Interview with Paul Bowman by Andrea Aguzzi, first part (made in genuary 2011)

Interview with Paul Bowman, second part
Interview with Paul Bowman, third part

The first question is always the classic one: how does it start your love and interest for guitar and what instruments do you play or have you played?

I had a typical “American” childhood, as my interest at age 11 was rock music and the electric guitar. I learned jazz guitar in high school, and though I started classical guitar after hearing Segovia in concert at age 14, I enjoyed playing in the high school jazz big band. Around this time, a turn toward the serious life’s work on the guitar came after a swimming/diving accident and coming within one millimeter of being paralyzed. Not to mention, at that moment I saw my life pass before my eyes. This enlightened the conviction in my choice to study music. After High School, I attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. But then, it got all blurred as I started to play the Renaissance Lute. I had taken master-classes with Paul O’Dette, which was a great experience. I remember going home one Thanksgiving and bringing on board the bus my lute, classical and jazz guitars. After 3 semesters as one of 700 or so guitar majors, I transferred to the Manhattan School of Music where I received my B.M and M.M. degrees and studying classical guitar with the three-headed guitar faculty there at that time. After living in Europe for 11 years, I returned to the U.S. in 2006 to get my Doctorate. I qualified for candidacy the D.M.A. in Contemporary Performance this past June at the University of California San Diego. The University is reputable as one of the leading institutions in the world for the research of New Music. There I did not study on my instrument with a guitar professor (there is not a guitar performance professor at U.C.S.D.). But rather, I brought my pieces in for lessons to professors who were composers, instrumentalists and conductors. The ideas from these musicians perspective were informative in that musical ideas were not bound by knowledge of the guitar’s technical limitations.

You have worked closely with composers of distinction such as Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Jason Eckardt, David del Tredici, Harvey Sollberger, Pierre Boulez, Roger Reynolds, Tristan Murail, Helmut Lachenmann, Matthias Spahlinger, Phillipe Manoury and Charles Wuorinen and you have also collaborated with esteemed conductors Stefan Asbury, Heinz Holliger, Steven Schick and Jeffrey Milarsky. How was it working with these people?

While performing and recording with Ensemble Sospeso New York, I worked with Elliott Carter. He was a young man then, maybe 91 years old or so! We performed his work, Syringa (1978) for mezzo, bass baritone, guitar and ten instruments and recorded it on the Mode Records label. Jeffrey Milarsky conducted. Mr. Carter had a stately presence as we worked together on the beginning of the work – a noble guitar solo imitating the Greek god Orpheus. George Crumb is a composer who is very friendly and easily approachable, kind of a “down-home” personality. I really enjoyed working together on his percussion/guitar duo Mundus Cantus. Jason Eckardt, and David del Tredici coached me before performances of their works. Helmut Lachenmann devises ways of playing for the guitar and other instruments in creating sounds and affects that follow his musical and textural ethos. So I learned extended techniques from him during rehearsals at U.C. San Diego for his chamber work, Zwei Gefühle. My work with flutist/composer/conductor Harvey Sollberger is an ongoing process, as we we’ll be giving workshops/performances this February at Duke University, U.N.C. Chapel Hill, and at N.C. State University. Harvey is important because of his approach to accuracy, especially in the areas of rhythmic precision and in the dogged adherence to playing what’s in the score. Charles Wuorinen is someone I know from his work as a conductor, as well as from his coaching’s I’ve had on several of his works. I also worked with Pierre Boulez in his Le Marteau sans Maître with Ensemble Sospeso and conductor Stefan Asbury in a birthday-tribute concert at Alice Tully Hall, New York. Percussionist/conductor Steven Schick worked with me in the performance and recording of Boulez’ important work as well. Heinz Holliger conducted myself and members of Ensemble notabu Düsseldorf in Elliott Carter’s – Luimen – a work containing not only the guitar solo Shard, but, some tricky ensemble playing as well. Composer Roger Reynolds is University Professor at the University of California San Diego. We worked together on his solo work, The Behaviour of Mirrors (1985) - a piece that explores the premise that a mirror can not only reflect moments of the present, but moments of the past and of the future as well. The work was recorded and is in my 12 C.D. box set as well as playing on YouTube. I just worked with Tristan Murail this past April on his work, Tellur (1977). To get inspired ideas from one of the founders of Spectralism on the performance of this work was immensely valuable.

You have played Changes by Elliott Carter, would like to talk us about this score and your experience playing it?

