Eliot Fisk’s Notes

92Y Conversation with Eliot Fisk

On December 31st, guitar virtuoso Eliot Fisk returns to the 92nd Street Y for its annual Champagne New Year’s Eve Concert at 8 pm. He will be joined by guitarist Zaira Meneses, the Ensō String Quartet and Richard Savino on continuo for a program of Vivaldi, Bach, Paganin and Boccherini.

In this conversation, he talks about his first appearances at the Y, his relationship with the legendary Andrés Segovia, his approach to transcribing, and his plans for the concert.

For more information, visit www.92Y.org/concerts

92Y: Your first concert here at the 92nd Street Y was on a holiday, too, wasn’t it?

EF: Yes, it was October 31, 1977. I had just gotten my Master’s from Yale the previous May, and the marvelous tenor Robert White called me out of the blue and asked me if I would take part in his program on how music can expand on poetry. We included some lovely songs by John Dowland and other Elizabethan composers.

92Y: And so your Y career began.

EF: Yes, but I really think of my next concert here as my Y debut. That was on March 20, 1979, and it was my first time working with soprano Victoria de Los Angeles, with whom I later played quite a number of concerts. I also remember performing Vivaldi here with the Y Chamber Symphony [later to become the New York Chamber Symphony]. I also came to the Y as an audience member for concerts where I heard many people, like Leo Brouwer and, right at the start of his career, Yo-Yo Ma.

92Y: Certainly one key to the start of your career was Andrés Segovia. You were one of his last pupils, weren’t you?

EF: It is impossible to imagine now how anyone could dominate any instrument the way Segovia dominated the guitar. We now have so many great artists who serve their instruments so well, but at that time in history, Segovia enjoyed an eminence in the guitar world to match that of Einstein in the field of physics. He brought about the boom in classical guitar.

I began playing guitar at age 7, but when I was starting out, there were so few professional guitarists. Like so many others in my generation, I had to teach myself a lot of things. But I listened to Segovia’s records hundreds of times throughout my formative years. When I listen to really old recordings of myself, I realize just how much I sounded like him.

92Y: So how did you meet?

EF: It was on February 4, 1974, during one of his extended tours of the U.S. The famous Rose Augustine of the Augustine Guitar String Company introduced me to Segovia at his hotel, the Westbury at 69th and Madison. That meeting turned into a 2 ½ hour lesson. As a result of that, Segovia told me that whenever he was in New York, I was to call the hotel. Invariably, we would spend several hours working together. Despite our age difference, there was a tremendous chemistry between us. By the time of our lessons, I had studied Segovia’s recordings so much that I often knew what he would say to me even before he said it. He was a wonderful friend to me.

And he was that way with other young guitarists as well. So these days I try to do the same with younger players myself.

92Y: It is a guitarist’s lot in life that they can’t just be a player, they have to be a transcriber and arranger too. The Paganini Caprice No. 24 in A minor that we’ll hear is in fact one of your signature pieces. What’s your approach to transcribing?

EF: The main thing is to use your ear. The transcription should maintain the original’s spirit but fit the guitar. Segovia said you should only make a transcription if it will be even better than the original!

The whole issue of musical interpretation, or the deciphering of a composer’s notation, is a fascinating process. You try to get into the composer’s mind as you study the score, but for all your efforts, there are going to be some things you won’t be able to comprehend.

92Y: So then what do you do?

EF: I try to follow the philosophy of the great literary critic Harold Bloom. Bloom has said that you can never read a poem correctly, that the best we can hope for is to misread it strongly. I try to transcribe strongly. Of course, it’s easier when you’re transcribing a living composer’s work, because you can then ask the composer. The other important point is to transcribe what you love. You should transcribe works that will make you happy when you’re playing them.

92Y: Did you just say you transcribe works of living composers? Normally we think of transcriptions as re-workings of the great, and late, masters.

EF: Certainly I’ve transcribed music of living composers. I did some of Berio’s violin duets, even though everyone said they were impossible to transcribe. I’ve done Rochberg. I’ve done Corigliano; I asked John, “What more can I steal from you?” He told me about his Red Violin Caprices, but was uncertain as to whether or not they would work on guitar. I think they sound sensational on guitar, and early next year I will record my transcription of them.

92Y: Yet you also do lots of commissioning new works, not just rewriting current ones, right?

EF: Of course. I’ve commissioned many composers. One of my favorites was Luciano Berio—he wrote perfectly for the guitar. Also George Rochberg left a huge body of work as a result of our collaboration. This coming year I’m particularly looking forward to Robert Beaser’s Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, which I’ll play in Zankel Hall on May 1 with the American Composers Orchestra, one of the co-commissioners.

