Leo Brouwer and Manuel Barrueco Interviews The Havana Interview Hotel Riviera. May 15th. 1998 by David Reynolds Leo Brouwer is not Cuban. At least his personality, the non-stop workaholic, bespeaks his nationality. I am at the Havana Riviera Hotel watching Brouwer deal rather impatiently with the "manaña" attitude of his fellow countrymen. The drama which often can ensue is vastly more entertaining than anything which transpires on stage during the festival. At the Havana International Guitar Festival, now in it it's eighteenth year, Brouwer is an inferno in a cigar factory. Last night, at an evening concert, seconds before Cuban guitarist Rey Guerra appeared at the footlights, a stagehand inexplicably began hauling a large rope to the top of the theater. Impervious to Brouwer's pleas for the worker to stop, the rope continues skyward. The composer is paralyzed. Brouwer's assistant rushes over to the rope and begins pulling on the other end at the precise moment in which Guerra takes the stage. Brouwer yells to Guerra to wait, but the performer does not hear him above the applause. As the tail of the rope slips over the top of the parapets Guerra launches into a Spanish Dance by Enrique Granados and peace reigns once again. Two days later, I am apologizing to Brouwer for waking him in his hotel room at 7:00 a.m. in order to schedule an interview. He does not miss a beat. " That's okay, that's okay. How about 2 o'clock? Maybe we can work then I'm not sure." The night before I left for Cuba I had typed up a few perfunctory questions and a letter of introduction for the composer. I knew the chance of doing an unscheduled interview with Brouwer were slight because of the non-stop demand on his time during the biannual Festival. In the course of my week in Cuba my list of questions changed and grew, as I interacted with Cuban musicians and took in the political and artistic climate around the festival. Leo Brouwer is an intellectual in a country where such things are still thought to matter. In Cuba education is, or was in the past, valued above materialism. He was born in 1939 as Juan Leovigildo Brouwer but in as much as the Cuban has reinvented himself as concert guitarist, composer, film score writer, pedagogue, musicologist, and conductor, it can be hard to know what direction to point a question. I sat with Brouwer and Rey Guerra in the basement of the Hotel Riviera over a meal of red beans of rice. He was generous and open in our conversation in which we discussed his views on guitar competitions, spirituality, the Beatles in Cuba, Fidel Castro, and doing the dishes.
It's seems odd to be here at the festival and not to see {Brouwer's first guitar teacher , the recently deceased} Issac Nicola sitting in the back of the room during some of these events. Did his presence here year after year serve as a kind of an emotional link between a young Leo Brouwer, the guitar student, and the mature musician? Of course, I have a link with my youth. And it is more or less…I can't explain it because it is consistent with the roots of my writing which are almost the same even after a period of avant-garde music or whatever it is. This link remains since the 55th year, 1955 when I started composing small pieces for the first time. Correct me if I'm wrong. You're related somewhat distantly to Ernesto Lecuona. What is that relationship and is there any musical connection between the family and yours? Lecuona is the brother of my grandmother. Lecuona was always going around at home when I was five or six years old. And the piano was for me very familiar but, I didn't get any influence from him because his world, is a world of, in a way of light music and pop music. In spite of his unbelievable dances, great masterpieces of Afro-Cuban dances he wrote. I don’t have any influence from them, from Lecuona- not at all, only I admire him as a great artist of that period of light music. Your responsibilities as a conductor keep you away from Cuba for part of the year. Additionally, you spend time giving masterclasses, composing, and championing new music. How do you deal psychologically with the varying demands of these disciplines? In other words do you view these demands as being primarily integral, or in conflict with, you're own vision of yourself as an artist? That's a really interesting one. I think that {these varying activities are}not a conflict, but the differences between the basic rules of each discipline, the enormous difference, helps to relax from one field to the other. This is unbelievable but it is really true. And that's what compensates my conducting with my composing vice a versa {as well as} my teaching. For example at home when I am trying to relax I wash, dishes in the kitchen {laughs}.