Changes (1983) is one of the pivotal works for guitar. As a classical guitar student at Manhattan School of Music, I got to hear Mr. Starobin perform Changes before its premiere. It’s a work that demands rigor and mercurial ways of change in your playing. The transmutation of dynamic and rhythmic contours are occurring all the time. It works well when the player sticks to a tempo, follows for example the sequencing patterns of the 16th – note quintuplets, and, uses very little rubato. Imagine you’re playing “ringing changes,” like the bell ringers there in Europe (and to a lesser extend here in the U.S.) do. So be ready to find the most sonorous and softest elements of your instrument and right hand attack – and then give the most contrasting performances of the textures and dynamics as possible. I like to play the ending like a Bach Chorale, reveling in the most sonorous musical elements.

Berio in his essay "A remembrance to the future," wrote: ".. A pianist who is a specialist about classical and romantic repertoire, and plays Beethoven and Chopin without knowing the music of the twentieth century, is also off as a pianist who is specialist about contemporary music and plays with hands and mind that have never been crossed in depth by Beethoven and Chopin. " You play both traditional classical and contemporary repertoire ... do you recognize yourself in these words?

That reference of Berio while speaking to the students at Harvard University truly resounds in my musical philosophy. The New-Music interpretive experience refreshes the guitarist’s “toolbar” and ready’s one’s performing outside of established interpretive contexts. This is more important wisdom than any guitar teacher helped me with, because all they did was to try to sell me a bag of “interpretive” goods – I am not interested in playing “this way” or like “this player” – I am only interested in playing what’s in the music, not whether I have had conversations with J.S. Bach through my dreams, etc. My model musician is the pianist Maurizio Pollini, because he plays all the styles incredibly well. He is never satisfied, always striving and puts music first. His recording of the second Boulez Piano Sonata is incredible! I have dual major influences in my musical development. On the one hand, there is the New York “Uptown” music tradition – composers Babbitt, Wuorinen, Sollberger – as well as the musicians I worked with while studying and living in New York such as those in “The Group for Contemporary Music”, the “New Music Consort”, “Musician’s Accord”, and other musicians such as percussionist/conductor Clare Heldrich, who have shaped my musical training and background at an early age. And on the other hand, I have a strong classical guitar background through the knowledge from my teachers, intimate listening of recordings of important guitarists such as Segovia, Williams, Bream, Diaz, and my participation in international classical guitar competitions. So my advice for the beginning classical guitarist is to develop the sound, the execution and concentration required for a performance. Then, the ability in playing for example, a Bach Suite with a fugue is important. This is mandatory in order to be prepared for contemporary works, like the quasi suite-form of the Britten Nocturnal, opus 70. Oscar Ghiglia used to teach that a first-year guitarist should learn and perform Bach’s Prelude, Fugue and Allegro BWV 998 – and for good reason! Further, if you learn and edit your own Bach Suite from the Neue Bach Ausgabe, and not an edited guitar version, then one has an idea what it would be like to learn a brand new work composed for the guitar – a clean slate, no fingerings, and - what do you do now?

end of first part

That's All Folks: The music by Carl Stalling first part

There is a composer we all know. We know him very well, since we were children and we present him, almost every day, to our children, almost unconsciously. He walks closet to us from several years, discreet, so impalpable as brilliant his music has been that we continue to listen to unconsciously and to whistled in every country, in every latitude, beyond all musical and cultural globalization. There is a music that we always like to listen to that always makes us smile because it anticipates a world of fantastic and brilliant schizophrenic characters: I think it’s less than ten seconds, and it is always the same one from sixty years, but I always enjoy it as the first time. It’s the intro music opening the Warner Bros’ cartoons and I’m sure it’s already bouncing in your heads.
This music is by Carl Stalling (1891-1972), a brilliant american composer who has linked his name almost only to cartoons soundracks: first with Walt Disney, for only two years at the beginning of the soundtrack era, and then with the gold season of RoadRunner, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, all the crazy looney gang that we all know (one of the reasons why I think we lucky lucky to live in these times).
Born in the small town of Lexington, Missouri, the young Stalling got his first contact with music playing an old piano toy. In 1903, at the tender age of 5 years, he saw "the Great train Robbery" in a tent and from then he was determined as his own words show "to be close to the world of films in every way and any cost ". Seven years later he became the pianist of the local films’ producer in his city, in an old bulding with a designer only, in which Stalling played during the changing of film also. In the early'20s, Stalling directed his orchestra and improvised on Iris Theater’s organ in Kansas City where he met Walt Disney that decided to order him two pieces for two short Mickey Mouse’s movies, a character who at those times had appeared only in a previous cartoon.
In Hollywood, at Disney’s studio recently built, Stalling gave birth to a cinematic revolution giving the breath of life to inanimate characters through his music. In this sense Stalling was one of the most revolutionary and visionary authors in American music, especially if one considers his time’s design . Following the logical view of the action on screen rather than the traditional musicale rules and formal metrics (development, theme and variations, etc..) Stalling managed to create a composition entirely based on the flow of images on the screen, for the fist time in music history.
At first listen, Stalling’s immense musical talent impresses with its traumatic capacity (taken and developed by John Zorn) to resume and mix together different and heterogeneous musical elements interrupting the flow of music with constant changes and changes of direction, through a constantly changing kaleidoscope of different styles, forms, melodies, quotations, pieces for piano for silent movies in Kansas City elevating them to a science value with Disney and to an artistic performance with Warner Bros.
Stalling’s results become even more impressive if you consider that its songs played against everything that was happening in the music of that era, the years between'30 and'40, just think names that filled those years:

