Daniel R. Robinson in a typical middle class American frame. He began his musical adventure after buying an old 12-string from a sailor for $ 200. He traveled a lot, becoming a Beatnick and beginning to write his poems and to deal with Zen and Japanese literature, and it’s after his discovery of Matsuo Basho, perhaps the most famous Japanese haiku poet, that he changed his name to Robbie Basho, now musician. He met John Fahey in the early 60's who will introduce him to the steel string, while Max Ochs will help him to discover the folk music. In 1962, the real radical change after attending to a concert by Ravi Shankar: Basho starti his initiatory path, and almost feverishly he hunts Shankar’s recordings and listen to them for hours, stopped playing blues and protest songs to study the raga, applying its lessons on the guitar through the use of open tunings, special intonations and he already speaks about "esoteric doctrine of color & mood" or "Zen Buddist cowboy songs." In any case, he starts to be recognized as a one man band with his 6 and 12 strings steel guitars, he became a disciple of Meher Baba and i twill be in these occasions that he will meet and study with Ali Akbar Khan, master of the sarod and influential as the same Shankar. Between 1965 and 1971 he will record his most important albums for John Fahey’s Takoma with the only exception of Venus in Cancer who was recorde with Blue Tumb label in 1970 and reprinted a few years ago. If the first disks as the Seal of the Blue Lotus and The Grail and the Lotus are disks with a more bitter and harsh flavor, while concealing a wild beauty, it’s starting with the two volumes of Falconer's Arm and Venus in Cancer until the masterpiece of Song of the stallion that the poetry of Basho assumes an increasingly intense and torrential temperament.
Robbie Basho: a guitar flying on Ragas Robbie Basho is a cult figure in the world of lovers of acoustic guitar and fingerpicking. Man discreet and quiet, little inclined to the notoriety and the theatricality of the musical world he has been a keen and intelligent investigator for solo guitar managing to create an ethno-spiritual music that assimilates white music, black music, Latin music (flamenco) and eastern music ( Indian, Persian, Japanese). Basho was born in Baltimore in Marryland in 1940 and soon became an orphan, he was adopted by Donald R. Robinson and his wife and grows as
His music, a magical combination of old America made up of blues, folk and country music with Arab, persian, Indian modal scales has no equal today, while his unique singing tenor will be a sore that someone would not bear. His music will come to a certain classicism with Voice of the Eagle and Zarthus recorded in 1972 and 1974 for Vanguard, while four years will pass before the Windham Hill pubblishes Vision of the Country and Art of Acoustic Guitar 6 & 12 the year after. After Rainbow Thunder (songs of the american west) exit for the small Silver Label in 1981 Basho had great difficulty in finding new music labels interested in his music so much that the last disks Bouquet and Twilight Peaks are mere selfproductions on tape. Within a couple of years became seriously ill with cancer, until his death in 1986 at 45 years. Like Fahey, Basho applies a kaleidoscopic method to his creative research, assimilating European classical music, Indian music, Japanese, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Spanish and American folk forms, blues, Cajun, trying to translate all of
them in his own style and in his own poetical and musical form. It’s of course impossible and antithetical to its deep essence, be able to enclose the sense of Eastern music in a definition of a few lines, Basho metabolizes Indian music in different ways, sometimes with specific technical and harmonic forms derived from Indian instruments like the sitar or the veena, with the use of the drone and modal tunings, sometimes drawing from the essence of Raga an attitude of extreme spontaneity in the creation and execution, improvisation is conceived as a means to interpret in a different way each time the same musical 'mood'.
Link http://www.bcmai.it/tlj/articolo.asp?IDArticolo=437 http://www.bluemomentarts.de/bma/rbasho/en/
Another interesting factor is the attempt to combine the infinite rhythmic and melodic variations of Hindu’s music with parts with a bigger harmonic structure, building progressively an instrumental style and his guitar technique: the use of alternating bass typical of traditional American styles, combined with more strictly classical or flamenco’s arpeggios, alternative and advanced techniques that are increasingly dependent on A more specifically musical outcome. His goal was to create a classical music for the "Steel String Guitar" and even if his intent has remained largely unrealistic, it ‘s been used to create the conditions for a greater awareness in the next generation of guitarists Forgotten for a long time the name of Basho has returned in recent years in the wake of a new generation of folk and fingerpicking guitarists who have taken as a model his music and his ideas, reinventing interest around his figure. Names like Steffen Basho Junghans, Jack Rose, Glenn Jones and James Blackshaws have repeatedly both in their own records and interviews set out their cultural and musical debt with Basho. Discography: Takoma 1005 - The Seal Of The Blue Lotus (1965) Takoma 1006 - Contemporary Guitar (1966) (antology) Takoma 1007 - The Grail & The Lotus (1966) Takoma 1012 - Basho Sings! (1967) Takoma 1017 - The Falconer's Arm Vol. 1 (1967) Takoma 1018 - The Falconer's Arm Vol. 2 (1967) Blue Thumb 10 - Venus In Cancer (1970) Takoma 1031 - Song Of The Stallion (1971) Vanguard 79321 - The Voice Of The Eagle (1972) Vanguard 79339 - Zarthus (1974) Windham Hill 1005 - Visions Of The Country (1978) Windham Hill 1010 - The Art Of The Acoustic Steel String Guitar, 6 & 12 (1979) Silver Label 029 - Rainbow Thunder (Songs Of The American West) (1981) Windham Hill 1015 - Windham Hill Records Samplers '81 (1981) (antologia)
Review of Basket Full of Dragons a tribute to Robbie Basho Vol II, Obsolete Recordings, 2016 https://obsoleterecordings.bandcamp.com/ Robbie Basho was and still is something much more than a guitar player, or musician. Even something more, I try to define as a musical "kami". Kami (in Japanese there isn't the distinction between plural and singular) are objects of worship for the Shinto faith, this term indicates an honor for the noble and sacred spirits, which implies a sense of respect and adoration for their power and authority. Since, for Shintoism, all beings (living or not) have such spirits, the human being (as indeed every other) could be considered as a kami or a potential one, especially if, during its existence, it's been distinguished for his nobility of spirit and for his rectitude.