I especially like commissioning composers who don’t know the guitar. They dream up things I wouldn’t imagine for myself, so we nourish each other. The Austrian composer Kurt Schwertsik is a good example of this. I just finished recording his monumental work for solo guitar, entitled Ein kleines Requiem. Yet in all of this work with so many wonderful composers, I have often asked for and received permission to make little changes to make the works more idiomatic.

92Y: Let’s turn now to the New Year’s Eve concert. You’ll be performing with your wife, Mexican guitarist Zaira Meneses. Do you two perform together regularly?

EF: We do perform together a few times a year on special occasions. We play well together, without any rehearsal, even though we’re very different types of players. Zaira has a perfect musical instinct. The Vivaldi Concerto for Two Mandolins will be a lovely way for us to open the concert with the terrific young Ensō String Quartet.

I’m also so happy that I could invite Richard Savino to play continuo with us. A couple of decades back Richard studied classical guitar with me before moving to specialize in Baroque instruments. It will be delightful to have him along, and I’m sure we’ll have lots of fun improvising together.

92Y: You’ve also selected one of Boccherini’s quintets for guitar and strings. How did these works come about?

EF: Boccherini wrote about a dozen quintets for guitar and strings due in part to a patron of his who was an amateur guitarist. You can tell just how much of an amateur this patron was because the guitar part is very basic, nothing more than a sketch and often doubled in the other instruments. On the other hand, this means I get to improvise a lot, which is a lot of fun.

92Y: Finally, we’re grateful you’re giving up your New Year’s Eve to celebrate with us. How do you and Zaira usually spend the night?

EF: Actually, we’ve been playing on New Year’s Eve four years in a row. Last year it was in Salzburg, Austria, but this year we’re especially excited to be coming back to the Y.

Eliot Fisk interprets life as he sees it through his instrument, our beloved guitar. As I see it, the ultimate goal of any true artist is to describe what he feels and sees, from the power of thunder to the soft words spoken by a child. To me, when I hear Eliot play, I feel his uninhibted interpretation proceeding from his most immediate feelings …he risks all criticism and risks everything for the sake of the spontaneous communication of his truest feelings. I find this approach commendable and exciting.

In a parallel to the world of visual art Eliot Fisk does with the guitar what van Gogh did to his canvases. Van Gogh used bold strokes of color and designs and was criticized greatly back then for his unusual and fearless appraoch. Now we stand in front of his paintings in awe and know better.

To completely lose oneself in art as Eliot does is a sign of valor and sensitivity, something that I respect and admire. To hear a different approach in interpretaion and a variety of technical solutions from various artists does not in any way diminsh the value of each indivudal artist. How incredibly boring life would be if everyone was exactly the same!

Angel Romero

July 17, 2008

Dear Eliot,

I am afraid I am personally responsible for Mark’s comments. After your magnificent concert, we spoke briefly about it, and since he and I have known each other for many years, I shared with him my enthusiasm in no uncertain terms. He may have spoken to others as well, but he could not have missed the fact that the audience went crazy and asked you for so many encores. Certainly, a fact that was in stark contrast to their reaction to concerts by other performers. I doubt Mark had any specific intention here. He is one of the “good” guys. Perhaps this was just an unfortunate choice of words.

As for for the GFYM and GFYE exchange greeting, your readers ought to know that this can only work during a ceremony known in Russian as brudershaftrinken. Besides the crossing of arms, it requires two shots of vodka, drunk simultaneously. I think we used tequila instead, but it is still valid, my brother.

Matanya Ophee
Editions OrphИe, Inc.,
1240 Clubview Blvd. N.
Columbus, OH 43235-1226
Phone: 614-846-9517
Fax: 614-846-9794

Dear Friends,

I want to congratulate you on the latest issue of Soundboard, which is evidence of an amazing labor of love from all concerned. I can only imagine what goes into producing such a fine publication, one which shows every evidence of a “lavish and loving care beyond a mere commercial end” (as Segovia described his recording projects in that famous little spoken postlude to the Golden Jubilee set of 33 rpms in the great 3 LP Decca series!) There is so much to praise in this and other issues of Soundboard which have recently been sent to me as part of my membership in the GFA.

However, there is one thing in all the many pages rich with information and personal input of the various Soundboard writers that puzzles me. As we are all members of a small family of people worldwide who really care about the classical guitar, I want to ask for your perspectives.

The thing that puzzles me is the description of my concert at the 2007 GFA that appears on p. 75 of Volume XXXIV, Nr.2.