In Quebec several years ago you mentioned that you are writing new estudios for the guitar. How is that going? I couldn't finish. I'm ashamed because in {the last} ten years I should be writing at least four more series. But I couldn't complete it, only two or three. And I promise to myself to be more rigorous.
Do you have a vision for ten more, for twenty more? For ten for sure. I have the vision of ten more.
Also easy studies, or more complicated?
Five very simple ones for small children, like the first group and another group which goes like the last ones, into subjects, into flexibility of the left {hand}, or whatever it is but in a field of non-complexity, which is the most important thing. My rule for the studies is one complexity at the same time only.
"Vibrato was considered for many years as beauty. Vibrato, for me, is not beauty- it's intensity."
Did Jesus {Ortega} mention that you wrote three new concertos or am I mistaken?
Yeah. What are their names? One is a Concierto de Cuba? The fifth concerto is Helsinki. The sixth is for Greece. The Helsinki is dedicated to Timo Koronin a great master from Finland. The sixth dedicated to Cotsiolas, the Greek maestro and to the festival who, he's working almost twenty years- every year, {with a }very very peculiar and extraordinary small festival-top performers and a lot of young students with almost no expenses. It's something to admire. And the Last which I am still composing is the Concierto de La Habana which is going to be performed in November in Germany and Austria by Joachim Clerch, a Cuban guitarist who is working there. Last year Cuba lost one of it's great directors of film Tomás Guiteréz de Aléa (El Titan). You worked with him as early as 1960 in the film Historia de la Revolución up until 1983 Hasta Cierto Punto. Could you share a little about your working relationship? Our relationship was extraordinary. He was a great maestro with a long, long experience, since he was young. Before the Revolution he was working on a kind of newsreel with a space for humor. He was handling this space on it for humor in the newsreel for many years. It was extraordinary. And our relationship was friendly because we were very, very, good friends all of our lives. And also {he was intellectually} very high, very sophisticated. The same with one or two other Cuban directors-not too many more. Gutieréz Aléa knew new music -he knew. He played some instruments. It sometimes occurs {that an artist will have multiple disciplines} like an Alejo Carpentier- the novel writer-one of great writers of Spanish culture. You know that a film's music is {usually}done after the film is finished so we then cut the splices and then work with that, but in the case of Gutieréz Aléa we always were working from the beginning, the very beginning. We were working {on the score for his movies} with a very conscious methodology from the beginning of the film's conception. It is interesting because {working this way} you can have ideas, even themes, and other material to propose in the filming set- which is an interesting way to work.
A more integrated approach artistically?
The plateau, Yes.
So was working in these films something that ushered your composition into forms of instrumentation beyond the guitar, or a part of that for you?
Well in a way yes, but {what was}was more interesting was the challenge of cutting your owns ideas and putting the music in the service of the image which is the most interesting fact in film music. You have to compose {for example} an eighteenth century score{which would be} related to Spain or whatever it is. It's a challenge for a composer. It's not the same as making your own music and putting it into the film. It's another way.
Did that train your mind to think of images when you're composing? Yeah. Most of my music has a kind of program which is not {necessarily conceived} by myself- it is a program developed by the sound in itself. The sonority always has a character-lyrical, nostalgic, aggressive, bestial, um… joyful, but {it} always has a character. All music {has a character} because of tonality, because of cadential devices, because of many, many, many, things.
"I don't like competitions because they have a sad, destroying kind of atmosphere for the non-winners.