• Copland, 
• Cage begins to explore the possibilities of the piano’s sound, 
• the music of Satie, 
• Harry Partch’s music built with his own tools based on his opwn pitch theory, 
• the balanced improvisations of Ellington and his compositions based on the swing, 
• the be-bop of Charlie Panker and Dizzy Gillespie
• E. Varese.

It was a period ruled by the American conservative Impressionism pervaded by the desire to search for new sources and Stalling was without doubt one of the most extremist composers of the period. A pioneer who made us walking gently, with the innocence and lightness of cartoons, thorough a new fantastic universe, pervaded by all possible humor to the most subtle, shocking and exaggerated musical effects. A world where Willie the Coyote tries to get the evil RoadRunner, defying all physic’s laws, where Bugs Bunny terrorises the poor Taddeo with surreal sadism and the nevrotic Daffy Duck tries to catch Speedy Gonzales, the fastest mouse of Messico.
Disney and Iwerks idea was to modify old products and launching them through the new soundtrack tecnology: so Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was turned into Mickey Mouse, allowing him the use of the voice on 18 November 1928. At this time Stalling was working behind the scenes giving his fundamental contribution creating the music for the old Disney’s cartoons and it seems that in a couple of occasions he was even the voice of Mickey Mouse. Thank to him "Silly Simphonies" were born, some particularly cured animations in which music played a prominent role, as in the exceptional "Skeleton Dance": the cartoon shows the midnight concert of a group of skeletons in a cemetery.

Second Part
Third part

to be continued...

Interview with Jonas Löffler by Andrea Aguzzi first part

The first question is always the classic one: how does it start your love and interest for guitar and what instruments do you play or have you played?

I started playing the guitar at a quite young age – with six years – and somehow (it is too distant to remember the exact circumstances) I was pretty determined to play just this instrument, there was simply nothing else in question for me. This determination stayed and I am happy my parents did not try to convince me of another instrument back then. Besides some not very serious attempts at the electric bass (in a school band) and the piano (in the conservatory) I never played any other instrument than the classical guitar (including some of its historical incarnations).

What was your musical training, with which teachers have you studied and what impression they left in your music? I know that you have studied with one of my favorite guitar player: Pablo Marquez ..

After a little less than two years in the local music school in my hometown close to Franfurt/Main (Germany) I started going to the conservatory of Frankfurt where I had lessons with Stephan Werner. Stephan is a fantastic person who has an incredible passion for teaching and an immense talent for working with children. I stayed with Stephan for almost nine years and I would say that his way of teaching and his profound musicality influenced me deeply and basically constitute the basis of my musicianship. In working with him (as with all my following teachers) there was never a boundary between instrumental technique and music, it was always one thing: The music and its emotional content always formed the center of attention. In 2006 I started studying at the Darmstadt Music Academy with Olaf Van Gonnissen. With Olaf I learned to have a much more independent way of working, moreover, with him being an avid performer of historical instruments, he encouraged me to work with the historical sources of the music I was working on and to perform them on the original instruments of the respective epoch. After finishing high school, I went to study with Pablo Márquez in Basel (Switzerland). Pablo is an incredible musician who sees things from a wider perspective (being also a conductor and a respectable pianist) and has very clear musical ideals. Transparency and balancing of voices and the conscious shaping and use of specific sound qualities and colors are at the center of his teaching and I believe that I have learned a lot from him in these respects (along with many other things). While studying with Pablo I also had regular lessons at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with the lutenist Hopkinson Smith, partly on the baroque guitar, partly on the classical guitar. His (amazing) lessons were often build around the insight that many times one has a very clear conception of the music already in her or his mind and as soon as one realizes that, bringing the idea on the instrument is not a big step anymore. After finishing my Bachelor's degree I continued to study with Stephan Schmidt in Basel. Stephan is also a fabulous musician and a great person as well as a very sensitive pedagogue. My lessons with him gravitate many times around focusing all the bodily energies used for playing into the music itself instead of wasting them for big movements of the hands or the whole body. Also, talking about music and the guitar with Stephan provoked many thoughts in me that I would not want to miss.

