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Jordi Savall: connections beyond words

2026-07-17T08:58:00

AUGUST Grid posts (4)

The Catalan gambist and conductor Jordi Savall speaks with Michael White about his six decades of music making, the ideals that have guided his work and the future of the early music world he helped to shape

It’s a painfully hot day in London – hotter, Jordi Savall tells me with a soft, benign smile, than in Barcelona – and we’re talking between concerts: one just finished and another coming up the next day.

For someone about to turn 85 (1 August), who has been active on the public stage for six decades and still manages more than a hundred engagements a year, his sense of calm – of taking crazy schedules in his stride – is curiously powerful. There’s a serenity about him you’d associate with Buddhist monks: he’s reflective, thoughtful, wise…

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