CLASSICAL GUITAR
WINTER 2015
SPECIAL FOCUS: REPERTOIRE
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XUEFEI YANG
REDISCOVERS
HER ROOTS
51A St. Mary’s Road Bearwood
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Tel +44 121 429 7446
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It is always a pleasure
shopping at
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Great range of goods and
friendly, knowledgeable
service.
Xuefei Yang
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We always have in stock full ranges by Jose Ramirez, Manuel Raimundo, Almansa, Asturias,
Conde and Teodoro Perez. Also available are new and second hand instruments by:
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Lopez, Panormo, Taylor, Burguet, Victor Anglada, JC, Makino, Hofner, Santos Martinez,
Manuel Rodriguez, Moreno, Strunal, Admira, Aria ....
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4 Fall 2015
Exploring the Americas
Pablo Villegas talks about his
Americano CD, and more by Blair Jackson
The Importance of Repertoire
It’s not just how you play, but what you play
by Blair Jackson, Derek Hasted, Chris Dumigan, and Steve Marsh
Solo, Duo, Trio
The multifaceted career of Meng Su
by Mark Small
One Guitarist, Many Styles
Romero Lubambo thrives playing jazz, Brazilian, and classical
by Lawrence del Casale
The Guitar as Tool and Artifact
Inside the Harris Guitar Collection at the SFCM
by Lawrence del Casale
28
34
38
53
42
FEATURES
SPECIAL FOCUS
REPERTOIRE
CLASSICAL GUITAR
CONTENTS WINTER 2015
On the Cover Pablo Villegas Photographer Lisa-Marie Mazzucco Classical Guitar Winter 2015 Issue 380 “‘Un Sueño en la Floresta’ is one of the most soulful pieces everwritten for the guitar.” —Pablo Villagas, p.28
cor_agm_101415.indd 1 10/14/15 11:03 AM
cor_agm_101415.indd 1 10/14/15 11:03 AM
6 Fall 2015
80 Stage
David Russell and Declan Zapala are worlds apart in London
82 Discs
Berta Rojas’ Historia del Tango,
Duo SF, Stein-Erik Olsen, David Tannenbaum plays Sofia Gubaidulina, and more
88 Print
Part 3 of Hoppstock on Bach, The Techniques of
Guitar Playing, pieces by Simon Molitor, Oleg Kiselev,
Stephen Goss, and more
REVIEWS
MISCELLANY
8 Letter From the Editor
52 Holiday Gift Guide
94Competition and Festival
Listings
97Ad Index
98 The Last Word
10 CG News
Segovia scholar Alberto López Poveda (1915–2015); Banff Centre’s classical-guitar residency; and more
16 View from the Front Row
Xuefei Yang rediscovers her roots
by Blair Jackson
20 High Society
The Southampton CGS carries on
by Guy Traviss
NEWS
60 Method
Evolution of the barre chord
by Rhayn Jooste
72 Fret Work
Canadian luthier Joshia de Jonge
by Stephanie Powell
78 Classic Guitars
1929 Francisco Simplicio
by Adam Perlmutter Tools of the Trade 74 Takamine’s full-voiced H8SS
77 Oretga’s RCE159MN is a dynamic electro-acoustic
by Adam Perlmutter
66 Keepers of the Flamenco
Cornerstones of the repertoire
by Jason Webster
68 Momentito
On recording and performance
by Graham Wade
PLAY
CRAFT
22 Reverberations
The Tarrega–Leckie manuscripts
by Graham Wade
24 Letter From . . .
4th Changsha, China, guitar fest
by Guy Traviss
CONTENTS WINTER 2015
CG reviews the Takamine H8SS p.74BONUS
STAGE & STUDIO
• How to be successful on the house-concert circuit • Microphones designed with
the acoustic player in mind
• Improve your sound using
a handheld recorder
6 Winter 2015
20 – 26 August 2016
CLASSICAL GUITAR FESTIVAL
AND SUMMER SCHOOL
The
25th Anniversary
of the West Dean International
Supported by
Bursaries available for students aged
16 to 24.
Booking opens mid-December
T: 01243 818300
E: bookingsoffi [email protected]
Superb learning and performance opportunities for players
of all levels.
www.westdean.org.uk
West Dean College, West Dean, Chichester, PO18 0QZ, England
David Leisner
Amanda Cook Duo Agostino
Andrew Gough
Morgan Szymanski
Ben Verdery
Kai Nieminen
Berta Rojas
Rebecca Baulch
Sean Shibe
Sean Shibe
Manus Noble
Aquarelle Guitar Quartet
Ray Burley
Irina Kulikova
20 – 26 August 2016
CLASSICAL GUITAR FESTIVAL
AND SUMMER SCHOOL
The
25th Anniversary
of the West Dean International
Supported by
Bursaries available for students aged
16 to 24.
Booking opens mid-December
T: 01243 818300
E: bookingsoffi [email protected]
Superb learning and performance opportunities for players
of all levels.
www.westdean.org.uk
West Dean College, West Dean, Chichester, PO18 0QZ, England
David Leisner
Amanda Cook Duo Agostino
Andrew Gough
Morgan Szymanski
Ben Verdery
Kai Nieminen
Berta Rojas
Rebecca Baulch
Sean Shibe
Sean Shibe
Manus Noble
Aquarelle Guitar Quartet
Ray Burley
Irina Kulikova
Andrew Gough
8 Winter 2015
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT Editorial Director Greg Cahill Editor Blair Jackson
Managing Editor Stephanie Powell Copy Editor Anna Pulley
Production Manager Hugh O’Connor
Contributing Editors Guy Traviss, Thérèse Wassily
Saba, Maurice Summerfield, Graham Wade, Chris Dumigan, Steve Marsh, Derek Hasted
Creative Director Joey Lusterman INTERACTIVE SERVICES
Interactive Services Director Lyzy Lusterman Creative Content Coordinator Tricia Baxter Community Relations Coordinator Courtnee Rhone Copywriter Kelsey Holt
Single Copy Sales Consultant Tom Ferruggia MARKETING SERVICES
Sales Director Cindi Kazarian Sales Managers Ref Sanchez,
Amy-Lynn Fischer, Greg Sutton
Marketing Services Manager Tanya Gonzalez
Stringletter.com
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ClassicalGuitarMagazine.com. As a subscriber, you enjoy the convenience of home delivery and you never miss an issue. You can take care of all your subscription needs at our online Subscriber Services page (ClassicalGuitarMagazine.com/Subscriber-Services): pay your
With this issue, Stringletter completes its first year of publishing the new quarterly version of Classical Guitar. For me, it’s been a challenging but ultimately rewarding experience taking the reins of such a well-established entity—trying to preserve the best of the format that had existed for more than 30 years before the operation transformed from a monthly published in England, to a quarterly based in the San Francisco Bay Area, while also moving in some new directions and establishing our own voice and visual approach. We’re still finding our footing, so to speak, and there will be more tinkering and experimentation to come, but we hope you are enjoying the “new” CG.