Of course, any of us in the public eye has to be strong enough to withstand the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that can on occasion be shot our way by reviewers or others who don’t happen to like what we do. No one is obligated to like what we do and maybe sometimes in the heat of the moment we ourselves don’t even always like all we do. But in the little family that cares about the classical guitar there ought to be a limit to personal animus.

When your reviewer writes that he returned to the second half of my concert with the prurient curiosity of someone craning his neck to view a bad accident on the highway, I think he goes past the limits of legitimate difference of opinion and into the realm of a mean personal attack. I realize the reviewer is just trying to be witty. But I don’t think that kind of writing has any place in a publication with the goals of Soundboard. In a similar way “How do we beat the bitch?” as a question poised to John McCain about Hillary Clinton, wasn’t funny either.

Am I suggesting censorship of articles until they become a meaningless pablum of soothing platitudes? Obviously not. Am I afraid of someone else ’s strong opinions? How could I be? But it might be up to the wiser heads at Soundboard to ask a writer of such an opinion couched in such a fashion whether he really means to put that kind of a poison pill out into the world.

What upset me a lot more was the snide way the soundboard reviewer imputed to those who happen to like my playing a sort of blind enthusiasm. He describes those who liked the concert as “enthusiastic, if nothing else”. Would he describe Andres Segovia, Oscar Ghiglia, Alirio Diaz and Ralph Kirkpatrick, who were my teachers; Angel Romero, Paco Pena, Joe Pass, who have been my colleagues on stage; Luciano Berio, George Rochberg, Robert Beaser, Leonardo Balada, and Nicholas Maw, some of the composers who have written for me, as “enthusiastic if nothing else” too?

After reading this review—the ONLY truly negative review in 6 pages of coverage of the 2007 GFA —I started to ask myself how this nastiness slipped by the proof readers who do such a phenomenal job in every other aspect of the Soundboard.

Whoever is in the kitchen needs to be able to take the heat, and as your reviewer suggests, I am the last person in the world who ought to be afraid of controversy. But there is a level of meanness to this reviewer’s writing in this instance that has no place in our little guitar community.

In further regard to this last, it is interesting that most of this sort of attack on me comes from within the guitar family. The very same things aptly identified by your critic — my visceral and spontaneous way of going at the instrument—things that offend some people within our guitar community may be what help give me a lot of success outside of the guitar world, something which in a funny sort of way indirectly helps even those who may not care for my playing inside the guitar world.

As Barack Obama reminds us, we need to speak with those who disagree with us. So I think what GFA ought to do now is to organize the possibility of some sort of contact between your reviewer Mark Switzer and myself. How about having him interview me? I’m sure some interesting sparks would fly. We might even get a great Soundboard article out of it!

By the way, around 25 years ago one of the greatest contributors to the legacy of the classical guitar, my dear friend Matanya Ophee, reviewed one of my early concerts in what I was told was perhaps the most cutting review of any guitarist ever published. Some decades later we met at a festival in Mexico and he recalled the incident. “I have done unspeakable harm…” I told him, “No worries!” We gave each other a big hug and ever since have shared the affectionate greeting taught to Matanya by Rostropovich: GFYM and GFYE (loosely translated from the Russian: “Go fuck yourself, Matanya!” or “Go fuck yourself, Eliot”!)

Please let me hear back when you have the time!

Affectionately,

Eliot

The loss of Thomas Humphrey last Wednesday, April 16, 2008, leaves a void so big that no one and nothing can fill it, nothing that is except the Paul Bunyan sized, the bigger- than- life- sized memory of this quintessentially American giant who gave to the world of guitar making a legacy as big as his own rollicking personality and stratospherically creative imagination.

During the 3 decades of our long friendship I was occasionally asked by the press to describe Tom to the uninitiated. I used to say what I would still say today: he was out of the tradition of the great American inventors like Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone (“What hath God wrought?”) or Thomas Edison, who when he made the first light bulb, famously stared at it for 48 hours straight!

Like many other guitar players, I too in my early years in New York City revolved in and out of Tom’s famous 72nd St. workshop and apartment thrilling to each unpredictable zig and zag of his febrile luthier’s fantasy. Many guitar builders work slowly and methodically, carefully changing small details in a life- long, disciplined controlled experiment. Their work can resemble a practically monastic search for the Holy Grail. Not so Tom. Some totally new idea would come to him – like the famous Millenium design which announced itself in a dream— and off he would go on some previously unknown, wild horse of an idea, laughing at each wild jolt along the way as he charged fearlessly into uncharted guitaristic territory.

