defining it as an "adjusting of the melodic fluency of the rock from the early '70s to the '80s modern sonorities, the result leading to the emergence of a rock music genre that differs from the current inland rock like a natural pearl between the cultured ones."
In a statement of the release of the album "The Secret Of Pyramids" from 1992 Octave's style was defined as follows: "A unique sound and a mix of styles converge to a rock of the future that ingeniously interlaces the electronic music with the classical one." The same article relates about the song "The Eyes Of The Planet": "The first track on side A of the LP entitled "The Eyes Of The Planet", cumulates all the components of a beautiful dream, showing frequent and amazing changes of tempos and styles, wiggling back and forth between the symphonic orchestration and the metallic warmth of the hard rock"
Florian Pittiș said at the launching of the album "At The Gates of Love" in 1993: "Octave creates sometimes the impression that he seeks to outline a dream-music, a music that can be taken as a drug, a music that calls image" Corneliu Băran described in the article "With Moțu and Octave" from the "Azi" newspaper the musical material of the album "Sweet Freedom" from 1994 in the following way: "The LP contains six "heavy" compositions of amplitude, and I would say – of an expressive tone and as melody – of an exceptional instrumental refinement"
Each Octave album has a story. On the covers of the albums and on the booklets of the CD's is a synoptical storyboard which is constructed from the names of the songs and philosophical ideas signed by Octavian Teodorescu. Cătălin Andrei made reference in 1995 to the philosophical concept behind Octave's music in an article in the "Ziua" newspaper with the occasion of the release of the double compact disc that includes the entire trilogy: "Octave albums – a blend of philosophy, music and science fiction. To understand Octav you need to accept the integration into his philosophical concept. Because his songs are full of seductive traps, which can stun you so much that you become forever "octavomaniac"."
Ema Ofițeru spoke in an article from "Cotidianul" newspaper in 1999 about the "special note" of the music of the artist like being perceived as "a very present and original one".
Mihaela Dordea mirrored Octave in an interview with the artist in 1999 as a composer with a "visionary thinking", with a melos "come from other worlds" that sends a "clear pacifying message".
Daniela Caraman Fotea also summarize in the "Pop Folk Rock Remix" musical lexicon from the year 2003 Octave's musical message to the words: "peace, harmony, spiritual purifying" against a background of "generous themes".
Related Research Articles
Nicolae (Nicu) Covaci is a Romanian guitarist, painter and music composer. He is best known as the leader and founding member of Romanian Rock and cult band Phoenix, for which he is vocalist and guitar player, with more than 50 years of activity.
Holograf is a modern rock band from Romania. Since the band's formation in 1978, Holograf released 18 albums. The band won the Excellence Prize at Romanian Media Music Awards in 2013, the awards for best pop-rock artist and best pop-rock song at Radio Romania Music Awards Gala in 2014 and was nominated multiple times at Romanian Music Awards for Best Group and for Best Song.
Costin Petrescu is an architect, graphic artist, percussionist and Romanian-French composer.
Iris is a Romanian rock band established in 1976 by Ioan 'Nelu' Dumitrescu (drums), Ion 'Nuțu' Olteanu and Emil Lechințeanu. They achieved success, followed by tours throughout Romania and recordings for radio broadcast. At the 2006 MTV Romania Music Awards, Iris won the Best Rock Award and were nominated for Best Band and Best Live Act.
Timpuri Noi is a Romanian alternative rock band.
Ion Petre Stoican was a Romani-Romanian violinist, a lăutar.
Romanian rock is a genre of popular music in Romania. It was influenced by changes in Romanian politics to such an extreme, that both the themes and styles of musicians, and the tastes and interests of listeners, changed dramatically with every major event in Romania's internal politics.
Adrian-Floru Enescu was a Romanian composer of film soundtracks and contemporary music.
Sfinx was one of the most appreciated Romanian rock acts in the 1970s, along with Phoenix.
Dan Andrei Aldea is a Romanian rock multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, best known for his work with the band Sfinx, but also for his solo career.
Electrecord is a Romanian record label that was founded in 1932. It was the only record label in Communist Romania. It was then transformed into the national recording company following the socialist doctrine of centralization.
Șerban Nichifor is a Romanian composer, cellist and music educator.
Alexandru Hrisanide was a Romanian pianist and composer who was a representative of late 20th century Romanian avant-garde. A Netherlands resident since 1974, he taught piano and composition at the Amsterdam and Tilburg Academies of Music. Hrisanide’s music achieves an original synthesis between archaic melos and modes on the one hand, and the accomplishments of the modern Viennese school on the other. He won the Lili Boulanger Foundation Prize in 1965.
Marius Popp was a Romanian jazz pianist and composer.
The Octet for Strings in C major, Op. 7, is a composition by the Romanian composer George Enescu, completed in 1900. Together with the Octet by Niels Gade, it is regarded as amongst the most notable successors to Felix Mendelssohn's celebrated Octet, Op. 20.
Curtea Veche nr. 43 were a Romanian musical band who were active in the mid-1970s.
Silvia Șerbescu was a Romanian concert pianist. She was one of the first important concert pianists emerging from the Romanian piano school, and a distinguished piano pedagogue. Her interpretations of Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and Debussy were memorable. From 1948 until 1965 she was a piano professor at the Bucharest Music Conservatory.
Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano in F minor, Op. 6, is a chamber-music work by the Romanian composer George Enescu, completed in 1899.
The Decet for winds in D major, Op. 14 is a chamber-music work by the Romanian composer George Enescu, written in 1906. A performance lasts about 23 minutes.
"Octav Teodorescu, also born today in 1963, is an instrumentalist and composer from Romania. Since 1988 he evolves under the name Octave."(in Romanian)
"Octavian Teodorescu – the famous "Octave" from the '90s, the artist who proved that electronic music in Romania can mean not only Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis and Kraftwerk"(in Romanian)
"In 1982 he was drafted. He took along his guitar. Rigid military rules and the lack of freedom added to his determination and to the despair of his superiors he showed his preference for his guitar instead of the Kalashmikov guns. Unfortunately, he could play only in the laundry room, dreaming of "Sweet Freedom" and the day when he would come back home and would create his own band. That day came in June '83. Afterwards he became a student at the Bucharest Institute of Building, but this kind of education was not for him. Two years later he left school and decided to become a professional musician."(in Romanian)
Electroblog.ro"A new style, a new approach, perhaps the most purely electronic symphonic rock music material"(in Romanian)
Underground Empire"Octavian Teodorescu (who named the project by his first name OCTAVE) is something like the Romanian Yngwie Malmsteen. But I'm inclined to say that he shows the better compositions."(in German)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