We spent time yesterday talking in the colloquia about what constitutes legitimate artistic inspiration for a composer. When I think of the guitar repertoire I'm reminded we have a great deal of music that refers, to love, dance, romance, and abstract emotions also but very little of the spiritual. So examples of spiritual music that guitarists play might be perhaps the Milan Pavans, Homenaje de Falla, perhaps the Weiss Tombeau, and the Elegiaco by Brouwer. To what degree has spirituality served as an inspiration to you, if at all? Yes it is {an inspiration}. Not in a sense of religion. In a sense of spirituality as you say. Spirituality means a kind of being. Emotional distension, emotional inter-realization, and this is what I call spirituality because it doesn't matter if you have composers which are believers of religion- which I am not. But some of these composers write, or wrote, some of the most aggressive {types of} music. And you know in another field {of artistic endeavor one} can have a kind of spirituality- of emotional tranquility it is much more adequate for thinking- that this music is not only abstract {but also spiritual in nature}. One of my first questions yesterday in the shouting with Palomo was if music is abstract or has a program. I didn't put it like that. I said what do you think about abstract music or program music. Of course I believe in program music also because every music has an image. Man, especially twentieth century after mass media, cannot avoid to relate sound to image- in this very moment it is absolutely impossible. Much of your writing for guitar exists in small forms- some very large. I think of, for instance, the third movement of the Elegiaco. You present a theme and when you bring it back it is not so much developed as it is transformed. Is that somewhat spiritual -is that a concrete example of what we might be talking about? Probably. For example the Elegiaco last movement has one of the laws, of, one of the characters of minimalism, which is not an up to date movement. Minimalism has a very antique background. Hindu, African, Indonesia. Minimalism has been practiced in the last thousand years {but today} minimalism comes as a challenge to clarify the complexity of old-fashion. I say avant-garde- it's a kind of clarity and this clarity presumes to show off the small detail, the new vision of the same {ideas}. I think that things are not changing. Man makes a different interpretation of the same thing. This is real. And this is for me the most important fact. I can not believe in the philosopher that says that man transformed and da, dadada, dadada no! It's the vision that things are already there. Nothing new under the sun.
Nothing new…under the sun. Good. The phrase "culture of sound" is one you use quite a bit and also is used by other in relationship to your conducting. Could you give some practical advice about what a growth of understanding about the culture of sound would mean for an eighteen year old guitarist who will sit tomorrow at his music stand to practice for four hours. Yes. The problem is that when the youngster associates the tone production to music, he is not taking care of tone production, he is using tone production for the score. That's why I suggest to new students many times to separate both things. To hear your own tone production you must hear yourself. Look how it sounds here {referring to an imaginary right hand placement in relation to the sound hole of the guitar}, this zone of the guitar, this resonance, pleases a little clearer. Here {in another spot} it is much more clear but is on the edge of hard sound, and there is no more sound. The {tone} color is on the other side of it- also no sound but color. So sound quality, tone quality, is a three headed spectrum-resonant, resonant clear, and clear- which is near the rosetta. The rest is color, timbre so on sul ponticello, or tasto, or nail or pizzicato whatever it is. I think the most important thing to start {with} is to take care of quality of sound-sound quality if possible.
"I cannot make a simple hymn to Fidel Castro. I can write it, but it's not in my heart."
So are you suggesting that rather than practicing scales for forty-five minutes a day someone takes the guitar out and just listens to sounds. LB: Sounds. In different points to produce the sound and analyze how your guitar responds to these experiments. Your left hand must produce three, four, five different statements: non-vibrato, poco vibrato, vibrato for that and so on and so on. And by the way when I'm talking about vibrato, vibrato was considered for many years as beauty. Vibrato, for me, is not beauty- it's intensity. Not beautiful- intense. Intense. Beauty is everything. You take one note, you make it ring and then later you make a little vibrato and this is one way. You make a strong sforzando and then you have intense vibrato this is another way of {obtaining} beauty. Then you have no vibrato and then you have a sound that rests until another type of beauty. One is relaxed; the no vibrato is absolutely relaxed- resting. This vibrato is adding always a kind of intensity. Sometimes it's not possible. You have, if you play Villa Lobos Three (begins to sing middle section in a very distorted manner) it's impossible to play like that because you are adding a kind of tension and intensity which is not the character of the piece. Very good. I read once where you said too often musicians try to learn music in a "tiron"(jerk) rather than trying to slowly unmask the music. Is there something you could suggest that they could do to more clearly develop their conception of interpretation. Is there a system or routine?