But Tom was more than just an inspired guitar maker. Perhaps because he had lost his own father early in life, Tom had an unbelievable sensitivity to and love for young guitarists or for anyone going through a tough time. My wife and I can never forget Tom’s kindness to us when we had just come back to the United States in the summer of 2000. No one was more loving or more sympathetic or gave us more hope for the future than Tom and his beautiful wife, Marta.

The stories of the countless young players Tom befriended, nurtured and mentored are too numerous to recount here, but the list of important players and teachers who found unsuspected musical possibilities through the grace of his instruments is like a “Who’s Who” of the classical guitar in the closing decades of the 20th century. People like Odair and Sergio Assad, Sharon Isbin, Ben Verdery, Michael Newman, Laura Oltman, David Starobin, David Tanenbaum, Lili Afshar, Peter McCutcheon, Vladimir Mikulka, Ernesto Tamayo, Costas Cotsiolis, Roger Cope, Bruce and Adam Holzman, Tom Johnson, myself and dozens of others all played countless concerts and made numerous recordings on various generations of Humphrey guitars. In short, Tom recreated in his work the big, boisterous, decentralized extended family he had known as a child growing up in Minnesota.

Of course Tom also created a new human family all his own when he married his lovely, Brazilian wife, Marta, who gave him 2 precious daughters, Gabriella and Adriana, who have grown to be as lovely as the famous, flamed jacaranda that graced the sides and backs of so many of his beloved guitars.

Tom had moved out of his New York City digs in the 1990’s, buying a gorgeous piece of property near Gardiner, New York, with water running through it and a breathtaking view of the famous “ridge”, a huge expanse of variegated, exposed rock to rival the Grand Canyon. In fact, Bruce Holzman and I used to call Tom’s place “Ponderosa East”! On this property Tom had a whole crew of horses, two scrappy, yapping little dogs, and a number of cats, all of whom shared the huge tract of land with the innumerable revolving guests who came through and very often stayed for long periods of time.

As we drove away from the final reception after Tom’s memorial service, Zaira and I drove past this place for the first time without Tom in it. But we immediately turned back on impulse and stopped and walked onto the grounds and once or twice around the house, even peering in at the workshop to see if it might have all been some cruel cosmic mistake and he might still be there.

Memories flooded in: Tom in his workshop, myself walking with Tom through the unending grounds as he expounded on some new idea, our daughter Raquel riding the horses as Tom or one of his daughters led, ourselves jumping up and down on that huge trampoline Tom put out back, the many meals that Marta would conjure up out of nowhere… too many good times to ever remember them all at once.

And I thought to myself, “This house is here, this barn, this shed for the horses are all here because Tom dreamed them up and put them there, just like his instruments.” And although I knew I’d never again hug him as he came smiling out the front door to greet us, somehow he didn’t seem gone at all. Instead his being seemed to be all around us, smiling down from the great ridge and bubbling out of the clear brook and cavorting on the grass: the unforgettable companion whose presence lit up all our lives (even we didn’t know how much till now!) that unique personality wide as the American prairie, his imagination as far out as space…. And it seems to me now writing this that his soul still shines down on those of us who knew and loved him, leaving in its warm afterglow an abiding love that will never leave us.

I guess you could say that I first met Joe Pass when I was around twenty years old and first heard his famous record called “Virtuoso.” I came out of the tradition of the great Andres Segovia, who was my mentor. It was Segovia’s guitar that transfixed me and love for his music that sealed my fate as a guitarist. But when I heard Joe, my jaw hit the floor. Segovia used to describe the classical guitar as an orchestra seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Here was someone who had turned one single jazz guitar into a jazz ensemble complete with bass, percussion, solo instrument everything somehow coming out of the body of one guitar! There I was a twenty year old classical guitar player with the kind of tunnel vision you have at that age, but this guy Joe Pass had stopped me dead in my tracks.

The next time I “met” Joe was almost two decades later in the lobby of the hotel in Córdoba, Spain where we were both participating in the Guitar Festival. I saw someone who had to be Joe Pass trying to get the attention of the overworked woman behind the desk, and I introduced myself. Like most of the true greats, Joe was extremely modest and self-effacing. Of course, he had the ability to assert himself when things weren’t right, but he was absolutely pure and without airs. “Oh yeah, I’ve seen your name around,” he said. Within minutes we were talking about Bach, jazz, hundreds of parallels between classical and jazz music, and everything else under the sun.

Joe was from Pittsburgh; I’m from Philly, two big cities of contrasting character in the same state of Pennsylvania. I always thought it was kind of poetic that the famous town of big steel should have spawned one of the jazz greats of the 20th century. Maybe it was the Pennsylvania connection but before that festival in Cordoba was over, my Lydia, had asked Joe if he would consider performing with me, and Joe with his customary good naturedness had said, “Sure.” I remember that after his concert in Córdoba where he mesmerized 2,000 people for two hours under the night sky, he signed Lydia’s program; “To my darling Eliot’s wife.”