You have realized “Terra”, your first cd, your first recording, can you tell us more about this record? Why this title and this repertoire ….? 

At some point in the last year, after playing several concerts and competitions, I realized that I had quite a nice repertoire at hand that was worth to be recorded. I had anyway planned for a longer time to make a new CD (I already recorded one in 2006, released privately) and decided to record a part of my repertoire at this point in April 2013. I found that the pieces, although they mostly had no obvious nexus, matched quite well in their contrasting features and their overall mood. That led me to emphasize these contrasts in the sequence of pieces on the record – the different musics appear like the manifold surfaces and appearances of the earth, hence the name Terra. Also, one of the central pieces recorded, Tristan Murail's Tellur, is essentially composed around that very concept and also carries the earth in its name, tellus being a latin synonym for terra: Tellur is built on the constantly changing and in itself harshly contrasting sounds of one instrument: the guitar.

Berio in his essay "A remembrance to the future" wrote: ".. A pianist who is a specialist about classical and romantic repertoire, and plays Beethoven and Chopin without knowing the music of the twentieth century, is also off as a pianist who is specialist about contemporary music and plays with hands and mind that have never been crossed in depth by Beethoven and Chopin. " You play both traditional classical and contemporary repertoire ... do you recognize yourself in these words? 

I would not be as orthodox. I do not understand why the supposed “border” between “traditional” and “contemporary” repertoire is often stressed so much. Especially given the fact that many of the pieces regarded as “contemporary” are anything but contemporary and many times are already as much as half a century old or older and themselves became part of a certain tradition. Also given the plurality of styles within so called “classical” music in the 20th century I do not understand why it should be helpful to know Chopin for an interpreter of Steve Reich's minimal pieces (and vice versa). At the same time knowing many styles of music is without doubt helpful to gain a certain mental flexibility that surely is helpful for approaching different kinds of music. While Berio apparently had the so called grand tradition of European music in his mind, I would try to be less (or maybe differently) ideological and say that it somehow helps to play different kinds of music. These might be Bach, Georgian vocal polyphony or German Schlager: it does not really matter for me.

What does improvisation mean for your music research? Do you think it’s possible to talk about improvisation for classical music or we have to turn to other repertories like jazz, contemporary music, etc.? 

I would not consider myself an improviser as I have to little experience in that field. From the experiences I have (mostly in the field of so called free improvisation) I can say that again this helped me to gain more flexibility in playing composed music. Classical music is full of improvisatory aspects that many musicians just don't classify as improvisatory: Starting from different room acoustics that are to be dealt with, to chamber music situations and to the occasional mistake that happens while playing. All these aspects (and many more) demand an improvisatory flexibility from the musician that is, as I would say, not very different in nature from that of a jazz musician or any other improviser.

What’s the role of the “Error” in your musical vision? For “error” I mean an incorrect procedure, an irregularity in the normal operation of a mechanism, a discontinuity on an otherwise uniform surface that can lead to new developments and unexpected surprises ...

If there was something like a human condition, I think that the error would be a big part of it. As errors happen everywhere where humans are at work, they are also a big part of music. For me errors in any form sometimes inspire new ways of working, sometimes, in case they repeat, they require a rethinking of the method in use and sometimes I don't even realise I did a mistake. In my own playing and musical thinking I tend to not give them a lot of room. Ideally I don't see practicing as a way to avoid errors but rather as a way to get to and to understand the center of the music. If you get there, mistakes do neither matter to me nor (ideally) to the listener.

Interview with Amanda Monaco by Andrea Aguzzi

The first question is always the classic one: how does it start your love and interest for guitar and what instruments do you play or have you played? 

I come from a very musical family. My father played guitar, and he was in a band with his three older brothers when he was a teenager. My grandmother would book them gigs! They were called the Monacats, then they changed their name to the Pat Williams Four (my grandfather's name was Pasquale William). I come from a large Italian family, and they will spontaneously break into song at family functions. Every member of the Monaco family sings in tune! I know it doesn't sound possible, but it's true.
I played French horn in high school, but since age 12 it's been all about the guitar. I keep saying I'm going to start playing French horn again, but when I have an extra time (which is almost never) I always give that extra time to the guitar. I also play a little piano but not very well.