And if you’re not, tell us why. I really would like to hear from you: What’s work-ing and what’s not? Do you wish we had more practical articles about playing tech-nique? Do you like the balance of history- oriented articles and interviews with con-temporary players and composers? What current CDs and sheet-music releases are turning you on? The more we know about your tastes and desires vis-à-vis the maga-zine, the better we can serve you.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the magazine has been dealing with the
limitations of the quarterly format. There’s so much to write about! But we’re finding that there is a way to extend coverage be-yond the magazine.
If you have not already investigat-ed ClassicalGuitarMagazine.com or our Facebook page, I urge you to do so, to bookmark them, and check them often, as we are constantly adding news stories, pro-viding links to outstanding classical-guitar videos (we scour YouTube so you don’t have to!), offering a new pick-of-the-week CD or sheet-music review you won’t find in the magazine, as well as exclusive reports on guitar festivals, and much more. Our on-line presence truly is a vital component of the new Classical Guitar, and it’s only going to become more important as time goes on. Please let us know what you think about our web efforts, too.
Don’t be shy. You can write to me direct-ly at the email address below or at our more general mailbox: [email protected].
Also, I’d like to note that in this issue, there is a new supplement called Stage &
Studio, offering helpful articles about
per-forming and recording that fall outside the magazine’s usual purview. I hope you like
that, too. —Blair Jackson
bill, renew, give a gift, change your address, and get answers to any questions you may have about your subscription. A single issue costs $9.99; an individual subscription is $40 per year; institutional subscriptions are also available. International subscribers must order airmail delivery. Subscribers outside the United States pay a surcharge for airmail delivery. Add $5 per year for Canada/Pan Am, $10 elsewhere, payable in US funds on US bank, or by Visa, MasterCard, or American Express.
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Except where otherwise noted, all contents ©2015 Stringletter, David A. Lusterman, Publisher.
CLASSICAL GUITAR
NEC TRADE CAMPAIGN | 8.5X11 | CLASSICAL SINGER | AUGUST 2015
LOVES
GUITAR!
WANTS AN
AMAZING
COMMUNITY OF
MUSICIANS.
CURIOUS
AND MOVED TO
EXPLORE.
HAS SUPERB TECHNIQUE. N E W E N G L A N D C O N S E R VATO RY H A S A U N I Q U E LY C O L L A B O R AT I V E C U LT U R E W H E R E S T U D E N T S A R E E N C O U R A G E D TO E X P LO R E .NEC guitar faculty draw out each student’s musical narrative and imaginatively develop individual
technique. Students enjoy enormous freedom among an open and supportive group of fellow guitarists led
by Eliot Fisk and Jérôme Mouff e. We’re not about perfection. We create an experience.
Sound right for your student? Learn more at necmusic.edu
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
NEC TRADE CAMPAIGN | 8.5X11 | CLASSICAL SINGER | AUGUST 2015
LOVES
GUITAR!
WANTS AN
AMAZING
COMMUNITY OF
MUSICIANS.
CURIOUS
AND MOVED TO
EXPLORE.
HAS SUPERB TECHNIQUE. N E W E N G L A N D C O N S E R VATO RY H A S A U N I Q U E LY C O L L A B O R AT I V E C U LT U R E W H E R E S T U D E N T S A R E E N C O U R A G E D TO E X P LO R E .NEC guitar faculty draw out each student’s musical narrative and imaginatively develop individual
technique. Students enjoy enormous freedom among an open and supportive group of fellow guitarists led
by Eliot Fisk and Jérôme Mouff e. We’re not about perfection. We create an experience.
Sound right for your student? Learn more at necmusic.edu
10 Winter 2015
NEWS
SEGOVIA SCHOLAR PASSES
A tribute to Alberto López Poveda (1915–2015)
by Graham Wade
ing to the museum after him, and erected a bust by the sculptor Alfonso González Palau, both during Poveda’s lifetime, a sin-gular honor.
I was fortunate to know Don Alberto for some 40 years and visited the Museo many times. With respect to my own writings on Segovia, he was an indispensable ally, al-ways enthusiastic to supply information and eager to discuss every aspect. His ar-chives contained complete documentation concerning Segovia’s medical history, trav-el tickets over the years, concert programs, some of his guitars, spectacles, and bow ties, and a thousand other pieces of mem-orabilia of all kinds, including extensive correspondence. Don Alberto’s files were meticulously ordered and catalogued and beautifully presented in handsome cabinets. It was with great sadness that I received
the news this past summer of the death, at age 99, of Alberto López Poveda, founder of the renowned Segovia Museo de Linares, Spain, a treasure-house of information about Andrés Segovia and the place where the maestro is buried. Don Alberto, the of-ficial biographer of Segovia, worked for 40 years to write Andrés Segovia, Vida y Obra, the 1,500-page, two-volume compendium of Segoviana published in 2009.
Formerly the director of an aluminum factory (having started at the bottom as an apprentice at a foundry), Don Alberto be-came acknowledged throughout the world as the leading Segovia scholar, as well as an authority on 20th-century classical gui-tar and Andalusian culture. As a favored son of Linares, the city named a street
lead-From left: Noted luthier José Romanillos, Graham Wade, and Alberto López Poveda
Don Alberto was uncannily similar in appearance and build to Segovia himself, though he seemed to attribute any such phenomenon to coincidence rather than any distant kinship. Like Segovia, Don Al-berto was an example of an Andalusian gentleman from a wiser, gentler era, always generous and hospitable to visitors, a loyal friend at all times.
I last went to see him during Decem-ber 2012 when he had already attained a great age and recent anxieties had taxed his strength. Despite a certain frailness, he accompanied my wife and me to his favor-ite restaurant near the Museo and we were treated to a wonderful meal of excellent seafood with fine wine.