Robbie Basho I've always imagined it ... as an acoustic twelve-string guitar kami, not a saint of the Catholic religion, not a saint, no, too distant, saints are too pure, I don't believe that Basho would never even become interested about it. Along with John Fahey, Basho is one of the two great figures of American acoustic guitar, two complementary, equally fascinating and complex figures. In a sense one might venture to say that they are two sides of the same coin: both started from the traditional American music, from fingerpicking blues and folk prewar records and then they bring it to a higher level, integrating it with classical Indian music, with European classical music, each with his own personal feeling. A more troubled figure and obsessed with his own ghosts, Fahey, more sensitive, more spiritual Basho. I first met Fahey and only after some years Basho, whose discography was not reprinted in the same way and whose worship was more "esoteric" among the guitarists to Fahey. To even keep me a little bit away from Basho was a certain idea of "new age", I always hated that association. Basho was well beyond the trivial disquisitions or theories on the Aquarius's new age. Basho was a giant who has been able to create and show a personal and innovative way, I realized it when I started to collect his CDs beginning with the two collections made from Takoma titled Guitar Soli and Bashovia, which I highly recommend to anyone still interested at listening to his music. But here we have this tribute, the second after the "We Are One, In The Sun: A Tribute To Robbie Basho" made in 2010, released by Important Records. In these years Basho's cult has grown up, about the new fingerpicking levers as Matt Valentine, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Glenn Jones, James Blackshaws, Ben Chasny and the great Jack Rose, who were able to catalyze new attention on his figure. It's nice to see and feel the affection that surrounds Basho, because I think with this record we go beyond the simple tribute, there are thirteen tracks all performed by different artists, but all with a common idea of Basho's style. And for style I don't just mean just his open tunings or his use of alternating bass that reminded the drones of Indian classical music, I mean something more than mere "technicality", but the essence of his music, its simplicity that actually hides a great complexity of thought, that being lightweight but not trivial, that spiritual sense that never degenerates into trivial affectation. Guitar players involved here are all interesting names: the great Glenn Jones playing with Matthew Azevedo (harmonium), Chuck Johnson, Buck Curran joined by Italian singer Adele H, the player of the Syrian oud Tammam Saeed and percussionist April Centrone, the Italian guitarist Paolo Laboule Novellino, the duo of Henry Kaiser and Michael Gulezian, Israeli composer Yair Yona, Twelve Hides with Ben Tweddell, Mike Tamburo, collaboration between Mariano
Rodriguez, Karina Vismara and Jonah Schwartz and singer Eva Sheppard accompanied by his father Jesse Sheppard to the 12-string guitar. Excellent record.Viva Basho. 1. Portrait of Basho as a Young Dragon – Glenn Jones & Matthew Azevedo (USA) 2. Fog upon the Moon – Tammam Saeed & April Centrone(Syria & USA) 3. Manifestations of the Sun – Adele H & Buck Curran (Italy & USA) 4. Walk in Beauty: A Healing Way Song – Richard Osborn (USA) 5. Salangadou – Eva Sheppard and Jesse Sheppard (USA) 6. Pasha – Paolo Laboule Novellino (Italy) 7. Kahlil Gibran – Yair Yona Music (Israel) 8. Golden Rose at Dawn – Chuck Johnson (USA) 9. California Raga – Twelve Hides (UK) 10. The Rediscovery of the Basho Cathedral – Steffen Basho-Junghans (Germany) 11. Enigmatic Eagle – Michael Gulezian and Henry Kaiser (USA) 12. The Chameleon and the Crow – Mike Tamburo (USA) 13. Wine Song of Love – Mariano Rodriguez, Jonah Schwartz, Karina Vismara (Argentina & UK) https://obsoleterecordings.bandcamp.com/album/basket-full-of-dragons-atribute-to-robbie-basho-vol-ii-2
Actually, I have to share that I was about to be a doctor, when I really decided to become a professional musician. At that time I was studying medicine at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). With no regrets, I left that behind and got into the University of Campinas to study Popular and Classical Music, with one of my masters, Ulisses Rocha. In my formation I also had classes and masterclasses with Daniel Wolff, Henrique Pinto, Paulo Martelli, Fábio Zanon, Leo Brouwer, and some conferences with David Russel, Jorge Caballero and many others. My guitar is a Sérgio Abreu from 1999. It’s a great instrument that is becoming more and more mature, with a collorfull sound and very well balanced. Abreu was one of the greatest classical guitarists in the world. His recordings are memorable. He had a very known Duo with his brother, Eduardo (they studied with Monina Távora, years before the Assad Brothers started to having classes with her). But they stopped playing, and for our lucky, Sérgio didn't let away this guitar universe, having becoming one of the best luthiers of Brasil. I've also played in a Hauser-I guitar (from Sergio Abreu), and that is a very special one. In my humble opinion, the Stradivarius of the guitars.
From Brasil: Vitor Garbelotto
Interview with Vitor
Garbelotto (June 2016)
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? It started when I was nine years old. My brother was having guitar classes at school and I fell in love with the guitar by the moment I saw it! He taught me the basics, how was the fingers name and numbers and how I could read the chords in those little and popular magazines. Two years after I started to study with a teacher in my hometown, Criciúma (south of Brazil). I had classes for three years, and since this moment, I never stopped playing.
Let's talk about you last record Sarau para Radamés, how did this project start? You play music by Raphael Rabello, Paulo Cesar Pinheiro, Tom Jobim, Paulinho da Viola, Ernesto Nazareth, Radames Gnattali, Baden Powell, Vinicius de Moraes ..., why did you choose these composers and how? The story begins in my first album (Radamés Gnattali - Complete Works for Solo Guitar). I realized that Gnattali, even in Brazil, wasn't well known, especially by my generation. So, to make the concerts of that CD, I decided to mix in the program his original music for guitar and some arrangements from composers who had some connections with him, such as Pixinguinha, who worked with him at the Radio Nacional, or Jobim, who took some classes with Gnattali in the beginning of his career. I called this project "Sarau para Radamés". "Sarau" is a kind of cultural meeting where people can play music or read some poetry, tell stories; and I tried to bring this atmosphere to the concert. So, between the pieces, I used to tell the audience some stories from Gnattali's life, in a very intimist and informal way. That was how I introduced Gnattali's world to many people, inviting them to get closer his music and his history. And fortunately, it was such a success! That's why I decided to record the "Sarau", only with my arrangements for solo guitar. It was also a way to get closer the composition, because, for me, arrange is a form of composition, especially talking about guitar. And the main goals of these arrangements were to make them sound as if they were composed for my instrument. To achieve
this goal, I also had the honor of being produced by Paulo Bellinati, a great person and a great master. We worked hard for many months to get that result. You have played a lot Radames Gnattali's music, making a record devoted to his music for guitar solo, can you talk to us about this composer? I didn't know him but his music is really beautiful.... Yes, his music is fantastic! For me, he is one of the most important brazilian composers of all times. Radamés Gnattali was born in the south of Brazil, in a city called Porto Alegre. His father loved so much opera that he gave him the name of a character from the Verdi's opera. Gnattali's sister is called Aida, for the same reason. He studied piano at the conservatory of Porto Alegre and he was really great as a pianist, so he was encouraged by his teacher to move to Rio de Janeiro, that was the capital of Brazil at that time (around the 1920's). He had to work to make his living, and he worked in many places, but was as arranger in the radios that he found his place. He made thousands of arrangements in the period he worked at Radio Nacional, the biggest radio in Brazil at that period. And because of this job, he met and lived with the best musicians of that time, such as Garoto, Pixinguinha, Jacob do Bandolim, Zé Meneses, Tom Jobim, Dorival Caymmi and many others. So in his compositions you can see many different influences, especially, from the urban music from Rio de Janeiro (highlighting samba and choro). And it was a thing for him, because the classical musicians thought that he was too much popular, and at the same time, the popular musicians thought he was too refined for a popular composer. Gnattali's music was way ahead of his time. Nowadays it is a little bit better, but often we can encounter the same issue: it's not "classical", but it's neither popular. For me, in his works you can find a perfect balance, it's right in the middle, so you need a great technical approach, but you also need the fluency of popular music to make it sounds, particularly the rhythmic part. 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.? For me, improvisation is far beyond to play notes. Of course that jazz has brought this to a great level, but this kind of improvisation, used to exist since before the baroque period. The Preludes, in a certain way, were all improvised; the ornaments too, and also the cadences of the Concertos. I think that the classical musician left a little aside this study, because the technical part has
become high level, also as a consequence of the appearance of the recordings. So, if we are talking about improvising notes, contemporary music, jazz and choro (brazilian instrumental music), for example, are still the best way. But music is also dynamics, and tempos, and timbers. In these fields, even in an all writen piece, you have so much space to improvise music! The thing is that you need to study it as much as the jazz player studies scales and arpegios. The instrumental music is very powerfull, but you need to play as if you were talking. I can say many words, but sometimes few words said with the right intonation and timing, is more effective to transmit the message. 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... It depends. If I want to play Gnattali’s music for example, first of all, I need to know the notes that I want to play. If my proposal is to translate in sounds, the notes that are written, every single note should be played as correct as possible. And by correct, I mean, exactly as it is written. When I play tonal music, I study the harmony, to be ready for odd circumstances, that may appear during the performance. I also study scales and arpeggios, and this is a great technical tool, and beyond that I pay attention all the time in the sound that comes out from the guitar. For me it’s better to play a little slower, but with a good sound, than play faster just to play faster. If we are talking about other things, like physical things involving posture or position of the right and left hands, for example, I just consider that as an “error factor” if these things interfere directly in the performance. Sometimes you are in the flow of the music, playing something beautiful and suddenly, your left hand slips. You need to check if that occurred because of a passage not so well studied, or if it happened because of a lack of concentration… In both ways, you need to be prepared to return to the musical flow. Here enters the improvisation study and your capacity of find a way back to the music. But in all cases, you need to be prepared for the unexpectable. When you are on stage, with an audience in front of you, you open yourself to exchange that musical experience, and many things can happen. You need to be prepared. I study the parts separated and usually in the end of the study I play from the beginning to the end of the piece, and if something odd happens in the middle, I try to explore this causality to create something new.