Lydia and I dealt mostly with Joe’s soft spoken and equally self-effacing manager, Mike Magnelli, but right before our first concert together my German wife called Joe’s German wife Ellen Luders Pass and asked her when Joe and i could rehearse. Ellen said, “my husband never rehearses, and he’s not going to rehearse with your husband either!” (“mein Mann probt nie, auch nicht mit Ihrem Mann!”).

This was quite scary for me because Joe and I hadn’t even agreed on what pieces we were going to play, and I had never in my life performed with ANY jazz guitarist, let alone the legendary Joe Pass! To sell the idea of the program I had cooked up a New World/Old World program idea relating to the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in America, but I had no idea how long Joe intended to play nor precisely how our collaboration was supposed to work. At the sound check at 5PM, I offered Joe a couple of classical pieces I thought he could improvise over: the little Bach Prelude BWV 999, Satie’s first Gymnopedie, a Waltz of Lauro and “Summertime” by Gershwin. I never quite figured our how Joe was able, at that very first concert, to weave such beautiful melodies over classical pieces he couldn’t have known particularly well.

Another thing about Joe — he was different every night — and I mean really different! You didn’t know what form the piece was going to have and you didn’t know what tempo he was going to want. You had to extend your antennae out to Martian lengths to pick up his vibrations. At the same time, when you were on stage with him, you were never really scared because he was so clear in everything he did that you could tell what you were supposed to be doing.

Joe was absolutely natural on stage. He’d play a piece beautifully and then ask, “What was that piece I just played? Oh yeah, I remember…Actually I don’t like that piece… (laughter from the audience) No, I really don’t… (bit of a laugh from Joe himself) No, really that’s the truth.” At a certain point in that famous first concert of ours, (the one where we hadn’t at all decided how many numbers he was going to do!) Joe actually said the following (and I have a tape to prove it!) “While I’m waiting for my friend Eliot to get on out here… Where IS Eliot???(Somewhat impatiently) I’m waiting for him!!”

Later when we were touring through Austria (poor Joe sitting good naturedly crammed into the front seat of my VW Golf as we were driven between destinations over the ciruitous back roads by one of my Austrian students!) I would get him to tell about his years on the road with Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson. This led Joe’s manager, Norman Granz, who had always believed, to push Joe to go out and do solo tours. Joe described following an Oscar Peterson solo as something like trying to get up after being run over by a speeding freight train: “So Oscar comes out and starts playing like this…(Joe starts singing this 10,000 miles an hour fast riff from bottom to top and top to bottom back up top to end in a fortissimo chord) and then I have to come on out with my little guitar.” But formed in the crucible of keeping up with Oscar and Ella was Joe’s phenomenal virtuosity and expressive power. Later in life Joe would say on stage, “You like fast stuff!” (he’d play about a minute and a half of blinding riffs) “Well, I don’t!” And that was that.

Joe talked openly with me about his early years playing every wedding, bar mitzvah and party in Pittsburgh. He emphasized that all those early experiences were also essential to his later success and solidity. Joe also claimed to know only one key, but this was clearly akin to Einstein telling you it all boils down to E=mc2! Joe always said it wasn’t his fingers that were tired after playing a concert but his mind. And if you heard Joe night after night as I did, you knew why. He certainly never played anything nearly the same way twice.

Joe wasn’t afraid to talk about his down andout years when he was addicted to heroin. He talked of bumming around out on the west coast. Every time he was out of money—and that was often enough—he would go flip-flopping (remember those flimsy rubber sandals from the ‘50s and ‘60s called “flip-flops?”) his way down the street or beach or wherever he happened to be, looking for a guitar player. There were several reasons for this: 1. Joe had no guitar 2. Joe knew that any time he could get his hands on a guitar, he would not only amaze the owner, but also guarantee himself a bed and a roof over his head for a few days.

I asked him about his time in a drug treatment center when he was getting himself cleaned up. He talked openly about that too and about how he slowly started to get back into playing music. I asked him about touring during the days of segregation and about the indignities suffered by the great Black stars. I also asked him if there was any resentment toward him on the part of the African American artists he traveled with. He admitted that he felt it took a long while for them to accept him on his merits.