One of the great personalities of the Segovia era has passed on.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GRAHAM WADE
ClassicalGuitarMagazine.com 11
NEWS
Berta Rojas Earns Latin
Grammy Nomination
The latest album by Paraguayan classical guitarist Berta Rojas, Historia del Tango, recorded with the Argentine chamber group Camerata Bariloche, has been nominated for
a Latin Grammy in the “Best Tango Album” category. The ceremony was set to take
place on November 19 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas,
Nevada. You can find CG’s review of that album on page 82.
Rojas has been nominated twice before for Latin Grammys—
in 2012 for “Best Instrumental Album” for Dia y Medio
(A Day and a Half), her
collaboration with Cuban saxophone great Paquito D’Rivera; and in 2014 for “Best Classical Album” for Salsa Roja.
SPONSORED
SPONSORED
RUSSIAN-ISRAELI GUITARIST, YURI LIBERZON
Yuri Liberzon’s love for
guitar began at the age of 6
in Novosibirsk, Siberia, and
flourished after relocation to Israel
at the age of 10, where he took
private lessons with Yaron Hasson.
Yuri’s success in the United States
then began with full scholarships
to study with Manuel Barrueco
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and Benjamin Verdery at Yale
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Audiences praise him for his
consistent display of mental
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were anyone in the classical
guitar world that could manage
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architectural logic, it would be
Yuri Liberzon. His debut album,
Ascension, is available now.
Watch Yuri play ‘Old Lime Tree’
by Sergey Rudnev now:
ClassicalGuitarMagazine.com/
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MARTÍN CRESTPO PHOTO
12 Winter 2015
generated a lot of interest and that the Banff Centre is extremely pleased with the programming and master classes. The 2015 residency featured two rising classical gui-tarists: Croatian Robert Belinic and Curtis Institute of Music student Jiyeon Kim.
Although the reaction has been positive, that doesn’t necessarily mean the residen-cy will be extended beyond 2016—that, he says, would require another donation spe-cifically for classical guitar. The series ran for five weeks and featured collaborations with the Rolston String Quartet, Banff’s quartet-in-residence, which formed at Banff Centre in 2013, and choreography by in- demand dance-choreographer Mark Morris. “We’ve been changing and evolving for 30 years,” Gamache says about the orga-nization which manages to stay current in the ever-changing music industry. The res-idency will be back next year either in the summer or fall, he says; Banff is still in the preliminary planning stages. More informa-tion should be available within the next few
months. —Stephanie Powell
Robert Belinic (guitar) and Jonathan Lo (cello) at the 2015 Banff Guitar Residency
NEWS
Banff Centre Closes Second
Year of Guitar Residency
The Banff Centre, the esteemed Alberta, Canada-based arts-culture-education hub, has wrapped the second year of its guitar- residency program.
The center, which welcomed back the guitar residency in 2014 after a several decades-long hiatus and a change in program philosophy, was gifted a donation to resur-rect the program for a three-year period.
“We had a lot of specific residencies for different instruments and it was becoming a lot of work to recruit [musicians],” Simon
Gamache, manager of classical music at
the Banff Centre, says over the phone from Newfoundland, explaining the program-ming change a few decades prior. “What we did was rethink our programs—the idea was to make space to have musicians come when they needed to, not necessari-ly to prescribe time; [to encourage] self-di-rected residences, creative residences.”
He adds that the first two years
Jason Vieaux Premieres ‘House
of Cards’ Composer Jeff Beal’s
‘Six Sixteen’
Jeff Beal, an award-winning composer who
has scored music for House of Cards, Blackfish, and Monk, premiered his latest work, Six
Sixteen—for guitar and a string quartet—at
the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington, Kentucky, where he was named composer-in-residence.
The fest also welcomed classical guitarist
Jason Vieaux, who graced the cover of CG’s
Summer 2015 issue, as the inaugural David P. Reynolds Visiting Artist, and to take part in performing the world premiere of Beal’s composition. Beal says he kept Vieaux in mind while composing Six Sixteen—a piece he says that he named for the number of strings being played: six on the guitar and 16 by the quartet. “The first thing you think is, ‘I don’t have to limit myself,’” Beal told Kentucky.com. “When you have world-class musicians, you want to play with that.
“Music is storytelling,” he added, “and having worked in film has really honed my
skills at storytelling.” —SP
Jeff Beal
NEWS
DENVER, CO
JUNE 20-25, 2016
Metropolitan State University
Local Host Alex Komodore
Guitar Foundation
of
America
CONVENTION & COMPETITION
Concerts
International Concert Artist Competition
International Youth Competition
Lectures
Vendor Expo
Private Lessons
Masterclasses
Technique Workshops
Jason VieauxNEWS
NEWS
DENVER, CO
JUNE 20-25, 2016
Metropolitan State University
Local Host Alex Komodore
Guitar Foundation
of
America
CONVENTION & COMPETITION
Concerts
International Concert Artist Competition
International Youth Competition
Lectures
Vendor Expo
Private Lessons
Masterclasses
Technique Workshops
14 Winter 2015
caption
Behind the Scenes
at La Guitarra 2015
Who knew that San Luis Obispo, a love-ly and tranquil city of 45,000 located on the Central Coast of California, was such a hotbed of classical-guitar activity? At least it is every two years when concert producer Russ D’Angelo puts together La
Guitarra California Festival. This year’s
gathering was a spectacular success from every standpoint, with big crowds turning out to hear concerts by some of the fin-est guitarists on the planet, attend master classes, enjoy a colorful exhibit of guitar art, and check out the wares of top luth-iers in a special exhibit hall.
The list of performers was impres-sive. The opening night concert that drew close to 1,000 people to the Cohan Performing Arts Center was a tribute to the legacy of the late Celedonio Romero, featuring performances by his sons and grandsons in the Romero Guitar
Quar-tet (and individually and in duos), as well
as a slick video presentation about the Romeros. Other top players at La Guitar-ra included Ana Vidovic, Roland Dyens,
Duo Melis, Tony Harmon and Nathan Towne, Vladimir Gorbach, Massimo Del-la Cese, Agnew-McAllister Duo, Jácome Flamenco Trio, and, performing free
out-doors, the Incendio Guitar Trio. The Los
Angeles Guitar Quartet’s Scott Tennant
was among those giving master classes.