I know that you play a Brian Moore guitar, how is this instrument?

I love it! It's got a warm tone and it's small and light. The neck is just thick enough to have some weight to it, not too skinny.

What was your musical training, with which teachers have you studied and what impression they left in your music? I asked for it because, I don’t know if it’s true, listening to you music I immediately though about Jim Hall …

In high school I studied with a wonderful guitarist named George Raccio. He was an incredible teacher who always taught things in a very simple, accessible way; even when it was really difficult material, George had a way of making everything seem simple. In college I studied with the great Ted Dunbar, as well as pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Rufus Reid, pianist Harold Mabern and saxophonist Steve Wilson.
And I LOVE Jim Hall. I had the good fortune to attend his very last concert in November 2013 at Jazz at Lincoln Center. I must have heard him play 100 times over the years, and every time was just incredible. I once bumped into him on the street in Greenwich Village and we took a lovely, slow walk together, talking about Charlie Christian and Oscar Moore. I'll never forget it.

The first time I met you it was on Ralph Gibson’s book “State of the Axe: Guitar Masters in Photographs and Words”, there are two pictures of you on that book … how do you meet Gisbon and … do you still have problems with club’s owner who play your guitar without asking it to you?

I met Ralph Gibson through Tina Pelikan of ECM Records. He is a phenomenal photographer, taking those pictures in under five minutes during a sound check. As for my essay about being treated differently for being a woman, it still happens, but a lot less. Maybe it's because I'm 40 now. :-)

What does improvisation mean for your music research? Do you think it’s possible to talk about improvisation for classical music or we have to turn to other repertories like jazz, contemporary music, etc.?

Improvisation is everything. I'm currently serving as Artistic Director of Convergence Arts, Inc., a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization committed to sharing the art and fun of improvisation with the community at large. Classical music used to have improvisational sections - the cadenza of a concerto was traditionally used for that - and I think there's still room for that today. Improvisation is an important tool in all aspects of life; it gives you flexibility and resilience.

Your record “The Pirkei Avot Project Vol. 1” really surprised me. I like Jewish music, I’m a fan of John Zorn and Tzadik, and I really like it? Can you tell us more about this recording? How much important is your religion for you and your music?

I discovered the Pirkei Avot when reading through a prayer book at my synagogue. I looked for music that had been written to some of its verses, but found nothing, so I decided to write some, and record it with some of my favorite musicians.
Since 2000 I have been a resident musician at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Music is a very big part of the spiritual life there, and I play Shabbat services with myriad ensembles that include cello, piano, recorder, percussion and/or mandolin. There are eight resident musicians in total.

What’s the role of the “Error” in your musical vision? For “error” I mean an incorrect procedure, an irregularity in the normal operation of a mechanism, a discontinuity on an otherwise uniform surface that can lead to new developments and unexpected surprise.

Some of the greatest discoveries are made through mistakes. I welcome them and embrace them.

I have met your drummer, Satoshi Takeishi, last here in a concert closer to my home in Mestre, he was playing with Marco Cappelli, I really enjoyed him, he is a great drummer and percussionist .. how do you met him?

I met Satoshi in 1999 through a mutual friend, guitarist Adam Levy. We played for a few years together, then life took us in different paths and we started playing together again in 2008. I'm so glad we're working together again!

I have, sometimes, the feeling that in our times music’s history flows without a particular interest in its chronological course, in our discotheque before and after, past and future become interchangeable elements, shall this be a risk of a uniform vision for an interpreter and a composer? The risk of a musical "globalization"?

I think that it's important to have a history of the music even if you're not going to play it the way it used to be played. Some of my favorite avant-garde jazz musicians are incredible straight-ahead players when asked to play that way. I love it when I can hear the entire history of the music come out of someone's horn. Otherwise it sounds like a lot of noise.

Let’s talk about marketing. How much do you think it’s important for a modern musician? I mean: how much is crucial to be good promoters of themselves and their works in music today?

Since 2012 I've been working with a business consultant named Marty Khan. He has a blog on his web site. www.outwardvisions.com, and has written a great music business book called Straight Ahead that stresses the importance of the collective as a way to move ahead in the music business as well as the 501(c)(3) non-profit organization as a vehicle for doing business (the way almost every other arts organization does it; for some reason it hasn't caught on as much in jazz).

Which composer (or which historical movement or genre) do you think is easiest for the non-musician listener to appreciate? Do you think they enjoy pieces that are more technically difficult or just more "flashy"?

