Career
Gheorghe Zamfir (born April 6, 1941) is a Romanian pan flute musician who has received 90 golden and platinum disc awards, released over 200 albums and sold over 40 million recordings.
Zamfir is known for playing an expanded version of the traditional Romanian-style pan flute (nai) of 20 pipes to 22, 25, 28 and 30 pipes to increase its range, and obtaining as many as nine tones from each pipe by changing the embouchure.
He is widely known as "Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute"
Zamfir came to the public eye when he was "discovered" by Swiss ethnomusicologist Marcel Cellier who extensively researched Romanian folk music in the 1960s. Largely through television commercials where he was billed as "Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute", he introduced the folk instrument to a modern audience and revived it from obscurity. In the United States his commercials were widely seen on CNN in the 1980s.