Please tell us five essential records, to have always with you... the classic five discs for the desert island... I think that is the hardest question (laughs)! Just five! Well, let’s see… The Goldberg Variations - Glenn Gould I couldn't left aside some Bach. Although we can find more “historical” concepts, I love the way Glenn Gould does it, with a lot of energy and passion. I like both recordings, but I'm been listening more the first one. Lamentos do Morro - Raphael Rabello, Rabello, for me, is one of the biggest guitar players of all times. In this recording he is brilliant. The rythmic aspect is so well solved, and at the same time the guitar sings the notes very well pronounced, and everything very intense and visceral. Mercedes Sosa interpreta Atahualpa Yupanqui 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? Marketing is very important. For a long period of time, artists were subordinated to the Records companies. Nowadays, with the Social Medias and specially YouTube, it's easier to show yourself to the world, although the "ocean" of artists is becoming bigger every day! First of all you need to have a good product, and that's the great thing of our time: there is room for everyone! You just need to do whatever you want, and do it with passion and respect (for yourself and for your art), that's the way. That is what will make your music different from the others. After that, comes the technical part: audio recordings, good videos, websites, and throw it constantly in the social medias, to your email lists, and promote yourself and your art. You need to be in touch with your audience, or they will forget you. And that's not because you're not good, but essentially, things are coming and going in a faster way, so you need to be remembered. And internet gave us the freedom from the Studio Recordings, and a bunch of tools to help us doing that, but you need to work hard to make your music be listened and understand the way the medias work to promote your music or business better. I talked a lot about marketing with Ulisses Rocha, a great guitar master and my teacher at the University. And the hardest point to understand, not just for the musicians, but for every artist, is that in this world that we live, you need to transform your art into a product, otherwise, you have a hobby. So, find out who are the people that will love your art, and promote yourself, studying the best way for it, for me, is essential.
This album is really incredible. Mercedes singing is really something. Atahualpa was one of the greatest Argentine folklorists. His songs reflects an Argentina much more plural and rich than just the tango music. So many different rhythms in an intimate way! And what can I say about those percussion and guitars?! It's really beautiful! Retratos (the original recording) - Radamés Gnattali I also coudn’t left aside some Gnattali’s recording, and it’s very hard to pick just one. This is an emblematic album, that came with the original recording of his Suite Retratos, for string orchestra, mandolim and choro group (called in Brazil as “Regional”). Gnattali made some "musical portraits” from four Brazilian composers, Ernesto Nazareth, Chiquinha Gonzaga, Anacleto de Medeiros and Pixinguinha. They are considered the foundation of the Choro Music. And it was written for the greatest Brazilian mandolinist, Jacob do Bandolim. In this recording there’re also some Gnattali’s pieces for solo piano. A jewelry of the Brazilian instrumental music. Antônio Brasileiro - Tom Jobim This was Jobim’s last album, released few days after he passed away. It’s a very rich album, with some instrumental music, and some rearrangements, great success as Insensatez and Só danço Samba. It’s a masterpiece where he shows all his geniality as a composer and arranger. Also there are two tributes to Gnattali, a piece called “Meu amigo Radamés” (My friend Radamés) and Radamés y Pelé. Fantastic album!
What are your five favorite scores? There are so many, but some scores that I really love, but still didn't have the time to study, are the Five Bagateles by William Walton, the Decameron Negro by Leo Brouwer, Prelude, Fugue and Allegro (BWV 998) by Bach. And from the scores that I already play, Brasiliana nº 13 by Radamés Gnattali and Lamentos do Morro by Garoto. With who would you like to play? What kind of music do you listen to usually? I'd like to play with a great orchestra. In fact, play with any orchestra is already fantastic, but with a great one might be outstanding. I’d also like to play with many musicians, some of them already dead, like Radamés and Raphael Rabello, but also with the living ones as Egberto Gismonti and Milton Nascimento. I listen to many different things. I easily change from Gesualdo to Dave Matthews Band. In my phone you will always find some rock, jazz, baroque, classical, contemporary and Brazilian music and I usually listen to it in a random mode. In fact, that was the way I found to really listen to all the music I have, and now I have Gesualdo, Dave Matthews, Ella Fitzgerald, Django Reinhardt, Marcus Siqueira, Julian Bream, Gnattali, Sviatoslav Richter, Baden Powell, Claude Bolling and some others… Your next projects? I have many projects, in fact, I think that one life won't be enough for them (laughs)... But my idea is to keep in this borderline between classical and popular music. Right now I'm working in three projects, the new album of the Tau Quartet (a guitar quartet where I play), the music of Baden Powell, in a trio formation, with bass and drums, and continuing my studies in the Gnattali's works, and there are lots of things! Besides that, I'm promoting my two albuns, specially the "Sarau para Radamés” in Brazil and Europe.
Review of Radamés Gnattali Complete Music for Solo Guitar, Vitor Gaberlotto, 1999 The more I listen to Sudamerican composers’ music, the more I think that this continent is the perfect place where popular and high cultures were able to meet themselves without those prejudices and polemics that we usually find in European culture. Let’s talk about, for examples, Radamés Gnattali (27 January 1906 – 3 February 1988), Brazilian composer of both classical and popular music, as well as a conductor, orchestrator, and arranger. Reading his biography it may seems that Gnattali was predestined as a musician and a composer: his mother, Adélia Fossati, was a pianist and music teacher and his father, Alessandro Gnattali, had been a carpenter in Italy, but after arriving in Brazil applied his passion for music to creating a new career for himself as a successful bassoonist and conductor. Also his name, Radamés, was named after characters from Verdi operas. He began to play the piano with his mother at the age of 6, and went on to learn the violin with his cousin Olga Fossati. When he was 9 he received an award from the Italian consul for conducting a children's orchestra in arrangements of his own. In the following years, he also learned the guitar and cavaquinho and started playing these instruments in a successful group called Os Exagerados, as well as at silent films and dances. Then, Gnattali began a career in Rio as a
successful conductor and arranger of popular music—activities which tended to divert his attention from other genres. Financial needs led him to work for radio stations and record companies as a pianist, conductor and arranger of popular music. In parallel, he pursued a career as a self-taught composer of classical music. While beginning to compose music influenced by Brazilian folk materials, he continued to dream of becoming a major concert artist. Gnattali's musical career straddled popular and classical genres and their traditions. His arrangements of samba pieces, involving strings, woodwind and brass (rather than the traditional accompaniments with two guitars, cavaquinho, accordion, tamborin and flute) exposed him to lifelong critical attacks from Brazilian musical traditionalists who resented the "jazzing up" of the genre. Conversely, some of his serious concert pieces (música de concerto) attracted the opposite criticism of inappropriately introducing instruments such as the mandolin, marimba, accordion, mouth organ and electric guitar into the concert hall. In doing this, he was inspired by his friends from the world of popular music, including Jacob do Bandolim (literally, "Mandolin Jacob"), Edu da Gaita ("Harmonica Edu") and Chiquinho do Acordeom ("Accordion Chiquinho"), for each of whom he composed dedicated concert pieces. By the 1930s he was composing concert music in a NeoRomantic style also incorporating jazz and traditional Brazilian strains. Over the decades, the emphasis Gnattali placed on these components shifted towards jazz in the early 1950s and back towards the Brazilian popular styles by the start of the 1960s. I would like to thank brasilian guitar player Vitor Gaberlotto for releasing this beautiful “complete Music for Solo Guitar”, produced by Ulisses Rocha, where he plays all his solo work, In this record we could listen to Pequena Suite para Violao Solo, Danca Brasileira, Brasiliana n# 13, Toccata em ritmo de samba e I Dez estudios para violao, all for 19 beautiful tracks Gnattali non only composed these guitar scores, but also three solo concertos and three duo concertos. His connections between popular and high cultures are clearly audible in his musics and are the roots of his musical ideas and creativity Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Jobim included the song "Meu Amigo Radamés" as a tribute to Radamés in his final album, Antonio Brasileiro (1994). What else a contemporary composer would want more?