This is a tough question because I think that all music is accessible, but jazz has been given a bad rap. There's been too much discussion of how "intellectual" it is, or how you have to be "sophisticated"

Please tell us five essential records, to have always with you .. the classic five discs for the desert island …

OOH! That's a tough one!
"The Bridge" - Sonny Rollins
"Extrapolation" - John McLaughlin
"Cannonball Adderley and the Poll Winners"
"Coltrane's Sound"
"James Brown's 20 All-Time Greatest Hits"

What are your five favorite scores?

Henry Mancini - Breakfast at Tiffany's
Herbie Hancock - Blow-up
String Quartet No. 5, 1st movement (Bartok)

With whom would you like to play? What kind of music do you listen to usually?

There's so many musicians I'd love to play with, but I'm really happy with the ones I'm playing with now. I am very blessed in that regard.

What I listen to depends on where I am. I commute four hours from NYC every week to teach at Berklee College of Music in Boston, so I usually listen to guitar music (Ralph Towner's new album Travel Guide with Slava Grigoryan and Wolfgang Muthspiel is amazing, you must hear it, you'll love it!) or stuff like Tony Bennett/Bill Evans. When I go for a run it has to be soul music/Motown. My husband is the Editorial Director of The New York City Jazz Record, so we listen to a lot of new jazz of all styles in the house as well as the re-issue classics

Your next projects? When we will see you playing in Italy?

Currently I am writing music inspired by Formula One racing. I am a huge F1 fan and recently discovered that my great-uncle Walter E. Monaco was heavily involved in the racing scene, as well as a good pal of Sir Stirling Moss.

I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to play in Italy! Where do I sign up?

Interview with Giulia Ballarè - first part

Hello Giulia, welcome to Blog Chitarra e Dintorni. When did you start playing guitar and why? As in many Italian families, we have always listened to a lot of music and of all kinds, from Italian operas by Verdi and Rossini to italian pop music ... Also my parents have always participated in pour parish’s musical life: my mother sang and my father played the guitar. Having one guitar at home, therefore, I grew up very close to her and at one point it was my father who taught me my first chords until, exhausted his knowledge, he decided to send me to lesson to better study this instrument!

What kind of studies did you make and what is your musical background? At age 11, I was admitted to the Conservatory "Guido Cantelli" of Novara, the city where I live. A path along 12 years (traditional undergraduate and graduate interpretation): the early years of the traditional with Maestro Francesco Biraghi and then nine years under the guidance of Maestro Guido Fichtner. I was lucky to get an Erasmus scholarship during the last year of the three years of interpretation and I went to study in Spain, in Murcia. There I met Carlos Piñana, owner of one of the few teaching posts for Flamenco in the Spanish Conservators, unusual and rare because flamenco, although widespread, is considered a street’s art. By this contact with this kind of Spanish music my passion for the guitar is definitely increased, and I was able to to enhance and refine my technique!

What guitars did you play?
My first guitar ever was my mother’s one , with whom she played in parish’s oratory. Once admitted to the Conservatory Maestro Biraghi advised me an Alhambra S - 3C, certainly better than the plywood guitar that I had and I still play it in my home sitting on the balcony in summer ..
After I have completed the examination of the 5th year in the Conservatory, Maestro Fichtner, like all teachers , made a serious talk with my family! In fact arrived at a certain point of the studies is necessary to begin to invest much more money in a better instrument : the growing technical abilities and difficulties of the music dealt with and must be supported by an " lutherie instrument ", this was the magic word that found their way into my vocabulary (and even in daddy’s wallet!) . So I ordered a guitar by Renato Barone, following the advice of Guido Fichtner who already had one ... a beautiful guitar, which I still use now to teach , but obviously very fragile because in 2005 - the same year in which this one had been built – it suffered an accident at the top, because of the humidity , incident immediately solved by the master luthier .
During the Biennium my knowledge were ever increasing , and also my needs ! I realized that was not enough studying and studying for hours : the Barone guitar had nothing else to offer to me … I realized I had to try something else , I tried many, many guitars until a bit of luck helped me in my research: I found on internet that a collector in Ferrara was selling a 1999 Thomas Humphrey, which he bought ten years before , reading a post in the italian guitar magazine Seicorde .
It was curious to get this guitar. Ferrara was to be only the first stage of my research .. but it turned out to be the last one: in fact, when I was just a 12 years old kid and I still played the Alhambra , I read that Seicorde magazine , I saw the review of this strange guitar : the inclined plane , the rounded bottom , a beautiful rosette , but especially ... the hight price of 24,000,000 lire ! It was only a dream, and who would have guessed that, 10 years after, I would have been faced with just this instrument!
Today, it is now three years of playing the Humphrey and who knows how long I will play it..