Brouwer and Palomo No. I don't believe there is a routine for style, for rigor. Only culture could help survive the world of style. If the guitarist is not cultivated… if a guitarist is going to play Guiliani and he never heard Rossini he's dead. If a guitarist is gonna play Sor or whatever it is or Legnani of Carcassi or whatever it is and he's never heard Paganini well… It's unbelievable. He is using some of the minuetos the ones of Fernando Sor he must hear Beethoven and so on. Sometimes a string quartet helps more to style and high interpretation than hearing two dozens of guitarists recorded. It doesn't mean that hearing guitarists is wrong no no no no. You must learn from everybody. Not to imitate- just to compare what is going on. When a conductor is doing. Beethoven Six. I'm sure this conductor, if he is a professional, has heard Klempere's version, Toscanini's version, Bernstein's, Harancourt, Haitink. I have fifteen Versions, more or less, and so on and so on and so on. Then the same happens with the piano sonata. You have the same piano sonata played by Maria-Joao Pires, Barenboim, by Gilel, Richter etc. Then you have slight difference from one to the other conceptually. Some times very very important and this is helping more than to imitate the same guitar or guitarists.
I know you say that you don't like competitions but you feel they might be necessary to help put a spotlight on certain young, talented individuals. Do you feel that there's any relationship between the demands of playing a competition and the demands found in the larger musical world? Good. Competition. I don't like competitions because they have a sad, destroying kind of atmosphere for the non-winners. The winner has for the competition a very good challenge for himself but, and maybe the opportunity…
Maybe? Well maybe. Because the concert hall is not only for the best because sometimes the better one is not playing. Sometimes it remains a little outside because the media, the managers, the circuit is already made by very sophisticated managing companies or whatever it is. I remember that once Columbia Management asked a guitarist to accompany in the United States coast to coast for Placido Domingo. So this guitarist came and he made the accompaniment for Placido- two songs, good. One of the best guitarists of Columbia. Then next two or three days he got some contracts, important contracts from three important symphony orchestras. One of them was Charles Dutoit, Montreal Symphony. The other one was Los Angeles and I can't remember which {other} one. The concert this guitarist offered as repertoire I thought was well…obviously {might be} Aranjuez, obviously Fantasia Para Un Gentil Hombre or Castlenuovo-the great classic ones. No. He offered Vivaldi. So he was killing himself. This is something true.
One of your famous compositions was based on a story of a musician who was cast out of his country but was latter called back to save and lead his people. Do you feel that it is reasonable for the artist in Cuba, or in anywhere in the world, to feel that his life is an element for social change?
Ya it's reasonable. The other thing is that the, lets say, the political touch or the political concern of an artist has many, many facets, many faces, many realities. "… my music is not Marxist. It's not Leninist. It's music and has to do with Cuba."
A man could be concerned* politically with some ideal and probably his music is not expressing it as all. It is for example in the case of Luigi Nono. Nono wrote one of the most abstract music in the twentieth century avant-garde. Luigi Nono, fantastic avant-garde composer was politicaly concerned, and the music has nothing to do with the political concerns. It's because his mind, or was, because he's dead now (and this is something important) the other man believes if he is not concerned by some political idea that he must be simple or elemental or he must come down to the pueblo. And all these ideas in the end, they are doing nothing good for music. Because their political concern is there in you're mind, in your attitude in life. But not in the sound you produce. The sound you produce is another world and could be or not used politically. I could not write now a march like Hans Eisner did or Bertold Brecht. I cannot do it. I know how to do it, but it's not in my heart -it's not. I cannot make a simple hymn to Fidel Castro. I can write it, but it's not in my heart. So the political side is connected to, in my opinion, connected to the historical background of art of music in this case. I am politically concerned with my roots. My Cuban roots in music- not with Engles. Engles was a thinker, Marx, a fantastic thinker. But my music is not Marxist. It's not Leninist it's music and has to do with Cuba. This is my opinion.