Review of Sarau para Radames ddm Multimidia, 2015
Vitor Garbelotto,
This is the ideal repertoire for a concert for solo Brasilian guitar. Guitarist Vitor Garbelotto managed to choose 11 songs just perfect for a great evening of music, 11 tracks with which to pay homage to the gaucho composer based in Rio de Janeiro, but also the authors who had had contact with the life and works of Gnattali : namely Raphael Rabello and Paulo Cesar Pinhero with their "Camara", Tom Jobim with his "Meu amigo Radames", Paulinho da Viola with "Sarau para Radames", Ernesto Nazareth with "Escorregando" Pixinguinha with "Rosa", Anibla Augusto Sardinha Garoto with "Lamentos do Morro, Baden Powell and Vinicuius de Moraes with medlesy Canto de Yemanja / Canto de Xango and Chiquinha Gonzaga with Suspiro. Garbellotto performs these songs with consummate skill, feels that this is his repertoire and knows how to manage it better, he is in his natural environment. But what surprises me is the quiet fluidity that is able to express with his guitar, is not a trivial matter, Garbelotto can play almost leaving his own guitar breathe, expressing a sense of breathe that, usually, it is the prerogative of those who attends more jazz's territories than those with a classical education. The music is awesome and Garbelotto knows how to put in the right light without neglecting a single note, and never showing a voltage drop, demonstrating excellent artistic maturity and a remarkable safety. If you want one record of Brazilian music in your collection, well... you can choose this one.
learned tuning and C major scale. I learned everything else by myself. I started playing the classical guitar when I was 17, and then I entered a university for music. I discovered your music because I was looking for Reich's music played by guitars, I was surprise to see that you have played “Music for Piece of Wood," your is the only guitar version I have of this score, why did you choose to play it? Did you use a “mute” technique? “Music for Piece of Wood” has many pieces of music which bring attention to their rhythms, but actually they also have beautiful harmonies. I pondered on whether such beautiful harmonies will sound more prominent if they are played using a guitar. The reason I play with “mute” technique is to create a percussive sound that gives the African music type of atmosphere.
From Japan: Yasushi
Takemura
Interview with Yasushi
Takemura (June 2016)
http://yasushitakemura.com/ 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 the electric guitar when I was 13 years old because of my admiration for rock music. The bands that I liked at that time were Metallica,Bon Jovi and Guns N’ Roses. My father played the classical guitar as a hobby and that is how I
Why did you decide to play Steve Reich's music? I have listened to your versions of Nagoya Guitars and .. I think they are quite .. funky...
performances. No matter whether you try to go as close as possible to the style of that era, or create a style through modern and personal sentiments, they are all part of the joy of music.
Steve Reich's music, such as Classical, Contemporary, Jazz, Rock, Techno, House, HipHop and Ethnic music are important music that links to all the music in me. I started recording for the purpose of facing Steve Reich's work, which is the "hub" that connects the various kinds of music in me. The reason why you think Nagoya Guitars is funky is probably because it is a fusion of the various kinds of music in me, with some groove incorporated into it. I am very happy that you've got such an impression! The image that I had in mind when recording Nagoya Guitars was Samurais with their swords locked together in a duel.
Please tell us five essential records, to have always with you .. the classic five discs for the desert island …
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...
What are your five favorite scores?
Accidental unintended or unexpected events are purely “error”. I think seeking surprises or coincidences is looking forward to something from the time before “error” happens, but because you are seeking something, it is not a “error” but one of the tools used in creation. But it is a fact that even if it is simply a “error” to the performer himself, it might become the coolest moment to the audience. In other words, “error” to me can simply be “error” or one of the tools used in creation. This reminds me of the sentence “Understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings.” in a book written by Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart. 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? There are different values and sentiments during different times. I think to ignore them and to go back in time with the values and sentiments of modern times will make us drift away from the understanding and perspectives of the composers and the performers then. However, when it is impossible to listen to recordings from a time where there are no such things, it is necessary to derive that from various literature and interpretations of that era. And I will leave the last to the performer. On the other hand, I do not think that it is the joy of music to just reproduce what was from a certain era. It is also a fact that many outstanding pieces of work have been produced from contemporary interpretations and
Glenn Gould ”Goldberg Variations 1981” Pascal Rogé ”Ravel The Complete Piano Works” João Gilberto “João Voz e Violão" Miles Davis ”On The Corner” Herbert "Bodily Functions”
Johann Sebastian Bach "Violin Partita No.2 in D minor, BWV 1004 Chaconne” Steve Reich “Electric Counterpoint” Erik Satie “Sports et Divertissements” Anton Webern “Variations for Piano op.27" Matteo Carcassi “25 Etudes op.60" With who would you like to play? What kind of music do you listen to usually? The guitarist is Ralph Towner. I listen to all types of music intensively everyday. Classical, Jazz, Latin, Dance, Rock, etc. Recently I listen to James Blake "The Colour In Anything” and Alfred Brendel “Haydn: 11 Piano Sonatas” a lot. Your next projects? I am currently recording a new piece of work. It is probably going to be a piece of work that readers of “Neuguitars.com” will be interested in. I want to be a musician that can make people feel the beauty of silence at any time.
Steve Reich wrote the work "Nagoya Marimbas" in response to a commission from the Nagoya College of Music in Japan. When fellow composer Aaron Jay Kernis first heard that work, he noted to his friend David Tannenbaum that the work might be suited to a guitar transcription. Tannenbaum agreed, and completed the transcription while consulting with Reich. "Nagoya Guitars" is a thoroughly minimalist work: it begins with a darting, mostly descending theme in the bass, and, after much chordal churning and unceasing movement, eventually ends up on a similar but ascending theme in a much higher register. All of the best features of Reich's minimalism are here: tension arises from repetition, the unstoppable movement gives the piece momentum, and the development of the theme, handled gradually, seems inevitable and right as one listens. Those who enjoy minimalist works will find this work to be right up their alley. Takemura adds something else: a more “funky” version, more funky and fun, with his electric guitar adding more moviments.
Steve Reich Guitar Works di Yasushi Takemura, miru records, 2014 Review of
This record is the first "opera omnia" for electric guitar by the american composer Steve Reich ever made. The author of this stylistic synthesis is the Japanise guitarist Yasushi Takemura, who played three scores: "Music for Pieces of Wood", "Nagoya Guitars" and the three movements of "Electric Counterpoint". It's true that about these three songs only "Electric Counterpoint" was specially written by Reich for Pat Metheny's guitar, but the inherent qualities in the music of the most famous living American composer, or rather, the characteristics of the musical processes adopted by Reich , often allow an interesting transposition to other instruments, such as the electric guitar. Music for Pieces of Wood, is a fine example of how something of interest can be made with only basic elements, it'slistening to a kaleidoscope: a pattern is established, then it shifts as with the click of the kaleidoscope. There are 58 shifts of pattern within a general 10 minute time frame. Three general sections comprise the overall form. Each section employs an additive progession to build density and is linked to the neighboring section by the underlying quarter note laid down by the first clave player. Takemura plays it using a “mute” technique that makes a connection between hi guitar and the percussions used in the original score.
The cd is closed by the three movimets of Electric Counterpoint, probably the most love contemporary pieces for electric guitar ever composed and played. Takemura plays very well and I have to say that I like the energy he puts into his music and his guitar. Maybe, expecially Nagoya Guitars, hi interpretations could not be considered as pefectly accademic versions, but I don't think this is really important. With his funkness and his fluidity Takemura adds more fun and new ideas to Reich's guitar music. Recommended it.
Regino Sáinz de la Maza and Narciso Yepes in Spain) and violin with José Casas. Eventually I kept playing the violin for one year but the guitar took finally over. In the same school I had five years of complementary piano training, and later I did also some conducting studies. I started to listen to and to know your music with the ECM's record on Luys de Narváez Musica del Delphin, which introduced me to the music of the great composer. How much time was necessary to prepare and to record the scores you played in that cd? I started delving in Narváez’s music when I arrived in 1988 in Paris to study Early Music with Javier Hinojosa. He opened to me the doors of understanding Renaissance music, and since that time this repertoire stayed with me constantly. So I can say that it was a work of nearly 20 years of getting it “to the point”! The recording itself was made in two days. Why did you choose to play the music of Gustavo Leguizmon in your last ECM's record?