Zoë Holbrook gets the Ana Vidovic master-class treatment
Luthier Michael Elwell and
festival organizer Russ D’Angelo A guitar by luthier James White
NEWS
NEWS
JOEY LUSTERMAN PHOTOS
ClassicalGuitarMagazine.com 15
Luthier Eric Reid poses with one of his guitars
Upper-bout soundport Luthier Chace Miller
shows off the ‘butt’ of her guitar
NEWS
NEWS
16 Winter 2015
VIEW FROM THE FRONT ROW
XUEFEI YANG
REDISCOVERS HER ROOTS
Xuefei Yang saved the best for last. Al-though the previous two hours of her con-cert at Oklahoma City University’s beau-tiful and acoustically sumptuous Petree Recital Hall had been faultless—an eclectic mélange of early masters (Dowland and Bach), classic choices (Rodrigo and Al-béniz), and adventurous modern pieces
The gifted guitarist’s Chinese
identity is showing more and more
by Blair Jackson
scribed herself for solo guitar and had originally planned to play a little earlier in the second half of her concert. After an evening of so much serious and technical-ly challenging music, the lilting sonority of “Fisherman” seemed to fl oat and dance through the hushed hall, as it conjured images of the rural China of our collective (Brouwer, Goss, and Chen Yi)—it was her
encore selection that seemed to resonate most strongly with the large crowd on that second night of the Guitar Foundation of America’s convocation in late June.
It was a short piece called “The Fish-erman’s Song at Eventide,” a dreamy tra-ditional Chinese folk song she had
tran-NEIL MUIR PHOTO
VIEW FROM THE FRONT ROW
imagination. In a sense, the piece felt like a natural choice for the best-known guitar-ist to emerge from China so far, yet it was actually quite a bold selection—after all, Yang’s musical education in her homeland was steeped in the same Western compos-ers guitar students in Europe or the Ameri-cas would have studied, and for the past 15 years she’s been based in London.
“Everybody in China knows ‘The Fish-erman’s Song,’” Yang had told me the pre-vious afternoon, as we talked in an empty lounge off the lobby of the Oklahoma City hotel where she and other artists playing at the four-day GFA confab (including Pavel Steidl, Pablo Villegas, and others) were staying. “It’s normally played on a guzheng, which is this plucked [table] instrument with 13 strings and sounds a bit like a harp or a zither. The arpeggios [in the song] sound like water to me; so beautiful. It took me two months to figure out [how to ar-range it for the guitar], but I’m proud of it.” When Yang started playing at the age of seven, three decades ago, “classical guitar was not like violin and piano, which have a much longer tradition in China. Guitar is a new thing. Before I was born, during the Cultural Revolution [a period in Com-munist China during which the influence of Western culture was largely banned], guitar was regarded as a ‘hooligan instru-ment,’” she says with a smile. She was the first guitarist in the country to enter a con-servatory there: “It sounds nice, but there were a lot of barriers to conquer and we didn’t really have any Chinese repertoire to play; maybe a simple melody for begin-ners. But I really wanted to play something substantial [from China], and this concept actually became stronger for me after I went to England.
“In China, even now, the trendy things are Western things; Chinese folk music is not trendy. When I was younger in China, I was trying to play the big pieces, the typical things [by Western composers], but when I went to England and started a professional career, I asked myself, ‘What is my identity?’ I’m a Chinese artist. There are French artists and Russian artists and Spanish artists, and they have their own heritage to play—this big heritage of mu-sic, some of which I have learned. But I feel
of the guitar, which I want to do. Even if other guitarists have done [transcriptions] of some piece, I like to see what I can do with it. Like with the Bach violin concertos [recorded for her 2012 CD Bach Concertos, a collaboration with the Elias String Quar-tet], I spent a lot of time really studying the score and comparing different versions. When I do a transcription, I know every note and why I put this note here—why this octave and not a lower octave?—and why I kept this part this long. And you do your fingering accordingly. If you play oth-er people’s transcriptions, they have their own idea, but if I want a brighter sound I will use more open strings, and if I want a darker sound I won’t have so many open strings. Especially playing Baroque music, there can be so many options for the fin-gering, but that’s part of the fun.”
In keeping with her desire to control as many aspects of her creative life as pos-sible, Yang produced Heartstrings herself. “For a solo album I can do it,” she says, “But
you need a good producer on a concerto recording—someone with a very good ear. In a way they’re like a conductor behind the scenes, keeping track of everything. When you go to a concert, it sounds fine, you don’t notice small things. But through the microphones you hear this instrument and that instrument don’t quite match, and maybe the sound of the bassoon is not quite in tune, all sorts of things. When it’s just me, I know what I’m looking for and want to hear, and by now, too, I’ve done a lot of recording.
my culture is rich, too, and I want to do something that expresses my identity.”
“The Fisherman’s Song at Eventide” is just one of 19 short pieces on Yang’s ap-pealing new CD, Heartstrings, and the only overt nod to her nationality; most of the rest are culled from many of the big names associated with the traditional and modern guitar repertoire (Falla, Barrios, Albéniz, Pujol, Llobet, Brouwer, Dyens, York), and a wide range of other classical composers (Debussy, Elgar, Schubert, Paganini, Mus-sorgsky). It covers an impressively broad range of styles and the emphasis is on more melodic, accessible pieces. The play-ing, needless to say, is impeccable—del-icate on the ballads, technically flawless, and even dazzling in places. The record-ing, by engineer Arne Akselberg at Potton Hall in Suffolk, England, in August 2014, is bright and full of life.
“I wanted to do an album that might get to a wider audience, with lighter and short-er pieces,” she explains. “I want it to appeal to somebody who is not just a classical- guitar player. If I record the Benjamin Britten piece I’m going to play tomorrow [“Nocturnal After John Dowland”], that’s going to appeal mainly to classical guitar-ists or classical-music lovers. But I want this CD to be more appealing to people even if they don’t listen to classical guitar or classical music.
“I want to do everything,” she continues. “I can play really serious, obviously, but I also like to do light things. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with playing light-er pieces. And thlight-ere’s nothing wrong with being ‘commercial’ if the quality is good.”
Besides arranging “The Fisherman,” Yang also worked up her own solo-guitar transcriptions for several other songs on
Heartstrings, including Manuel de Falla’s
“Spanish Dance” from La Vida Breve, which she had previously played as a duet with a cellist; Albéniz’s “Torre Bermeja,” which follows the composer’s piano score more closely than many guitar arrangements; and Edward Elgar’s lively “Salut d’Amour,” written originally for violin and pia-no—“I’ve never heard anyone play it as a solo piece,” she says.