Can you talk about the atmosphere in Cuba at your Bach to the Beatles concert in the early seventies? At that time we were really a blocked country. Now we have little things opening. We can see even TV from some of the …part of the world. But in that very year we didn't have anything from outside. The detante was total. So the young generation heard about Beatles maybe one tape from I don't know which country with a little cassette and it was kind of surprise. And what I did was to promote, not only Beatles, I mean the kind of music that was not in contradiction with Cuban music. Beatles or Rolling Stones or whatever it is never is contradiction with Cuban music. Never is in contradiction with the Revolutionary process. That was my idea and this was what I was trying to fight for.
But what was the reaction? There was some fear? No no extraordinary. Some political minor minds thought that the Beatles was music from the capitalistic influence to involve you in a kind of brainwash or whatever it is. It's a ridiculous… but it cost me many many{things} with these small minds of some of these people. I promote theses concerts and these people were filling the theaters when I played -totally packed and nothing happened. The people were happy, I was happy, so everything happens okay so… But there was an increased police presence wasn't there? Yeah, yeah but that was normal to protect the source of environment. Normal. And this was repeated. From Bach to Beatles that we had to do it three more times.
*The word compromise is, from Spanish to English a semi-false cognate. I have chosen to substitute his word "compromise" with "concern" which may more effectively communicate the meaning here. DBR
David Reynolds is adjunct professor of Guitar at Washington Bible College. His extensive writing on the guitar in Cuba may be found in Guitar Review- Fall 1998 # 114.
¡Oye, Mi Cuerpo Pide Brouwer!
The 10th Havana International Guitar Competition and Festival Teatro Amadeo Roldan Havana, Cuba May 13-20 2000 In Memory of Masuro Kono
By David Reynolds
May 15, 1953 Mother's Day. Isle of Pines, Cuba
"Here began, really, our great battle of ideas, in this model prison, that we had left better prepared for the following stages of struggle that were to follow…" -Pedro Miret Prieto
W hen the conspirators were released from prison for their attack on the Moncada Barracks, Fidel embraced the officer in charge of security. Not letting the propaganda slow for a minute, he quickly held a press conference at the Isle of Pines Hotel in Nueva Gerona. At five o'clock the next morning, when his train arrived in Havana, admirers jumped aboard and lifted him onto their shoulders, thrusting a Cuban flag into his hands. Releasing Castro on this Mother's Day was a decision Batista would regret just six years later when the former prisoner would once again roll into the capital, this time on a tank, to take possession of the government.
May 15, 2000 Havana, Cuba
Forty seven years later the official rhetoric surrounding the Cuban Revolution is still in high gear but nobody seems to be paying much attention. From the airport, my taxi's radio is boldly broadcasting an earsplitting censure of the United States and its record of handgun violence among children. The moderator interviews a woman concerning the previous day's Million Mom March on the Mall in Washington and the recent shootings at the National Zoo. He attempts to tie in the gun theme to Elián Gonzalez but the little boy's relevance to handgun violence seems tenuous at best.
"Not much positive about the U.S. today," I comment glibly.
"Well, you know, this child….," says the driver, unable to muster enough enthusiasm to finish the thought.