From Argentina: Pablo Interview with Pablo
Marquez
Marquez (March 2016)
http://www.pablomarquez.com/ 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? The interest for the guitar was basically since ever an interest for music. At the age of four I used to remain for hours aside the turntable of my great-parents listening to music, as if hypnotized, both by the music and by the object itself! Then, when I was eight, as there was a guitar at home and nobody was playing it, I asked to my parents to have music lessons. Two years later I was entering the Music School of Salta (the city in the Northwest of Argentina where my family settled) and started studying guitar with Graciela Lloveras (a former student of
For many reasons! When I first met Manfred Eicher (the famous ECM’s founder and producer), it was in the frame of the residence Figures Argentines at the Abbaye de Royaumont, together with Dino Saluzzi (one of the main ECM recording artists, who is also from Salta) and Gerardo Gandini (an outstanding composer and pianist, student of Ginastera and member of Piazzolla’s last Sextet). At that occasion I was presenting my CD Corazonando, published by the Argentinean label Epsa and dedicated to the music of composers from Salta. That recording included already three pieces by Leguizamón. Manfred liked very much these arrangements and suggested me to do, years later and after Narváez, an Argentinean recording, so the idea of an all Leguizamón disk came naturally to my mind. “Cuchi” Leguizamón (as everybody calls him) is on his side, together with Eduardo Falú, the most representative musician from Salta before Dino Saluzzi, and had many skills: besides being a wonderful pianist and composer, he was also a poet, a lawyer and a History teacher. This is by the way how I met him; he was my History teacher at college when I was 13, and at that time I didn’t know he was a musician and even less about the importance of his output for the Argentinean music! Why the recording project "El Cuchi bien temperado" alludes to Bach's music? Cuchi Leguizamón was the unparalleled master of the zamba, and more than
half of his compositions are zambas. Therefore, when I started planning the recording it was clear that the majority of the pieces where going to be examples of that form. So, in order to avoid monotony and provide a wealth of colours, I set myself the challenge of never repeating any key in my arrangements. I could then, through these arrangements, visit all the 24 major and minor keys, and thus the project was finally called El Cuchi bien temperado -a word-play with El Clave bien temperado by Bach. Furthermore, I used some of Bach’s typical compositional techniques in some arrangements, for instance in Chilena del solterón, where the interlude’s melody is the exact inversion of the introduction’s one; or the introduction of Zamba de Lozano, which I shaped in the form of a passacaglia; or the contrapuntal texture of Chaya de la albahaca, where I use the introduction’s motif to create unity with the rest of the piece. What difficulties did you find arranging this music for guitar? When you first hear Cuchi playing his music at the piano you would never imagine that such a rich harmonic and textural ideas could ever fit on a guitar. That kept me away from even trying to arrange his music for a longtime, and that was maybe the highest barrier. Once I started I had one priority, that of staying faithful to the spirit of his music. Very often you hear versions that are too light (let’s say “new-agish”), or to simple, or too intellectual and disconnected from the traditional or “telluric” roots (Cuchi’s tour-de-force was, in my opinion, his alchemistic balance between tradition and a modernity he was the first to bring in that language). In a word, it was difficult to find the right tone. The other challenge came from my choice of not repeating any tonality, in how to make the instrument sound well in every key. We know that the guitar can be very limited playing in some keys (D-flat Major, E-flat minor or F-sharp Major for instance!), so I had to unfold all the imagination I was capable of in order to make it sound natural. Furthermore, as the traditional forms of zamba, chacarera, cueca, bailecito, etc. are choreographic and therefore repetitive, I had to imagine variations for every repetition, trying also to create with every piece a unique atmosphere and vary the ideas and the techniques. In a way, it was a big work of composition from my side as well! 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 was first confronted to improvisation during the same Royaumont residence with Dino Saluzzi and Gerardo Gandini I mentioned before. Both of them were amazing improvisers (Gandini passed away in 2013), and initiated me in this
vast territory. For a musician with classical training and background like me it was literally a shock! Later I could eventually play with Dino in a concert-tour with his family band and in trio with bass, experiences where improvisation was at the center of music-making. Even though my musical life still goes through other paths (I don’t consider myself as an improviser), experiencing improvisation on stage gave me the feeling that music happens always here and now. This idea was of course also conveyed by many classical musicians, Celibidache and Sebök for instance, but that feeling of “to be or not to be” was never clearer than when I was involved with improvisation. Since then I always try to get that feeling while playing written music. To answer the second part of your question, improvisation has been since ever an inextricable part of music making and testimonies of every age up to the XXth century are legion, particularly those of Narváez and Francesco improvising four voices fantasias, Bach improvising fugues, all the classics improvising the cadenzas for their own concerti, Liszt, and even Bartók and Prokofiev. But somehow a divorce started operating in the middle of the XIXth century that took away the composers, the interpreters and the improvisers from each other. This is why I am so fascinated by figures like Dino Saluzzi or Gerardo Gandini, who reunite all these three functions in one person again. 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... Using mistakes to unveil new paths is a classic tool of improvisation. I could experience this and I used this concept while doing the arrangements for the Leguizamón recording. For instance, the complete second half of Zamba de Lozano is generated by a “mistake” in the last chord of the first half, where instead of B-minor I wrote a diminished fifth chord (I did that error while improvising and searching ideas). That gave me the possibility to explore a totally unusual harmonic field for this piece, which never had happen if I never had made the mistake. 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? I would say it depends on the interpreter or the composer. Personally, I find it thrilling to have nowadays access to the complete Music History’s perspective.
That gives me the feeling of wonder of such a variety and diversity of expression through the ages and cultures. I find extremely important for the musician I am, to put every work in its context, should it be cultural, ideological or simply esthetical. Having this perspective helps me doing that. Please tell us five essential records, to have always with you, the classic five discs for the desert island... Very difficult!!! I have nearly thousands of CDs at home, and I could make a selection of at least 500 essential recordings. Reducing that to only five it’s a very hard task, I would then tell the first five coming to my mind: 1.Bill Evans: Alone 2.Dino Saluzzi & Rosamunde Quartett: Kultrun 3.Egberto Gismonti: Alma 4.Dino Lipatti playing Chopin 5.György Kurtág: Jatékok What are your five favorite scores? Very difficult as well, same as for the recordings, the first five coming to my mind: 1.Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps 2.Bach: Sonatas & Partitas for violin 3.Beethoven: Hammerklavier Sonata 4.Ligeti: Kammerkonzert 5.Guillaume de Machaut: Motets With whom would you like to play? What kind of music do you listen to usually? I shared more than half of the time I spent on stage during my musical life with other musicians, and I had already the luck to play with many great artists, such as Anja Lechner, the Rosamunde Quartett, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, María Cristina Kiehr, Mario Caroli, Ruth Rosique, Sergiu Luca and many others. I also played under many great conductors like Susanna Mälkki, Lorraine Vaillancourt, Joseph Pons, and others. If I could dream freely, I would like to share some music making with Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim and Pablo Heras Casado.
Your next projects? Many, but I cannot unveil them for the moment, except that the next collaboration with ECM will be the first recording of Luciano Berios’s Chemins V for guitar and orchestra, with the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana conducted by Dennis Russell Davies.
considered by many as a precursor of the six-string instrument that we all know. All these scores comes from the Navarez's collection published in 1580 as Los Seys Libros de Musica del Delphin, where there are different kinds of fantasies , secular and religious songs. For this recording, Marquez has chosen seventeen of these forty works. The same Marquez in the beautiful booklet that accompanies the CD (pure style ECM) underlines his deepest respect for Narvaez's music, explaining how he needed twenty years to study Renaissance music in order to acquire the necessary skills to be able to play with his classical guitar these compositions: one of his goals was indeed to demonstrate the absolute actuality of Renaissance music by showing how it can be reproduced without the vihuela and with modern classical guitar. I think we can confirm that this target was successfully achieved! Marquez manages to create an elegant and intimate setting, making the Delphin Music cd a nice, pleasant, catchy and relaxing, offering food for our thought. These musics aren't muted memories of a now extinct past, but in the hands of Marquez become suspended moments, abstract compositions, real musical ideals brought back to life with discreet and gentle virtuosity by this great guitarist. I also recommend the excellent cd “Gustavo Leguizamon El cuchi bien temperado�, also published in 2015 for ECM. Track Listing:
Review of Pablo Marquez, Musica del Delphin, ECM, 2007 Pablo Marquez is a classic Argentinean guitarist whose skills and virtuosity were made available to different situations, collaborations and musical backgrounds. He has played with groups such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, as well as with traditional Argentine music groups, also studying with the bandoneon master Dino Saluzzi, while his involvement with contemporary music has also led him to collaborate with composers such as Luciano Berio, Gyorgy Kurtag and Maurizio Kagel. Music Del Delfin, released by ECM New Series in 2007, is a collection of music by Luys de Narvaez, Spanish musician and composer born in 16th century. The 17 pieces contained in the CD were originally written for the vihuela, an instrument similar to guitar in vogue in the 16th century and which today it's
Primer tono por ge sol re ut (Libro I, 1); Cancion del Emperador (Mille Regretz de Josquin) (Libro III, 6); Fantasia del quinto tono (Libro II, 3); Segundo tono (Libro I, 2); Diferencias sobre Conde Claros (Libro VI, 1); Tercero tono (Libro I, 3); Fantasia del primer tono (Libro II, 6); Baxa de contrapunto (Libro VI, 4); Quarto tono (Libro I, 4); Diferencias sobre el himno O Gloriosa Domina (Libro IV, 1); Quinto tono de consonancia (Libro I, 5); Je veulx laysser melancolie de Richafort (Libro III, 9); Sesto tono sobre fa ut mi re (Libro I, 6); Sanctus y Hosanna (Missa Faisant Regretz de Josquin) (Libro III, 3/4); Septimo tono sobre ut re mi fa mi (Libro I, 7); Fantasia del quarto tono (Libro II, 2); Octavo tono (Libro I, 8).