“I like to do transcriptions,” she contin-ues. “It’s one way to expand the repertoire
ClassicalGuitarMagazine.com 17
Heartstrings
Decca
18 Winter 2015
“When you record with an orchestra, of course, it’s different. For me, the hard part of concerto recording is I always want to really spend a lot of time with it—with solo recording I want to start at 10 AM and go to 10 PM, no problem. But with an orchestra they have musician union rules. It seems like every 15 minutes they have a break, and no more than six sessions a day, or something like that, so it’s a little harder to stay focused. The orchestra is like a big elephant,” she laughs.
“I treat live performance and recording as two different things,” she adds. “When I play for the microphone in a studio it’s totally different from playing onstage. Sometimes in the studio [on this project] I’d listen back and hear maybe too much and think, ‘I need to hold back a little bit.’
“When I play a big venue, I’m often am-plified and I think some of the nuances get lost. But in the recording studio, especially
VIEW FROM THE FRONT ROW
WHAT SHE
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Xuefei Yang plays guitars made by the Australian luthier Greg Smallman. Her first Smallman instrument was given to her by John Williams in 1995 (after many years playing one crafted by Japanese master builder Masaru Kohno), but now she plays a more recent model.
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with these super-sensitive mics, you don’t need to worry so much about projecting, or about chair noises, or the audience coughing. So for me the recording is about details, and that’s what I focus on.
“Classical-guitar players spend so much time in their rooms practicing and play-ing by themselves—and of course that’s important—but some of them don’t really know how to play out to an audience; they kind of play for themselves like they’re still in a small room. Intimate is good, but you have to play out for an audience. The studio is different and you need to find a balance.”
Having mastered almost every style of classical guitar you’d care to mention, created her own transcriptions, and also commissioned works by notable modern writers, the question naturally arises: Does she have any plans to compose, too?
“Composing is something I really want
Guy Traviss’ “Letter from China” on page 24), enticing fellow guitarists Jason Vieaux, Roland Dyens, and Johannes Moller, to join her as judges and players there. “For the competition, we used all new pieces by contemporary composers, because the new repertoire is very important. There are no recordings or videos of these pieces yet online, so they had to figure out how to play them.
“In China, so many guitarists are very good at copying pieces—they find record-ings of pieces by Sor or Giuliani or other things from the traditional repertoire and they copy them very well, but that’s not a good way to learn music. So we found these new pieces they can’t copy,” she adds with a laugh.
“I got involved to raise international awareness of classical guitar in China. That’s something that interests me and I
want to do.” CG
to try in the future,” she says without hes-itation, “but at the same time, I know I’m not going to be Beethoven, or even Brou-wer, whose work I admire so much. Right now, I feel I’m the most appropriate person to transcribe Chinese traditional music, because I know guitar so well and I know my culture so well.
“The other thing I can do is encourage Chinese composers to write for me. Before, I had Western composers write for me— Stephen Goss [who was at her GFA concert, where she played his “Illustration to Book of Songs,” written for Yang in 2014] and Carlos Domeniconi [I Ching]. Chen Yi was the first Chinese composer to write for me [“Shuo Chang,” also played at GFA]. I want to play more Chinese repertoire, but the truth is we need more of everything.”
This past summer, too, Yang agreed to be the artistic director of a guitar festival and competition in Changsha, China (see
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20 Winter 2015
HIGH SOCIETY
The venerable Southampton Classical Guitar Society
has weathered uncertainty, but thrives
by Guy Traviss
BACK ON ITS FEET
The Southampton Pier, 1890
ClassicalGuitarMagazine.com 21
HIGH SOCIETY
Stuart Christie
celebrations in 2002, for example, the soci-ety was delighted and honored that John Mills accepted the position of Honorary Life President. This is most fitting, as Mills has done much to encourage the society during its long history, performing many superb concerts. He is a figure nearly on par with Bream and Williams in the UK, and so provides the society with a true cultural asset.
SCGS is rightfully proud of its long history of concerts, with past visits from performers including David Russell, Ben Verdery, Xuefei Yang, Fabio Zanon, and Berta Rojas. Its first recital was given by then-student lutenist Nigel North, who proved so popular he was invited to re-turn only a few months later. In the years since, hundreds of memorable concerts have taken place. Many venues have been used over the years, including a sell-out series held in the most unlikely of places: IBM’s Research and Development Labo-ratory. “The strangest thing about using the lab was that we were not allowed to tell anyone precisely where the concerts were,” Christie says. “The posters had to be rather inventive, but the concerts were hugely successful.”
SCGS still organizes a number of major concerts in its Celebrity Series each year. In keeping with the society’s financial in-dependence, these concerts have to pay their own way. The series is complement-ed with smaller recitals in its Young Art-ist and Members series held in a variety of locations around the region, aimed at both assisting young talent embarking on professional careers and spreading the gui-tar’s voice further afield in the area. Plus, there are regular monthly meetings at St. Boniface Church in Chandler’s Ford in Hampshire, close ties with a number of gui-tar teachers in the region, and occasional one-day workshops.
“There are so many wonderful players graduating from the top music colleges,” Christie notes. “I don’t understand why more societies don’t encourage them. They are capable of putting on great concerts and, if carefully organized, can be highly successful for both the performer and the society.”
For more information on the society’s future activities, visit scgs-guitar.org.uk.
Southampton—not the ritzy beach town in Long Island, New York, but the original seaport city in Hampshire, England—is home to one of the UK’s most active guitar circles, the Southampton Classical Guitar Society (SCGS). Officially formed in 1972, SCGS has more than 100 members, a few of whom were present at the organization’s inaugural meetings more than four decades ago. It has had a long and complex history, but it has managed to endure.
The first time I researched the society, for an article back in 2011, then-chairman Wayne Lines noted, “Forty years on and I still worry about our name: Only the word ‘guitar’ doesn’t cause an issue. We don’t meet in Southampton itself, nor are our concerts held there. Likewise the words ‘classical’ and ‘society’ can create the wrong image in some people’s minds, but what are the alternatives?”