I always used to joke with Joe about his Italian name. I used to call him “Mr. Burgerino” after a dubious acquaintance of Joe’s who had been a true fan but also a fairly obvious mafioso. Joe told me about how the guy was always trying to get him to go to Palermo with him or something. When Joe would send me a postcard or when he signed a book of his transcribed jazz solos he wrote, “Remember the feet in concrete! Mr. B.”

On New Year’s Day, 1994, I took the train up to Hamburg, Germany, where Joe lived his last years with his beloved wife Ellen. “I’m a prisoner of love!” he used to say. “Why else would I live here?” Joe and I were supposed to do a 10 concert tour in Italy. We were going to record the concerts and maybe even use the stuff as the basis for a record. As usual, Joe hadn’t taken the guitar out of the case in weeks. On tour I hardly ever heard him practice, and often he only picked up the guitar—with the exception of a brief sound check around 5PM,—literally minutes before going on stage! I remember that on this visit to his modest apartment Joe literally had to blow the dust off.

Nevertheless, on this occasion I almost got him to rehearse. That meant we touched on a small group of pieces we could add to what we already had done together. I remember presenting him with the Prelude to the First Cello Suite by Bach, several Ellington tunes, Gershwin’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So” etc. Joe always claimed, “I don’t read too good,” but I got him to put his glasses on for some of this and he actually read pretty damn well — although with him who could tell if he was reading or making it up as he went along? I always felt that if only I’d been able to be better prepared, Joe could have told me all the secrets of guitar playing. If only I’d known enough to ask the right questions… Here I was some foolish, incompetent daring to share the same stage with this self-effacing giant — how many jazz players would have given their eye teeth to be where I was? But Joe never made me feel stupid and always encouraged me. When we’d done some particularly successful concert like the ones in Munich or Vienna and the public was roaring and hollering for more, we’d bow with our arms around each other, and Joe would say in his pseudo Italian, “Mama mia, senza fina, that was a good one!” He never made me feel like anything other than his equal.

The last time I spoke with Joe I called him from L.A. where I was playing and he was in the hospital. He’d had to cancel our Italian tour only a few weeks after I had seen him looking so good. I thought and hoped he was just in for a fast checkup for the mild diabetes I’d seen him give himself insulin shots for in the hotels (along with those odoriferous cigars that used to smell up the place!) I said to him, “listen, Joe, all the Italian presenters just want you to know that they’re not angry or anything; they just want you to get well so we can come back next year and do the tour,” Joe said, “That would be just fantastic!” Only much later did I know just how fantastic anything would have been compared to the liver cancer he was then fighting and which would ultimately take his life. We chatted some more and then Joe said with great warmth, “I love you, Eliot,” and I said, “I love you too, Joe!”

Oscar Ghiglia first entered my life on March 16, 1968, when he came to Philadelphia to play a recital for the Society of the Classical Guitar. The world was young then. Although the horrible War in Vietnam still raged and the civil rights movement was riddled with dissension between its own doves and hawks, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had not yet been murdered. We still thought things could and would change for the better.

Into this world and out of some other magical universe all his own walked Oscar Ghiglia. Although it is almost 40 years ago to the day as I write this, I still remember that first concert and many of the works that were on the program: the “La Frescobalda” Variations of Frescobaldi, the famous harp Fantasia of Mudarra, the Prelude Fugue and Allegro of Bach, Mallorca by Albeniz, La Maja de Goya of Granados, the Fantasia-Sevillanas of Turina, Falla’s Homenaje, Poulenc’s Sarabande, Ohana’s Tiento, Roussel’s Segovia….I was a boy of 13 just discovering how much he loved playing the guitar. Oscar was 5 months away from turning 30.

Oscar’s concert had a huge effect on all of us in Philadelphia. We had never heard the guitar played with such pure, unaffected elegance. Every note seemed bathed in beauty, yet made sense in some bigger universe governed by the eternal laws of the art of music. The legacy of Segovia was evident, but this was no copy of Segovia, rather a reinvention in an exquisite, personal way of many of the same principles (a vocal approach to melody, intimate knowledge of the different contrapuntal voices, an orchestral approach to color, etc.) that governed Segovia’s cosmos. Anyone who heard Oscar in those years will confirm that his playing forever changed the way we thought of our instrument.

I really met Oscar as Oscar about a year later when he returned to Philadelphia by popular demand. On the eve of his recital he also taught a brief workshop for the Society. At 7 PM sharp he seemed to materialize suddenly on the threshold of a room filled with the cacophony of a bunch of guitarists simultaneously warming up. With his trademark long beard and 1960’s hair style (not too different from his 2008 hair style!) dressed in a hand knit purple sweater, he appeared in a huge cloud of his own cigarette smoke like some immense benevolent genie who had magically emerged from an invisible bottle.