gentle, you haven’t that grave expressions that often accompanies your European peers composers, indeed, in your own music you can breathe a different attitude, because you don’t distinguish between high and low culture, you don’t close the window to popular music as Schoenberg did, indeed, you propose yourself as an intermediary between these two forms, as a connecting bridge, as a breeder, a shrewd pollinator, as your colleagues Ginastera and Pezzolla are already doing, bringing the European cultured language into folk music providing it with new colors and shades. And now imagine that among your students there is a very young Pablo Marquez, he, the great artist who will take the place of Oscar Giglia in Basel. I think it is a great pride for you, am I right? Because you have seen this young student growing, maybe you have felt his passion for the guitar growing too, you have see him mature as an artist, you will see it leave your city, Salta, a beautiful city located on the Andes of half a million inhabitants, you will see it become the great musician he is today and you have see him transcribe and play your music. What a satisfaction, dear Professor Leguizamon! I will apologize Professor: but I didn’t know your music. But luckily I already knew your former student Pablo Marquez and I have long since learned that when the ECM produces a new his own record, I should buy it immediately. And so now I'm listening to your music, your Zumba, 17 tracks, which he reinterpreted and arranged in his usual genial and innovative way. Because, dear Professor, your student is not a “normal” guitar player. Not satisfied with the "normal" guitar repertoire and even with dell'accademica contemporary music, no, he needs something different, needs to explore, assimilate, understand and interpret ... I believe that his music above all expresses this: a great curiosity and a great desire to explore, to grow and learn. And then to represent all this in new ways, different, exciting and engaging. And it's the case for this cd: "Gustavo Cuchi Leguizamón El Bien temperado". Produced in 2015, Pablo Marquez playes here 17 songs, reading each one in a different musical key. It 's a truly remarkable record, Professor, I think that you can really be considered satisfied.
Review of "Gustavo Leguizamon El Cuchi Bien Temperado" by Pablo Marquez, ECM 2015 Imagine being an history’s professor at the high school. Imagine also be one of the most important Argentinian composers, but you are not very well known, maybe you are a shy person, even your students don’t know that you are the author of those Zamba melodies they like to listen to and to sing so much during the break between lessons. For you this is not a problem, you're a quiet person,
I did not know anything about his past as a guitar player. Actually I found that Yoshihide, composer, improviser, one of the main actor in the Japanese radical / impro scene, had spent years as a serious jazz guitarist and in his youth he had studied with the great Masayuki Takayanagi. About this master of Japanese free jazz who died in 1991, Julian Cope wrote in his "Japrogsampler": "... one of those daring extremes that combine, in a forty-year career, on one hand virtuosity and absolute mastery about music theory, on the other free atonal rock-splitting amplifiers, a source of inspiration and rages for every contemporary. " A flawless definition that can not collect at least some curiosity about it. Too bad that his records are the subject of wild collecting with simply prohibitive costs, I'm looking for his guitar solo works form several years but it seems I need a money transfer from Fort Knox to buy one of them.
Otomo Yoshihide!!! Otomo Yoshihide's Guitar Solos I saw Otomo Yoshihide and his New Jazz Quintet playing on a quiet spring evening in Venice at the Teatro Fondamenta Nuove in May 2005. It was a nice evening, very intense, highly charged, I remember a close-knit band that moved effortlessly their sound waves between standards, flurries free jazz, noise and melodies. Never banal. That evening I saw Yoshihide take up and playing a guitar, an ES 175, if I remember correctly: it was a nice surprise, all I had first heard of him was about music and works conceived by lap tops and electronics,
It's easier to look for Yoshihide's guitar solo cds that are only two, the first entitled "Guitar Solo performed by Otomo Yoshihide 12th October 2004 @ Shinjuku Pit Inn, Tokyo +1" released in 2005 for doubtmusic, while a few months ago the same record company, directed by Jun Numata and focused on free improvisation, free jazz and Onkyo, produced the following entitled "Guitar Solo 2015 LEFT".
I bought it and it pushed me to listen to again the first cd solo made in 2005, in search of the differences, similarities and, perhaps, of my judgments and my
intuitions of a few years ago. One of the beauties of music is that SHE does not change, while WE do it. Music, especially if recorded, is a concentrate moment on the tip of a fork. We change, we get mature and listen to it again we vary our judgments, our ideas and perhaps by doing so we realize better about time passing, but I digress. These two records are for me complementary and can be heard in succession, as individual episodes of a creative process that is all moving and growing. Both works clearly highlight two aspects of the music of Yoshihide: the large, quiet breath of the pieces played with acoustic guitar and harsh and "intense" sounds in the songs played with electric one. Yoshihide alternates gentle and refined atmosphere as those of Theme from Canary by Akihiko Shiota and Gomen of Shin Togashi (our musician seems to be very interested in the avant-garde Japanese movies) to true sound terrorist incidents like Rig, Roulette and Cylinder. One of the characteristics of Yoshihide seems that he knows how to alternate moments of absolute, atonal and furious noise to melodic moments of quiet, along with the ability to rework in a decidedly indipendent ways, jazz standards like Mood Indigo, Misty and Lonely Woman by Ornette Coleman . About Lonely Woman: if you type "Otomo Yoshihide lonely woman" on youtube you will find a nice selection of different versions of this song, performed in solo, in trio and in quintet. It seems that this passage is a fixture in the music of this musician, a theme, a gym yet to test, to experiment, to start again. "Guitar Solo performed by Otomo Yoshihide 12th October 2004 @ Shinjuku Pit Inn, Tokyo +1" concludes with this passage, with a ladybug that at the end of the song hit the microphone starting a feedback absolutely in contrast with what was played a few seconds before, a curious fact that Yoshihide has decided not only to leave in the recording of the CD, but also to explain the liner notes and a stylized drawing in the CD itself. We find this passage in "Guitar Solo 2015 LEFT" as the second piece of the CD, after starting with Song for Che by Charlie Haden. If in the first album the song lasted more than seven minutes, here it becomes a half-marathon of over fifteen minutes! In ten years the song Ornette Coleman has changed his physiognomy, has not only expanded but it has turned from a ballad into something much more complex, articulated and tortuous. Perhaps in an homage and an implicit memory to his teacher Masayuki Takayanagi, that to this music had dedicated the titles of two of his albums, Lonely Woman and Lonely Woman Live. No coincidence that in this last record Yoshihide plays a Gibson ES-175 that was just belonged to Masayuki and that he dedicates to his former master several beautiful words, in a way reconciled with him after the abrupt interruption of their relationship that took place 23 years ago. The album continues with another torrential track, The Blue Kite another 15
minutes only, and Machi no Hi (2:15), Kyokun I (6:46) and the last 2020 Tokyo. They are two very special records: in both we can capture a deep vein of free jazz, noise, the desire to deconstruction, to bring even further the limits of a sincere and stubborn avangard. As Joe Morris, Yoshihide also makes a little use of pedals and effects, an amplifier and a guitar seem more than enough to be able to express their ideas, thoughts and to be able to generate all the sounds they need. His guitar is outside the standard we are used to, is not just a matter of being rock, metal, jazz or avant-garde: Yoshihide as Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Joe Morris is able to create his own world, a world in constant evolution.