It is a point that current SCGS chairman (and notable regional luthier) Stuart Chris-tie shares, but he admits his concerns are more aligned with the society’s finances, rather than branding, for the time being. SCGS in financially autonomous, which is unusual for such organizations in the UK. “We remain financially independent,” he says, “but have had to make some recent changes to compensate for falling atten-dance and consequent losses at concerts over the last few years.
“For about four years now, we have made losses on every concert, of vary-ing magnitude. This followed a trend in reduced concert attendance for guitar at many venues and other societies. Midway through last year, our treasurer predicted our potential financial demise later this year unless we made changes. We had a little leeway, as prior to this, concerts had made a little capital, which we were work-ing through.”
Christie’s first order of business as chairman was to streamline the society’s activities in order to correct this predict-ed trajectory. By changing venues to save on rent, and rethinking the group’s meet-ing times, he has managed to turn thmeet-ings around. Now it seems the society is back on its feet, and looking forward to a bright-er future. This is, of course, vbright-ery good news, since the society is strongly con-nected to the classical guitar’s modern his-tory in Britain. During its 13th anniversary
22 Winter 2015
REVERBERATIONS
INSIDE THE TÁRREGA–
LECKIE MANUSCRIPTS
The Tárrega–Leckie manuscripts have anhonored place in guitar history. Francisco Tárrega’s friend, Walter James Leckie, was a remarkable Englishman—a physician by profession, a traveler, a polyglot who spoke seven languages, and an amateur guitarist. Leckie’s close association with Tárrega stimulated the great 19th-century Spanish composer to write out many of his pieces and transcriptions for Leckie to perform. Originally there were four books set out in
A definitive facsimile edition makes the music come alive
by Graham Wade
these are transcriptions of pieces by var-ious composers—Tárrega, of course, was one of the great pioneers of arrangement for the guitar.
Take, for example, Albéniz’s Serenata “Granada”—the Tárrega approach can be
appreciated in meticulous detail. A few extra corrections and clarifications are in-cluded in red ink. Tárrega carefully marks positions for “Granada” with a T for traste (fret), so that in the first four measures alone, there are 16 such indications (e.g. T.7, T.6, etc.), not only for the first-finger position of the left hand, but also for oth-er notes held in chords. Individual fingoth-er- finger-ings are lavishly distributed—over 30 such markings written for just the first two mea-sures. Playing directly from these pages involves absorbing a mass of information, visually akin to reading a page of lute tab-lature. But that (like it or not) is the Tárre-ga method, enormous detail is applied to each musical thought.
On page nine, Whitehouse comments in his introductory essay, “It has been con-cluded that Vyvyano di Zanoni [a name printed on the cover of the red book] was a stage name adopted by Dr. Leckie. Con-siderable research has been undertaken by myself and Dr. James Westbrook, who first postulated this theory, and all have failed to produce any biographical information regarding a guitarist of this description.” I googled the name Vyvyano di Zanoni. The very first entry was from eBay announcing the sale of a letter for 120 euros from a guitarist of this name. In the left-hand cor-ner of the letter was a photo of Dr. Leckie. The discovery of the letter thus confirms Westbrook’s theory. Unfortunately the let-ter had been sold five days previously, a fragment of guitar history dispatched to an unknown buyer.
The book is trilingual, with text in En-glish, Spanish, and Japanese. The presenta-tion of the work is immaculate, printed on fine paper with the utmost clarity. White-house is to be congratulated on producing the definitive book on the Tárrega–Leckie manuscripts. I sincerely hope that uni-versities, conservatoires, and college mu-sic departments—as well as all Tárrega devotees—will be keen to acquire this
publication. CG
the composer’s own handwriting, but time and circumstance have whittled the quar-tet down to two books, a blue and a red.
In 2012, the Museum Collection of the Classical Guitar Centre (classicalguitar.co.uk) purchased the books and Brian Whitehouse has now produced a magnificent facsimile edition, The Tárrega–Leckie Guitar
Manu-scripts. If players wish to verify authentic
Tárrega fingerings in the 36 pieces included here, this is the opportunity. Twenty-five of
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24 Winter 2015
My arrival in China was not in the city of Changsha, but in Guangzhou, the coun-try’s third largest city, located just 120 kilometers from the Hong Kong border. I was there to visit Martinez Musical Instru-ments, one of China’s largest manufactur-ers of guitars, and the principal sponsors of this year’s Changsha International Clas-sical Guitar Festival. After a quick tour by founder Alex Wang, I was off on a high-speed train to Changsha in the company of other festival guests, including Swedish guitarist Johannes Moller and California lu-thier Kenny Hill.
Changsha is the capital of Hunan Prov-ince in south-central China, neatly posi-tioned on a branch of the Yangtze River. It was the site of Mao Tse-tung’s conversion to Communism, and for this the city has a special significance. Today, it has over sev-en million inhabitants, a lot evsev-en by Chi-nese standards.
If you are visiting China, and you are a musician, the first thing you must know is that the country is in the middle of a classical-guitar boom. This is measurable not only by the number of players, but in the quality of the playing. The Chinese ap-proach to performance is often criticized for emphasizing technique over musicality, but I believe this is now, or very soon will be, an outdated view.
Performers for the 2015 Changsha in-cluded Xuefei Yang (who was also there as artistic director), Johannes Moller, French composer/guitarist Roland Dyens, and American Jason Vieaux. Though Moller was at the end of his China tour and a re-turning performer to the country, Vieaux was on Chinese soil for the first time. My understanding was that Dyens’ experience
‘BOOM!’ GOES THE CLASSICAL GUITAR
ClassicalGuitarMagazine.com 24
A report from Changsha’s fourth CG festival
by Guy Traviss
was somewhere in between. Whatever relationship these individuals have with their Asian following, it was clear that in Changsha they were all on an equal footing: They all shared the identity of high-profile guitarist-outsiders. It was fascinating to see, as so often guitarists carry with them their own personal “brand,” one refined in Europe and America for a number of years. So what about the practical consider-ations of visiting Changsha, perhaps for a future festival? Bear in mind the tempera-ture averages 25–33 degrees Celsius (that’s 77–91 Fahrenheit) in August, with killer hu-midity (and spice in the food!). Obviously, English is not as widely adopted in Asia as it is in Europe and elsewhere in the world, though this shouldn’t be seen as a hin-drance. The festival organization did a fan-tastic job of ensuring foreign guests were well looked after. My advice would be: Em-brace the difference. The clearly defined cultural barrier allows foreign musicians to get a fresh view of the music they play. Many of the Chinese participants I spoke with (via translator) were completely di-vorced from the cultural context in which much of the music they play was actually written. Though this can create all sorts of problems, it also promotes an entirely unique approach to the repertoire we are so used to hearing.