I neglect to tell the cabby that I have left Eliáncito back in my home state of Maryland where he seems, from all accounts, to be thriving at the exclusive Wye Plantation. I know it's just a matter of time before the driver asks me where I am from. I'm trying to remember how to say "Zanzibar" in Spanish. "Soy Zanzibareño," I rehearse under my breath. Every once in a while I spot a T-shirt with a picture of the motherless Elián on it but the intrigue down here seems to be more a "flavor of the day," than a righteous outpouring of patriotic fervor. If there is hope for a rapprochement between Cuba and the U.S. it must lie, I think, somewhere in the mutual apathy shared for this boy's final place residency. On the bottom of one of the shirts I half expect to read: MY PARENTS WENT TO THE RALLY AT THE U.S. INTERESTS SECTION AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT. As we cross over the Almendares River into the Vedado section of Havana, a modest billboard announcing Mother's Day reads "Today, the most noble part of you." Yesterday, Cuban musical icon Leo Brouwer conducted a Mother's Day concert as a part of the 10th Havana International Guitar Festival and Competition. The program consisted of back to back performances of the guitar concertos, de Cojímar (the fishing village of Hemingway's the Old Man and the Sea) by Robert Valera, de Volos (No.6) by Brouwer, del La Habana (No.7) by Brouwer, and Aranjuez by Rodrigo. Soloists Rosa Matos, Costa Cotsiolas, Joaquin Clerch, and Rey Guerra performed these work respectively. At a press conference, Brouwer, permanent president of the festival (it's a Cuban thing and you wouldn't understand) has said that this year he hopes to achieve a "festival inside of a festival," recreating the atmosphere of the jam sessions so familiar to Cuban culture. But in reality, the festival might better be described as a festival inside of a festival grafted onto another festival. During May the Huella de España (Impressions of Spain) is center stage in Havana. It is a celebration of Spanish heritage consisting of a series of concerts and exhibitions running concurrent with the guitar festival, and bringing the likes of the Romero guitar quartet into Havana. The Cubans are particularly fond of the Romeros since the patriarch of the quartet, the late Celedonio, was born in the Cuban town of Cienfuegos where his father was working at the time. A concert by guitarist John Williams, who performed Brouwer's Decameron Negro, has inaugurated this year's festival. At a press conference when Brouwer refers to Williams as 'the most important guitarist of the century,' one is left speculating as to exactly which century he might be referring. The accolade, however, may not be entirely premature. In Cuba, Castro decided that the rest of the world was a year early when it ushered in the millenium and will presumably be holding its celebration this coming January. If you pay attention, you will hear this "20th Century" reference a lot in Cuba this year. The Communist slogans and billboards have faded in number and visibility here of late and the propaganda has taken on a kind of low-level insider's rhetoric. While the century in Cuba may still be split, the concerts are back to back. One might question the wisdom of scheduling of two evening concerts each night at 6:00 and 8:30 p.m., but this agendum only highlights the enormous amount of guitar that the festival offers every two years in May. Perhaps Czech guitarist Pavel Steidl offers the most delightful performance of the week. His every phrase verily drips with musicality and a substantial emotional path. Performing on both a modern and nineteenth century instruments (in works by Mertz, Coste, and Legnani as well as a composition of his own), this player offers a variety of presentation that the current guitar scene is tacitly screaming for. His performance is so engaging that Brouwer, stationed somewhere in the third row, is handing out high fives to other members of the audience well before the performer's string of encores begin. Argentine guitarist Eduardo Isaac shares the evening's split concert. His broad, round sound is a welcome compliment to Steidl's period instrument. The concert's highlight is Isaac's arrangement of selections from Maria de Buenos Aires by Piazzola. This week in Cuba, only a few months after suffering a heart attack, Brouwer runs from press conference to podium, to guitar competition, to rehearsals and concerts like the Conejito Eveready. In a masterclass, he pours over details of his Elogio de la Danza with as much enthusiasm as though this were 1964. The peripatetic Cuban has an ebullient joy for all things musical that would seem to be perpetually boundless. One evening I visit the Teatro Trianón to watch a documentary on the life of Brouwer. The Cuban is shown in his apartment in Havana amid a firetrap of tapes, scores, letters