Review of Otomo Yoshihide, Guitar Solo 2015 RIGHT, DoubtMusic Records, 2015 Otomo Yoshihide last year produced the CD Guitar Solo LEFT 2015, in which he paid tribute to his former teacher Masayuki Takayanagi, one of the most important figures of the Japanese free music scene of the sixties and more. Now it seems he has completed this work with this new cd Guitar Solo 2,015 RIGHT, with a title and an almost identical cover, in which Otomo uses the same guitar, even if the material is completely different. In this case we have a "reconstruction" of a piece that was originally created for the exhibition "Otomo Yoshihide: Between MUSIC and ART", which was held in Tokyo between 2014 and 2015. For the occasion, the musician recorded a total of 123 traces whose length ranged from a few seconds to a minute. After the recording of the material this was given to Akihito Matsumoto, who used to power the sound system at the show, controlling the sound output through a computer program that mixes the fragments in ever-changing configurations. Also in this aspect the connection with Takayanagi is strong, with a job that has a deep resonance experiments "automated" that the guitarist had explored in his later years. The strategies employed here, and the resulting sounds, however, are very different. This record consists of a single piece more than sixty minutes long, with a particular and definite identity. The opening reminiscent of the free improvisation language introduced by Derek Bailey, with short sequences of sounds that intersect and overlap through the sound field. Soon the atmosphere changes and ghosts of melodies emerges, in contrast to previous samples. This dialogue continues throughout the entire track, creating fascinating mix based on improvisation, in which the randomness becomes a precise compositional logic. But this I think this cd is interesting also in another respect: since it is the computer that eventually assembles Yoshihide's sonic mosaics, shall we can still consider this record a product of improvisation? And if so then even computers can improvise? Perhaps we should not take back, from another point of view, to the Alea's concept introduced by Boulez? In any case this is a cd that I can highly recommend.
methodically Joe Morris takes his guitar, strictly acoustic, and he gets stream of thoughts, ideas, proposed in this case with his latest CD "only bimhuis" in the form of six songs recorded October 18, 2013 and October 2, 2014 the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, structure / theater / place dedicated to improvised music with a story that continues since 1974. Morris is probably the number one free jazz guitarist, with an amazing discography where these three solo records only represent, in my opinion, the tip of a submerged impressive and creative iceberg . I always considered solo records only as very specific moments in the career of a musician, intimate moments of absolute freedom, where he can play without the compromises that playing with other people necessarily requires. With Joe Morris we have the opportunity to listen to three different times in his life, with three different CD. It allows us to capture the subtle and constant evolutionary dynamics that have always animated his desire to move always on the borders, on the frontier of music, in continuous expansion and exploration. In this "solos bimhuis" Morris prefers to explore complex and discontinuous rhythmic structures with constant changes using the possibilities offered by his acoustic archtop. The result is a classic "clean" sound whose variations are not given by the use of direct effects but by the ways with which Morris interacts with his instrument. When simplicity is synonymous with complexity. http://www.joe-morris.com/ http://www.relativepitchrecords.com/index.html
Review of "solo bimhuis" by Pitch Records, 2015
Joe Morris,
Relative
Let's make some order: – 1995 No Vertigo, Leo Records – - 2000 Singularity, AUM Fidelity – - 2015 solos bimhuis, Relative Pitch Records LLC These are three records for guitar only, three masterpieces made by a brilliant, innovative musician who never stand on his last position. Periodically,
Let's talk about BOOK
OF HEADS's records!
Twenty years ago John Zorn and Marc Ribot released on Tzadik these 35 amazing guitar studies, let's talk about their recordings.
any virtuous: I was lucky enough to see Mr. Ribot playing them live in a cold December night in Venice (Italy) in 1999 and I still remember the amazement at seeing him fumble with balloons, wooden chopsticks, mistreating and leading to limit his instrument, using it as a generator of atonal and unusual sounds and reversing in an instant decades of rock and jazz iconography. Listening to it is not easy and intuitive, it takes some concentration and dedication to understand and intuit the project and the supporting structure (which no doubt there are any) of these studies is not stopping the rigors sound and sounds that recall the metaphysical abrasive screams of the first Naked City and the violence of Painkiller. But here there is only the guitar, stripped, extremist, in its pure, naked essence.
Review of Marc Ribot, Heads, 1995 Tzadik
John Zorn
The Book of
An absolutely paradoxical record, a unique and complex open opera, as is its composer, John Zorn, saxophonist, composer, sound's investigator, soundtracks' author for essay films, real outsider, Japan lover, hard core fan, Godard's movies and the cultural trash magus, a typical product of New York counterculture, from of the downtown that stinks about punk, no wave and bad habits. Although he has always used the guitar, including it in an original way within the various ensembles from Naked City to Masada, and always being surrounded by excellent associates like Fred Frith, Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell and Eugene Chadbourne, Zorn has very little pubblished for solo guitar. So I think that this record can be seen (and listened to) as a sum of his guitar visions, the result of the synthesis of eighty compositions designed between the '70s and' 80s, condensed in 35 studies with a lenght between thirty seconds and a minute and a half, ideally designed for the composer / improviser / mad doctor Eugene Chadbourne which in those years had shared with Zorn lots of music and lots of creativity. I have seen those scores and... wow they are something so impervius and difficoult to translate and interpret, but in this firts record, these musics are commited in the capable and versatile hands of Marc Ribot, one of the most versatile and intelligent guitarists that New York scene has ever created that has been able to demonstrate perfectly that these studies represent a tough test for
Review of Yun Mu, Marco
Cappelli, (2001)
I looked for this record far and wide for more than two years before I could get it requesting it directly to the author. This rarity is a real pity because this recording is a true concentration of rich and intelligent ideas. Particularly interesting is the Book of Head’s interpretation: inside the cd we can find ten of the thirty-five studies created by Zorn and this was the first time that another guitar player recorded them. Compared to the more "downtown underground” edition premiered by Marc Ribot, I think that Cappelli’s version presents richer and more dynamic versions, maybe because the diverse classical background of the Italian guitarist. Equally amazing is Electric Counterpoint by Steve Reich with a very special and unusual version: Cappelli chooses not to slavishly follow the original structure of the score and to record it using not only the acoustic and classical guitar (here modified by adding other strings free to vibrate in "sympathy") but also a rich repertoire of folk instruments granted in order to add an "ethnic" sound, with a flawless and, at the same time, respectful performance. "Fabrica de Carillon-Nana" by Claudio Lugo is the shortest piece and perhaps suffer its positioning between Zorn and Reich. Five minutes in which the guitar is used in an unorthodox, harmonics, pizzicato, strings blocked shots in a harmonic and percussive unity that resonates like the delicate and mechanically precise gear of a music box hidden inside a Faberge egg. The nine minutes’ length of the music that gives the title to the cd, Yun Mu by composer Junghae Lee, and thirteen minutes of Napoletap by Giorgio Tedde, close this cd. Ttwo different pieces that I think share a sense of deep intensity. "Napoletap", as explicitly stated by the title, refers to the matrix of the Neapolitan folk music by putting it in a sound environment where the guitar is "processed" electronically and where it seems to me are given to the guitarist many possibilities to expression himself and manage the sounds. A really nice record, for the choice of repertoire, for the interpretations’ qualities and thanks to Marco Cappelli’s technical and artistic skills.
John Zorn The Book of Christoph Funabashi, 2012 Schraum Review of
Heads by
This CD is the second complete edition of the Book of Heads, a clear example of how, over the years, interest has been increasing from devotees guitarists to contemporary music to these 35 studies. Studies as much particular as much
opened to the possibilities and the inventiveness of each one of their interpreters. German guitarist Christoph Funabashi plays them, fumbling with four guitars, rubber balloons, Styrofoam pieces, several violin’s bows and a lot of saliva and sweat: the result are concomitantly varied quick suggestions, shards, sound bone fragments, contortions and convulsive paste-up relationship with silence. Something very liminal and functional at the same time, the guitar, the guitars stripped down to their extreme possibilities, their wooden body beaten and called up to the their maximum voltage limit. This disc is a sort of schizophrenic music box, a lullaby performed by oscillating Fuzzed pedals, analog effects, wah, followed by sounds and ramshackle riffs that seem to come from the back of a guitar shop. The Book of Heads is a classic example of John Zorn’s musical virtuosity and sense of humor, it’s a rewarding sonic exploration, expertly performed here by guitarist Christoph Funabashi. The Book of Heads requires a series of acrobatic skills and coordinations in the use of effects, pedals, various items such as polystyrene, violin bows, balloons, pliers and tongs, aimed at distorting and changing the sound of the instrument itself. It seems there is not a single squared centimeter of guitar that has not been used to generate this particular musical vibrations, a mix of blues, metal and experimental classic, almost a trademark by Zorn himself. With his quick, almost sharp interpretation Funabashi makes a clear idea of what was called music in the late '70s in downtown New York. A fun aspect of listening to these recordings are, in my opinion, trying to imagine how the performer is able to produce these sounds, playing them live. Congratulations to the record company Schraum to have published and produced this real artistic leap that most labels would consider too much esoteric or difficult. Amazing both from composition and interpretation points of view, Funabashi version shows how Book of Heads’ studies, after so many years, are still able to grow old with admirable dignity and how Zorn’s first experiments would become one of his sound cornerstones. Recommended.