As for the performances, Moller was due to play what would be the final concert of his China tour. In the previous month, he had performed in 13 different cities. During that time, a film crew had documented his every move, and some of that footage was shown onscreen moments before he gave his farewell concert. This set an expect-ant tone for his time on the platform, and
in return Moller delivered a memorable program. The standout piece was a set of variations called Five Chinese Impressions, which were enthusiastically received from the first note.
Where competition is concerned, Changsha supports a number of differ-ent guitar evdiffer-ents. Whether you are an advanced player (young professional) looking to enhance a CV, or a newbie look-ing to gain some competition experience, there is a category to suit you. Since re-turning from China and visiting other festi-vals, I am most frequently asked what the competition in Asia is like. I can usually guess straight away that they are fishing for stories of child prodigies and the like. No doubt Chinese guitar students are ad-vanced, but I will have to disappoint when it comes to stories of young Segovias. And the senior category managed to attract a fair number of foreign participants this year, which is impressive when you con-sider how far away China is from most of the world’s classical-guitar centers.
So, back to the concert platform, where Jason Vieaux was about to give his China debut. It had been a while since I had last heard him play. Expectations become high when you haven’t heard a concert player in a long while; somehow you expect the time in between to result in some proportional amount of improve-ment. Unfair, yes, but entirely natural. I was particularly impressed then to find Vieaux’s playing not only as good as I had remembered, but that the interven-ing years had added somethinterven-ing as well. I quickly recalled his attachment to the music of Pat Metheny, and other compo-sitions that he was fond of playing. But it
LETTER FROM CHINA
ClassicalGuitarMagazine.com 25
LETTER FROM CHINA
GUY TRAVISS PHOTOS
Clockwise: Roland Dyens performs; a group of guitarists warm up before the competition; and Johannes Moller poses with a fan.
26 Winter 2015
was his performances of music by Albéniz and other standards of the repertoire on this occasion that really stood out—a sign of a truly great concert.
If outward enthusiasm for classical gui-tar is to be found anywhere in China, it is in the post-concert madness that ensues when guest performers leave the safety of the green room and head out to meet their public. I have a great deal of experience when it comes to guitar festivals, and con-certs in general, so believe me when I say that in very few places in the world can you find so much excitement over a classical- guitar player. Even factoring in the relative novelty of a visitor from as far away as the US or Europe, this still doesn’t account for the strong pull the classical guitar has in China. A very good example of this was the response exhibited for fellow countrywom-an Xuefei Ycountrywom-ang. Predictably, her concert was a sensation for the Chinese listeners,
improvisation. Then came arrangements of tangos, then Django, all the things we have become so accustomed to him doing. But not to the Chinese. I can well imagine this concert as an example of what it might have been like to watch Dyens when he was a much younger man.
In conclusion, the lineup in Changsha was fantastic. This should come as no sur-prise, since Xuefei Yang was responsible for programming the event. As a Chinese na-tive living in London, she knows better than anyone what would work. I have no doubt that she will be able to deliver a similarly exciting set of events next year. If you are not already familiar with the scene (if it is even possible to be familiar with a scene on this scale), the Chinese community of guitar teachers and players is highly interesting. The economic boom of China may now be beginning to slow, but Chinese guitar shows
no signs of faltering. CG
LETTER FROM CHINA
but it was the arrival of her new book of music that week that really caused a stir. In the days following her performance and master class, a press conference was held for its release. I think it was the first time I had seen people literally scrambling for a classical score.
So far, I have highlighted many of the differences that exist between East and West at these events. However, it is im-portant to also say that we are inexorably moving toward what we commonly call the Global Village. Largely the consequence of the Internet and consumer capitalism, the homogenization of world cultures is seen by many as an unacceptable consequence of this movement. But to watch a figure like Roland Dyens, the quintessential Parisian jazz improviser, step onto the platform in Changsha, seemed to deny the Global Village’s influence here. Dyens began his concert, as he begins all concerts, with an
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LETTER FROM CHINA
28 Winter 2015
From all outward appearances, Pablo Sáinz Villegas has led a charmed life. A native of the La Rioja region of northern Spain, he started playing the guitar at age six, and by his teens was routinely winning guitar prizes, including the prestigious Andrés Segovia Award and, much later, the Gold Medal at the first Christopher Parkening In-ternational Guitar Competition; more than 30 in all.
These honors have led to numerous re-cordings and a globe-trotting career (near-ly 40 countries on five continents) as a solo performer and/or a featured player work-ing with orchestras and chamber groups (more than 70 different ones so far), as well as appearances in smaller configurations. This year alone, he has played in Spain several times, Germany, Peru, Brazil, and in 12 US states (plus Puerto Rico), most with local orchestras, many featuring Joa-quín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. (Next year he’s featuring Rodrigo’s Fantasia Para
un Gentilhombre at a number of his
sym-phonic dates.)
Villegas has always used his guitar art-istry as a springboard to do charity work, dating back to when he was eight years old in La Rioja and his mother urged him to play for the elderly in nursing homes. Within the past decade, he formed a group called The Music Without Borders Lega-cy, which promotes classical guitar, and music in general, among disadvantaged kids in San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico. He has helped reach some 15,000 children, and more recently he’s shifted his
attentions to La Rioja, working with the help of a bank to start music programs during what has been an economically challenging time for the region.
Though he still spends much time in Spain, Villegas has lived in New York City for 15 years, and it was at nearby West-chester Studios that he recorded his ex-cellent and superb-sounding new album of solo-guitar pieces, Americano (on the Harmonia Mundi label) with noted produc-er/engineer Adam Abeshouse. The disc is a sort of musical tour of the Americas, with Villegas performing pieces from Bra-zil (Heitor Villa-Lobos, Luiz Bonfá, João Pernambuco), Venezuela (Antonio Lauro, Pedro Elias-Gutiérrez), Paraguay (Agustín Barrios), Mexico (Agustín Lara), and the United States (John Williams, Leonard Bernstein). Oh, and there’s one geograph-ical exception—a tango from French com-poser Roland Dyens. But it’s a lively and wide-ranging program that moves easily among styles—from folk dances (jaropo, samba, tango, waltz, maxixe) to a medley from the Broadway show West Side Story to American bluegrass (which also features rhythm guitarist James Chirillo). It’s an in-vigorating ride, magnificently played.