... continues tomorrow...

Interview with Tatyana Ryzhkova – by Giuseppe Chiaramonte first part

Giuseppe Chiaramonte: When did you start studying guitar? Why did you choose this instrument? Who was your first guitar teacher?

Tatyana Ryzhkova: I started to play guitar as a child, when I was 10 years old. As a normal child, I didn’t want to play any instrument, I was happy enough without it. But, how it often happens, my mother brought me to a music school. When she was young, she wanted to play guitar but it wasn’t possible, so she had a dream that her daughter will one day play guitar.

Sometimes our parents have pretty good ideas and now I’m very happy that my mother had such a nice dream 17 years ago.

At that time, I was very lucky to take my first guitar lessons with a great teacher, who was one of the best guitar teachers in Belarus – V. Gromov. He was always kind, patient, and a little bit childish. He was a real friend, a great friend.

Giuseppe Chiaramonte: How much important is the first teacher for a musician? How much important was your first teacher for your career?

Tatyana Ryzhkova: I think that the first teacher is extremely important for every musician, especially when this musician is still a child. Your first teacher is always like a lighthouse for you, he gives you a technical basis, understanding of music and he enriches your emotional world. He can pick you up to the stars, but he can also put you down.

Giuseppe Chiaramonte: You performed hundreds of recitals with classical guitar. What do you usually do before an important concert? How do you prepare yourself the day before? I mean, are you used to play a lot until few minutes before the concert or do you prefer to take a rest in order to relax?

Tatyana Ryzhkova: I don’t practice at the day of the concert. It’s too late. I mean, if you cannot play this one or that one difficult passage two days before, it doesn’t help you if you’ll play it the whole day until your entrance on the stage. The only thing that could help you at this moment is to relax and pray. Frankly, I’m always rather nervous at the day of the concert and the only motivation that keeps my optimism up is that some hours from now everything will be over, and after the concert I’ll feel myself like the happiest woman in the world.

Giuseppe Chiaramonte: Where did you perform your best concert(s)?

Tatyana Ryzhkova: It’s a very difficult question. I played really a lot of concerts, but each concert is something special for me. All of them are very different, because the most important thing for me in a concert is my audience. And never, never you’ll have the same audience twice. Applause, reaction to the music and to some of my jokes, the eyes and smiles of the people in the audience, all this is always different. And I think it’s fantastic, because it makes every concert an unforgettable and unique event.

Interview with Elena Càsoli by Empedocle70 - first part

How did the love of Elena Càsoli for the guitar start?

Perhaps as happened to many others, it was the chance that permit me to meet with the guitar, through my elementary school teacher. It was a lucky occasion, and maybe not so common in the 60's as it could be today, thanks to her I started playing when I was seven years. Less random was the encounter with the music, thanks to the cultural passions of my father. In our house there were many old vinyl records that we listened to the evening, many books, and when I was old enough to attend a concert hall or theatre, I found myself to go in those places in many of our evenings. So the guitar and music soon became a natural and constant presence in my life.

“I play an instrument which today is enjoying one of the happiest periods in its long history. Its structure and sound have evolved and kept pace with changes in attitudes to music, culmination in a range of forms and expressions in the twentieth century unheard of since the renaissance and the baroque eras.” I admit that I was very touched by this declaration of intents: I often read about guitarists complaining about the "poverty" of the guitar repertoire, in comparison with the reportoire of other instruments like the violin and the piano. It seems to me that you reverse this issue .... emphasizing the "contemporary" of the guitar ...

I don’t think that my vision is overly optimistic, but a real one, confirmed by the huge amount of beautiful music for guitar written and published. Without any criticism, I shall say that I am truly amazed when I read or hear of guitarists who complain about a lack of repertoire. In my study I have accumulated scores of new pieces and not, that I happily receive by composers and publishers, but unfortunately I don’t have enough time to play and prepare for concerts, because I study every year a large number of other new pieces. It’s a mine of music for which I ask help to my students in Bern, so they shall read and play in their concerts.

In the booklet that accompanies Changes Chances, you make several references to "New Music", especially referring to Terry Riley. The same Riley in some of his records speak about "New Music", but I could not understand what really is, a new kind of music? A different attitude?