Review of James Heads, 2015 Tzadik
Moore
plays The Book of
James Moore is a versatile guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, a founding member of the electric guitar quartet Dither, and performs internationally as a soloist and ensemble player. A native of the Bay Area, James Moore studied classical guitar at UC Santa Cruz and the Yale School of Music, and has since immersed himself in New York's creative music communities, earning the title of "local electric guitar hero" by Time Out NY and "model new music citizen" by the NY Times. James. He worked with Bang on a Can, Alarm Will Sound, Clogs, and
members of the National. With this record, released by Tzadik twenty years after Marc Ribot's storical edition, Moore plays again the 35 studies created by Zorn between 1976-78 and edited in 1995. The best thing is that this is a special edition contains both a CD and a beautifully produced DVD of a film by Stephen Taylor showcasing the eclectic techniques involved in and all the abilities necessary to play those studies. So the DVD permits a depth view into what Tzadik itself called “of the most gonzo music ever created for solo guitar”.
As for the other two editions, most of the pieces are in the one/two-minute range so things happen fast, and you can have any loss of attention. Sometimes I think about these studies like TV commercial spots, so quick, so dense of tight informations, like in Zorn's file cards compositions or in his games pieces. Attention is really important if your want to get the idiosyncratic guitar languages played here, mixing together free improvisation, cartoons, film noir, world music, philosophy, rock's licks and jazz's riffs. This idea that an etude could be focused on the exploration of a particular technique was borne out by wide-ranging material wherein scrapes, bowings, strums, and scrabbly, post-punk flurries appear alongside classical patterns and high-pitched drones, as Zorn's compositional approach in the mid '70s was characterized by a restless channel-surfing quality and the great semiotic ability to mix together different styles and genres. So I think that Book of Heads is now more then a simple guitar studies' collection. Even if the scores are still the same from 1995 it's seems to me that they are growing, they are more like an “Opera Aperta” (to quote Umberto Eco) and that their influences is expanding between guitarists all over the world. Let's hope for more new editions.
The Gnostic Preludes by John
Zorn, Tzadik 2012
So .. we are here again in front of another cd by John Zorn. Great news? I don’t know. Zorn has become so quick about composing, recording, mastering, design and production that is simply impossible to follow his speed of light. By now he is going with a production of of 10 cd every year. Dear Frank Zappa and Sun Ra.. your discografies, already impressive, are little things in comparison to the creative bulimia of Zorn. The problem is that many of them are all valid records, well produced and
played and with a stupendous packaging. So … Zorn is never wrong . And he is not wrong with this spectacular The Gnostic Preludes "music of splendor" performed by the trio formed by Bill Frisell at electric guitar, Carol Emanuel to the harp and from Kenny Wollesen to the vibraphone. First of all .. welcome back Mr. Frisell, welcome back in New York downtown! How much you missed me, I had hoped for a your return almost ten years ago when you played Masada Guitars, but then you had disappeared from the “zornian” radar, and now you are here again. Dear Mr. Frisell listening to your guitar is always pure pleasure, never a yielding, never a disappointment as a Jon Zorn’s interpreter, well you have always given excellent probation of the your noteworthy abilities. Welcome back indeed. Let's intend us Carol Manuel and Kenny Wollesen are not certain from less, I had enjoyed them playing in the series Filmworks of Zorn (I know it, I know it, Zorn has produced a new cd of the series... I will buy it.. one of these days) and here I find again them in perfect shape. An unusual trio that harp, electric guitar and vibraphone but with the Gnostic Preludes really dates the best together. Eight passages, eight splendid preludes indeed. Forget you the noisy Zorn of Naked City or Painkiller. Here everything flows in a golden bright, the vibraphone of Wollesen succeeds in creating an aurora of sound in which it is easy to stay effortless entangled, eight very melodic preludes and apparently simple, with the three instruments that apparently repeat the same melodic phrases in between themselves, the same motives but at the same time performing personal detours that at the end join themselves again. Fourth episode of the series of cd devoted to the mysticism. Dear Mr. Zorn... but now that you are more then 60 year-old ...could not you slow down a little bit?
Adam Rudolph Go: Organic Guitar Orchestra , Review of Turning Towards The Light by Cuneiform Records, 2015 http://www.metarecords.com/adam.html#anchorreviews http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/rudolph.html I have to thank Marco Cappelli for introducing me to Adam Rudolph. I confess that before our pleasant and convivial meeting in Venice in March 2016 I had not yet had the opportunity to know his music and especially his rich and original musical thought. Rudolph shows a simply extraordinary career as a percussionist and a composer, with an awesome knowledge about African and Indian ethnic. Experience built slowly and directly on the field, something very far from the kind of simulated experiences that we live daily in our current media society. His latest record shows a further evolution of his project Go Organic Orchestra having him busy directing and coordinating the activities of a list of excellent musicians like Rez Abbasi, Nels Cline, Liberty Ellman, David Gilmore, Miles Okazaki, Marvin Sewell, Damon Banks, Marco Capelli, Jerome Harris, Joel Harrison and Kenny Wessel. This record goes back to 2014 winter solstice, very special date, in which Rudolph has met all these guitarists, among the most adventurous in New York's
music scene, to achieve the thirteen songs included in this Turning Towards The Light. The cd is excellent and it's a great news for all guitar enthusiasts, here Rudolph applies all his influences and experiences ranging from ethnic music to the musical mechanisms behind the works of contemporary authors such as Messian, Carter, Ligeti, Bartok and above all Toru Takemitsu. In particular these influences and these studies lead to a particular language called "Cyclic Verticalism," which combines in a very efficient and interesting way polyrhythms taken from African music to rhythmic cycles taken by the Indian music. Guitarists can move within these structures, a kind of stable musical orbits with which communicate and express themselves through improvisational structures. The constant use of polyrhythms and curious musical intervals make this music almost liquid, irridiscent and surprisingly meditative. Each guitarist is free to enrich and to bring his influences so the result is a fresh melange particularly passionate and always on the move, I heard several times this record and I was unable to grasp a center around which the music revolves, it seems to witness a curious and complicated Victorian mechanism, a series of elegant orbits that move between themselves in synchronism so perfect as difficult to decipher, and allow the music to flow and breathe showing every time new aspects. By coincidence I listened to the same period the last Steve Reich's record called "Radio Rewrite" and I was struck by certain similarities. Although the Reich's music is based on very well defined structures and decided right from the start, without the use of improvisation, even in his music you can always find new elements that emerge every time different. The same can be said for the music of Organic Guitar Orchestra, it changes every time or rather changes each time the way you listen to it, I think this is a consequence of the structures and musical forms used by Adam Rudolph that allow guitars to express themselves in unconventional and innovative ways without forcing them into rigid structures. A great record, I hope to see the complete Guitar Orchestra playing alive!
My last book: Visionary Guitars Chatting with Guitarist. Twelve interviews with Noël Akchoté,Magnus Andersson, Lucia D’Errico, Davide Ficco, Hans Jürgen Gerung, Scott Johnson, Seth Josel, Heike Matthiesen, Amanda Monaco, Pablo Montagne, Joe Morris and Marco Oppedisano . Foreword by Miguel Copon. .. you can buy it now (paper format and Ebook) on Lulu.com. You will find it also on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, Nook, iBooks an many others. I hope you will like it. Lulu You can find it on Amazon too: Amazon.it Amazon.de
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