CG caught up with Villegas in
Oklaho-ma City at the 2015 Guitar Foundation of America convention in June. I found him to be passionate, articulate, warm, witty, and, like his music, thoroughly engaging. We started by discussing his fondness for the Concierto de Aranjuez and for playing concertos in general.
THE SPANISH GUITARIST TALKS ABOUT HIS NEW CD, AMERICANO,
AND THE CHALLENGES OF PLAYING CONCERTOS
BY BLAIR JACKSON
EXPLORES
PABLO VILLEGAS
ClassicalGuitarMagazine.com 29
30 Winter 2015
CLASSICAL GUITAR: I would think it would
be a challenge to play an iconic piece such as the Aranjuez with different orchestras, where every conductor is going to have a slightly different interpretation and the in-strumentation might be different.
PABLO VILLEGAS: When you’re playing
with orchestras, of course, there is the or-chestra and the conductor and then there is you, so in the end it’s trying to get an agreement between these elements, and the most important ones are going to be the conductor and yourself. The conductor is usually very open to what the soloist has to say, because they trust that you know the piece even better than they do some-times—because we have spent years of our lives learning the piece, going back to the piece, trying to find the magic of that piece between the notes; so they’re open to let-ting you find what you want to say through this piece. But I also am always open to their ideas, because that enriches the in-terpretation. Sometimes they might have a perspective that is different from mine and that’s always going to benefit the piece in the end. That process of discovering the piece together is very important.
For me, before going to the first re-hearsal with the orchestra, it’s import-ant to talk to the conductor, get to know him, and then go over the piece—not only defining the tempi, but also the general emotional statements you want to transmit through it, and the general musical shape of it—the parts where you want to create momentum, the parts that are most emo-tional for you in each movement. In what places do we need to be careful to play to-gether; perhaps make eye contact? There are all these different subtleties that, de-pending on the conductor, can be different.
And as you said, each orchestra is go-ing to brgo-ing a different emotion and atmo-sphere to a piece. In the end it’s, how do you bring the three personalities together and then invite the audience—the fourth personality—into it? If the three personal-ities on the stage are in synch, it’s going to be much easier for the audience. They feel welcomed to that journey. As a soloist play-ing with an orchestra, it’s nice to be open to what the whole group wants to say. You accept it as a unique version in the mo-ment in that place.
CG: What other concertos do you like to
play?
VILLEGAS: I’ve played so many guitar
con-certi and I can honestly say I like many things about all of them. Of course, besides the Rodrigo Aranjuez and Fantasia [Para un
Gentilhombre], I’ve played the most
tradi-tional ones—the Villa-Lobos [Concerto for
Guitar and Orchestra]; the Ponce [Concierto de la Sur] which I recorded with Alondro
de la Parra; the Castelnuovo-Tedesco; old-er ones by Giuliani, Vivaldi. But I’ve also played some of the more off-stream con-certi, like Lorenzo Palomo’s Nocturnos de
Andalucia, which is a piece that was
com-missioned by Pepe Romero. Actually, Lo-renzo Palomo is writing a new guitar con-certo right now, and that should be ready next season.
CG: What sort of input would you have
in something like that? Is he sending you ideas, or are you giving suggestions?
VILLEGAS: I like to give a lot of freedom to
the composer, and it depends on how open he is to me being involved in the process. For me, it’s important to talk before he starts composing the piece. If the compos-er knows the guitar, or doesn’t know the guitar, that’s going to make a difference, be-cause if he doesn’t, he’s going to need more guidance on how to approach the instru-ment and the orchestra. In this case, with Lorenzo Palomo, he knows the guitar and he has composed a lot of things for guitar.
Other contemporary concerti I’ve played: I did the premiere of Tomas Mar-co’s Concierto de Córdoba a couple of years ago in Córdoba, Spain [the piece is dedicat-ed to Villegas]. Also, Joan Guinjoan has a beautifully written guitar concerto. Anoth-er recent concAnoth-erto I’m playing is called
Tra-vadors by John Corigliano [debuted by
Sha-ron Isbin in 1993]. I played it in Lima [Peru] last month—it’s so beautiful and atmo-spheric, and the guitar is so well treated.
Tomorrow night, I’m playing the premiere of one by Sergio Assad called
Con-cierto Popular do Rio. A lot of the concerts
I’m doing now—maybe 80 percent—are with orchestras, and 20 percent [solo] re-citals. So, one of my missions is to develop the symphonic repertoire for the guitar. At the beginning of this process, I asked
Sergio Assad to write a concerto and he agreed and was excited about it. This year is the 50th anniversary of the Duo Assad so it was good timing. He asked me, “What kind of concerto do you want?” I told him, “Something that speaks to you, to your truth,” and also, “I want this to excite gen-eral audiences. I don’t want it to be too intellectual.” He said he was open to write in the Spanish style, Argentinean, or Brazil-ian. I said, “If you’re asking me, I say write something Brazilian because that’s your culture, that’s your language.” He liked the idea, so he wrote this concerto we are about to premiere. In the last movement, which is named after a neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, there’s even a samba.
It’s been very exciting working with him. He was in charge of everything, and the guitar parts are beautifully designed. I think people are really going to like it. Or-chestras are always looking for new things to play.
CG: Do orchestras differ much continent
to continent? You mentioned playing in Peru recently: Is there a particular style or strength of South American orchestras?
VILLEGAS: I’m not sure there is a South
American orchestra style, but there is defi-nitely a style for a Russian orchestra, for example, and there are certain subtle dif-ferences between orchestras in the Unit-ed States, Russia, and Europe. Like, the brasses here in the United States are fan-tastic, amazing! The strings in Russia are so good, so strong, and can play anything. But there aren’t as many differences now, because musicians travel more—there are Russian musicians in the United States and European musicians in South America, and so on.
CG: Let’s talk about your new CD,
America-no. It’s an interesting concept to, in effect,
unite the musical traditions of North, Cen-tral, and South America. How was the idea born?
VILLEGAS: Everything started when I
met John Williams, the film composer [Star Wars, Jaws, Schindler’s List; he’s had 49 Academy Award nominations]. He’s a good friend of Christopher Parkening and he was composing a piece for the