I think I could say that with this definition of New Music I join the international community of musicians, musicologists, critics and the public that recognizes it such as all the music that is written with an intention of research and artistic creation. The results could be more or less experimental, depending from the path of each composer, but the attitude is common. In particular, in this definition we recognize composers that have links and derivations with the poetic and cultural history of European classical music, of course this definition is imperfect and limited, considering the vastness and variety of music research at the international level. It’s a world of pure creation, fascinating and multifaceted, in which composers invent, develop, transform the field of music with an attitude of profound freedom and independence. Their thoughts will materialize on paper or in the tracks of a computer in total independence from any unbridled rule or influence, which does not arise from their inspiration.
One thing that always amazed me is your versatility with which you approach easely different types of guitars from classical to acoustic, from arciliuto to electric guitar with the aim to be as much as possible to the service at the composer ... how can you manage this "park" of guitars? What are the difficulties encountered from one instrument to another?

Sometimes I also wonder how composers think that I can be so much flexible and they write me in the score to pass from arciliuto to the electric guitar in the space of a few seconds! You can imagine how much time is necessary, before this kind of concert, only to change the strings to three or four instruments. But that is, and in the years following the demands of composers and my curiosity, the classic guitar has joined two decades ago a Blade Electric Blue guitar with various effects, then it came a splendid acoustic Taylor one for a work of John Adams, the 1846th Panormo guitar, an elegant lady on which i play Takemitsu and Paganini, and the Arciliuto. Some years ago I studied the Chinese pipa for two works by Philip Glass at the Piccolo Teatro Regio in Turin with Sentieri Selvaggi and I recorded for a Stradivarius Y Despues by Bruno Maderna a 10 ropes classic guitar made by Carlo Raspagli. The differences are considerable, both technically and timbre. I try to "feel" the instrument under my fingers, to grasp as much as the possible its vibrant nature, its physicality, acoustic or electric that is, and then work on them until I feel in confidence, to find the "sound ".

to be continued...

Interview with Geoffrey Morris, first part

Italian Translation

The first question is always the classic one: how does it start your love and interest for guitar and what instruments do you play or have you played?

Like so many guitarists of my generation I was first attracted to the guitar through Rock music. In fact I played rock or jazz up until my 18th birthday and only then did I have the chance to study classical guitar. I think I didn’t learn to read music until i was 16 years old. I did study piano as a young child but I hated it. These days I play baroque guitar, 19th century guitar, modern classical guitar and very occassionally, the electric guitar.
What was your musical training, with which teachers have you studied and what impression they left in your music?

I was very lucky to study at the Victorian College of the Arts with Jochen Schubert who was a classical guitarist who emigrated from Germany to Australia in the late 1960’s. He gave me a real passion for exploring the instruments repertoire in a very broad way and he had a much better attitude to new music than most classical guitarists. Once I finished my degree I went to Europe and took lessons in new music from Stefano Cardi in Rome and Magnus Andersson in Stockholm. They were very different musicians and it was quite a culture shock for a 21 year old. I think in many ways I have learnt the most though through being an avid listener of recorded music of all genres and by being a constant researcher of texts written on the guitar from the renaissance on.

How did stat your interest about the contemporary repertoire, and what are the stylistic currents in which you recognize yourself most?

As a student Leo Brouwer’s studies were a great eye and ear opener. From there I went to the recodings of Julian Bream particularly the Royal Winter Music by Hans Werner Henze. After a few years I managed to start working with the Elision Ensemble and this brought me in contact with the music of Franco Donatoni and of the English modernists such as Brian Ferneyhough. I’m not sure in what ‘current’ I recognise myself although I certainly feel very far removed from the new romantics or at least those composers who seem to so well exploit the growing gulf between new music and the audience by writing psuedo- pop music.

Berio in his essay "A remembrance to the future," wrote: ".. A pianist who is a specialist about classical and romantic repertoire, and plays Beethoven and Chopin without knowing the music of the twentieth century, it is also off as a pianist who is specialist about contemporary music and plays with hands and mind that have never been crossed in depth by Beethoven and Chopin. " You play both traditional classical and contemporary repertoire ... do you recognize yourlsef in these words?

Early on in my playing career I only played new music. I think it is really bad for performers and now my interests are so broad that it can at times lead to a kind of paralysis through too many choices. I no longer want to play recitals which are only new music at least not at the present. The idea of study, research and following a consistent musical journey is in many ways more improtant to me than performance. I think the idea of playing a broad repertoire represents a desire on the part of the artist to experience the full history and breadth of their repertoire.

Let’s talk about marketing. How much do you think it’s important for a modern musician? I mean: how much is crucial to be good promoters of themselves and their works in music today?

Well I’m terrible with this. The website I have was part of a prize I was awarded but I’m sure that self-promotion is probably crucial at least to those who are trying to perform all the time. There will be musicians who are better at promotion than playing! But I guess that we have to hope that quality wins out in the end.

to be continued