The class had gone on for around three hours and Oscar was obviously really ready to go back to his hotel and rest. As a formality he asked if everyone had played. In fact, I had been waiting the whole time to play the Prelude and Fugue from Bach’s Prelude Fugue and Allegro, but one by one the other players had gone ahead of me. I felt a little sorry that I was keeping Oscar past the agreed ending hour of the class. Nevertheless, I took out my guitar and began to play. I wonder what Oscar thought about this strange little kid. At any rate, once I’d got a few bars into the Prelude he began to solfege along and smile his encouragement, and so our lifelong friendship began right there. For me it was the beginning of a fantastic collaboration.

Through all the travails of the intervening 4 decades Oscar Ghiglia has been and remains my mentor, my colleague and my friend. Surely his influence on generations of guitarists all over the world has been and remains similarly life changing. With complete justification we can say, “The sun never sets on the empire of Oscar’s students.”

Those of us who were in the very first generation of his American followers, people like Phil de Fremery, the late Peter Segal, Bruce Holzman, Tom Johnson and Sharon Isbin have made and are still making contributions to the field that derive from the innumerable lessons he imparted. Many generations later Oscar is still leading other guitarists out of the proverbial platonic cave and toward the light. Michael Newman and Laura Oltman, who have created the marvelous New York Guitar Festival, both worked with Oscar for many years, and indeed to even start a list of those who have benefited from his wisdom risks becoming an endless “ Who’s Who” of important players, teachers and guitar enthusiasts.

On this occasion of his 70th birthday year I join thousands around the world in expressing my undying gratitude, love and respect for this great artist, guitarist and unforgettable friend who has always given so much and asked for so little in return.

I first became aware of the music of Agustin Barrios Mangore’ through the masterful revisting of this music by the great Venezuelan virtuoso, Alirio Diaz. Some years later John Williams’ famous first recording devoted solely to Barrios played an important role in re-introducing Barrios to all of us living outside Latin America.

Since then Barrios’s music has practically been overplayed, yet rarely has it been heard played in a manner consonant with that revealed in Barrios’ own recordings. Imperfect though the sound reproduction on these old discs is, they give undeniable proof of certain attributes of a style of playing that was common to an entire generation of great guitarists from Llobet and Pujol to Segovia. I find it extremely amusing that some of the same people who claim to be so interested in authentic performance practice of old music, for example, can virtually ignore incontrovertible evidence from the surviving recordings of the masters of a great romantic style, which, while perhaps somewhat out of fashion at present, has a great deal to teach us all about expressivity on the guitar.

What are some of the hallmarks of this style as revealed in Barrios’s own recordings and manuscripts?

1) This is music written for an actual audience, music that seeks above all to communicate in a magical way (see Barrios’s famous mystical and poetic outpourings about what it is he is trying to do with his “six silver moonbeams” (echoes of Lorca’s dancing “seis doncellas/ tres de carne/ tres de plata” in the Adivinanza de la Guitarra!)

2) All artistic and aesthetic means serving the goal of communication are justified. Thus Barrios uses lots of rubato, vibrato, and portamento, and seemingly varies his pieces in many small details spontaneously, in the moment, often departing from his own often meticulously notated scores as the whim overtakes him.

3) Barrios uses as a matter of course all coloristic effects of the guitar: tremolo, tambour, snare drum, scordatura and harmonics all are called upon in new and creative ways to conjure up the many colors, sounds, smells and sights of life as he knew it.

4) Once again, a routine performances just will not do. It is the intangible magic, what the flamenco artists call the duende, that it the raison d’etre of this music.

5) Barrios also uses much more harmonic variety than almost any of his virtuoso composer colleagues: his bass lines feature lots of step wise motion (not just open strings). This alone makes his pieces more difficult to play than that of some of his lesser contemporaries and predecessors, but also allows Barrios his greater harmonic vocabulary.

6) Barrios also uses a greater variety of keys than the E,A, D trinity which enslave so many of the earlier guitar virtuoso composers.

I feel that a true test of the virtuosity of any of us latter day Barrios interpreters is to emulate the same spontaneity and expressivity he so nobly embodied by studying the many variants of parallel passages (as indicated in Richard Stover’s editions!) and being able to spontaneously opt for any one of a number of solutions to certain passages. (In this spirit, I often introduce slight changes of my own and hope Barrios might approve.)

Sad as it is that Barrios’s posthumous career even exceeds the success he enjoyed in life, we can all be grateful for his legacy and for the opportunity to keep burning the sacred flame he first ignited.