and recordings. During the film we see clips of Brouwer playing the Aranajuez concerto with the Cuban Jazz group Irakere, Brouwer with electric guitar recording pop music, and Brouwer in the 60's conducting a Baroque ensemble in Europe. A portion of the video is dedicated to the composer's work with the late filmmaker Tomás Guiteréz de Aléa (Guantanamera and Fresa y Chocolate). There is an interesting clip of an interpretive dance choreographed to the music of Elogio de la Danza interspersed with the composer underscoring Stravinsky's influence in the work. The line between documentary and docudrama is occasionally blurred with clips of the Cuban preparing the Havana Symphony for their Concerto de Volos with guitarist Costa Cotsiolas, the player to which Brouwer has been most closely wed in recent years. On the podium, Brouwer is filmed erupting into frequent temper tantrums that threaten to make Toscanini's direction appear emotionally detached by comparison. The beautiful Teatro Amadeo Roldán, (the festival's new home) has just finished being refurbished last year by the state after having been gutted by fire twenty years ago. The Teatro sits directly in front of the headquarters of Alicia Alonso and the famous Cuban Ballet and is convenient to some of city's best hotels. The building contains two halls: the Sala Caturla (capacity 276) and the Sala Amadeo Roldan (capacity 889). The former, outstanding for its acoustics and intimacy, is the finest guitar performance facility that this writer has seen. In both halls air conditioning ducts placed in the back of each seat permit not only a comfortable environment, but also zero ambient noise during recording and performance. At the spiritual apex of the festival, Finnish guitarist Timo Korhonen single handedly derails the event with, what can only be described, as the most bizarre spectacle in the history of guitar festivals. After performing a Bach sonata, the Finn leaves the stage that immediately goes portentously black. Next, an enormously lengthy description of Kurt Schwitter's Ursonte is broadcast during which time, we learn, Mr. Korhonen has spent the last six months developing his own personal interpretation. Unfortunately, no amount preparation could be sufficient to prepare the audience to for what soon follows. Reappearing on stage, sans guitar, with a dozen pages of text in hand and, the Finn performs said sonata. The narrative sonata is comprised entirely of unintelligible syllables interrupted by sporadic vocalise, guttural melancholic grunting, and frequent violent eruptions of the phrase "reke the bebe". Initially suspicious that the performance isn't, in fact, a brilliant gag, the audience howls in thinly suppressed hysteria for the first ten minutes. It eventually becomes evident, however, that the joke is on the audience. Twenty minutes, and three movements later, those who still remain in their seats reward the performer with a polite round of applause; for in matters of guts over glory the latter is always the hero in Havana. Following Ursonte, Mr. Korhonin further endears himself to the audience with Henze's Royal Winter Music a work whose spar melodic accessibility further saturates the lobby- a narrow colonial affair not geared to handle the length and breath of Mr. Korhonen's artistic vision. Downsizing a program for the benefit of a festival can be a tricky artistic accomplishment that on this evening goes unrealized; and all this is to the detriment of the second half of the evening's performance, Noche Flamenca that does not get under way until almost ten thirty. The festival's two mainstays Costa Cotsiolas and Shin Ichi Fukudu return again to the festival, the latter, premiering a work dedicated to him by Sergio Assad. Assad's work contains all the dense complexity that one has come to expect from that source. For the second half of Fukudu's program he returned with Japanese Jazz guitarist Kuzumi Wantanabe who jammed against Fukudu's Villa-Lobos Prelude #1 for all it was worth. Despite it's engaging effect, when two guys from Japan fly to Cuba to combine American jazz and Brazilian classical guitar music one must be suspect that the apocalypse is close at hand. A reflective moment occurs at the end of the concert when the two players dedicate an arrangement of the Beatles' The Fool on the Hill to "Brouwer and is love of the Beatles." The songs dulcet tones seem to drift out of the Teatro and up the steep hill to the Revolutionary Plaza itself. The next afternoon, I am invited to the home of Aldo Rodriguez, Cuba's first major competition winner. On our journey from the concert hall to his apartment we pass the U.S. interests section were a mob has gathered. Cuban guards have the street cordoned off and a man on a ladder with a megaphone is trying, without success, to organize the unruly group. "Is this another protest about the child," I ask.