Eliot Fisk
Boston April 15, 2008

Dear Friends,

The front page of the Jan. 31st issue of the Tab riveted my attention and won’t let me go yet. It seems to me that the headlines of this front page taken together offer wonderful lessons for all of us.

First, we read that the plans for Newton North have been approved by voters.
Now that most of the fierce debate about how to renovate the high school is over, even those of us who voted for this proposal (as the better of two imperfect alternatives) can step back and thank the passionate critics of the plan. The critics have kept the pressure up, have made the proponents of the plan really pay attention. It is a better plan for the intensity of the debate. Going forward we will all benefit from the fact that the entire process has been vetted democratically. Wouldn’t we like to be able to say the some about the decisions of our national government in Wash. DC! (Talk about wasteful use of public money!)

Under the headline entitled “Yikes!’ we read that, like our national government, our local government is not looking at a rosy financial future, that we will soon again face the necessity of choosing the least unpalatable of two unpleasant choices: of cutting services or raising taxes or perhaps of some combination of the two.

But at the bottom of page 1, the solution stares us back right in the face: There we read of two uniquely American heroes, lawyers, Ellen Lubell and Doris Tennant, who at their own very considerable expense are traveling to Guantanamo to defend a man they have never even met: “A Passion for Justice” indeed…and then some!

The morning that I picked up my free (!), plastic – wrapped copy of the Newton Tab from my front lawn I also drove my daughter all of 5 minutes to school. Along the way we did not have to worry about explosive devices left by lunatic insurgents, nor, when she ran into school, did I fear that some left over cluster bomblets from someone else’s war were going to blow her to bits. I was not afraid either that, were she exploring in the woods outside the school, some forgotten land mine would tear off one of her limbs or worse.

When I got home, I didn’t worry about some airplane dropping bombs on my house…I didn’t even worry about petty burglary during the time I was out. When I went to mail my letters at the local post office, the lady behind the counter greeted me courteously and had time for a little small talk. When I bought some croissants for breakfast, strangers held the door for me going in and smiled at me coming out. Needless to say the thought of a suicide bomber walking into the store never crossed my mind! I could go on and on about the blessings we Newtonians enjoy and take for granted.

I seem to recall reading of one great American president telling us that we had nothing to fear but fear itself, of another calling on us to ask not what our country could do for us but rather what we could do for our country. Surely it seems that if we each could find within ourselves a small particle of the courage and commitment to good citizenship shown us by Ms. Lubell and Ms. Tennant we wouldn’t need to say “Yikes” at all but would just roll up our shirtsleeves in a true spirit of community and get to work. Ms.Lubell and Ms. Tennant don’t just show us what it means to be great citizens of America; they show us what it means to be great citizens of the world!

On the demise of a friend and leader, here is my letter to Prudence Steiner, the widow of the recently departed Daniel Steiner:

Mrs. Prudence Steiner
c/o New England Conservatory
290 Huntington Av.
Boston, Mass. 02115

June 13, 2006

Dear Prudence,

On the final day of our first Boston Guitar Fest, after a glorious week of fellowship in and celebration of the love of music, we were stunned by the indescribably painful news of Daniel ‘s passing. It is with the greatest humility and respect that we add our voices to the great chorus celebrating the life and mourning the departure of our beloved “philosopher-king!”

Indeed, Daniel’s goodness was so obvious, his wisdom so profound, his self effacement so genuine that none of us can ever forget him. Quite apart from the administrative miracles he initiated, his humanity itself remains a shining beacon for all of us at the Conservatory who were guided by him in infinitely many, gentle ways we sometimes did not even recognize at the time!

I for one must have been something of a nuisance to him, with my frequent letters espousing all my various causes. Yet he was never ruffled by my lack of wisdom; he forgave me my impetuousness and was even able to distill from my outbursts some occasional kernels of truth. Invariably he took the time to respond, to moderate my impatience and to steer me along a wiser course.

Daniel’s loving oversight of his truly vast flock was of biblical scope. Somehow he seemed to be aware of all of us, somehow to manage to intervene in decisive ways at just the right moment to steer us along the “path of righteousness.” We are all for the rest of our lives spiritually richer for having known him.

In these difficult days our hearts go out to you and to your wonderful family, whose heartfelt remembrances put tears in our eyes. We feel honored to have been included in the vast and varied group at Daniel’s service at the Levine Chapel and to have been reminded again of the great overarching message of love and service that was his life, writ big as the firmament itself.

Sending you all our love and our deepest thanks to you and to your wonderful family once again for having shared so generously with all of us the divine blessing in human form that was Daniel Steiner.

Sincerely,

Eliot Fisk
Zaira Meneses
Raquel Fisk