"No, they are in line for visas," says Rodriguez.
Rodriguez is the picture of grace and hospitality-a gentleman's gentleman. He gives me a tour of his apartment with a magnificent view of the sea, a panorama partially marred by the rigging set up on the Malecon for the Elián demonstrations. On the wall in his studio hang several pictures of himself taken last year with Fidel Castro. He regales me with a video, method book, and a score of his work. During the week Mr. Rodriguez performs the Fantasia Para un Gentilhombre that the newspaper Granma reports is played with "precision and stature bringing emphasis to the melodic power, the nobility of it's inflexions, and dignity of expression." Such is the great success of this performance that the second movement is repeated for the audience. That night, the Cuban, Jorge Luis Zamora, winner of the 1993 Radio France Competition and former student of Aldo Rodriguez handily rips through his program of virtuoso repertoire. This player has a vast technique and a no-nonsense musical sensibility that surely ranks him among those at the top of the guitar world. Zamora opens his program with Brouwer's arrangement of Piazzola's Death of an Angel. Virtuoso works like Seis por Derecho by Antonio Lauro, and Guajíras de Lucía by Paco de Lucía fill his program. After each work the crowd erupts in applause reminiscent of the finals at Wimbledon. Zamora closes with Danza from "La Vida Breve" by Manuel de Falla. Two-thirds of the way through Zamora gets tripped up on a measure and is forced to repeat the work only narrowly escaping the same pitfall on the redo. Despite a standing ovation the humble Zamora refuses the encore. During this week in Cuba the country is rife with competitions of one sort or another. In the resort area of Varadero, the Russians are back. A contingent of Russian chess players has come here for an international chess championship. Just west of Havana, at the Hemingway Marina, is the annual sword fishing competition that American author founded fifty years ago which Castro himself won in 1960. The following year the writer shot himself in the head. When I arrive at the section of the marina known as Papa, the fishing boats are all out for the day. All that remain are an enormous inflatable snowman, a small banner announcing the competition, and three guys from Atlanta nursing their hangovers. On my way back from the marina I decide to take a look at the Superior School of Art which houses facilities for Dance, Music, and Art education. The grounds of the school, a country club before the Revolution, now house a rag tag collection of buildings of such architectural disparity that only EPCOT Center might rival their eclectic assembly. From inside the main building drifts the sound of a clarinet while a trumpet student stands in the courtyard practicing Vivaldi. From out of one of the administration buildings a boy emerges chasing two fat pigs into the street in the direction of the Vivaldi concerto. Say what you will about Cuba, there's no high and low culture down here- it's all just culture. As for the guitar competition, it is conquered by the sheer bravery of a 21 one-year-old blind Rumanian, Ionna Gandbrabur, who arrived in Havana accompanied by only her guitar and her fearlessness. She sails through the three rounds to claim second place. The third place was given to the Cuban, Alexis Javier Méndez and first prize left deserted. Nineteen guitarists from six countries (only one from outside of Latin America) vied for the top prize of $5,000. Also gaining entry into the competition this year was fourteen-year-old Cuban guitarist Yasser Rodriguez. The Cuban contingent was chosen from a national competition, which took place in December. The competition winner performs with the Havana Symphony on the last day of the festival and claims to be the only competition to afford this opportunity. One is given pause, nevertheless, to question this practice of leaving a first prize vacant in guitar competitions. I suspect that if the winner of chess championship were given a second place or the angler with the longest swordfish a consolation prize there would be quite a tale to tell. Perhaps the difference lies somewhere deep within the nature of the musical beast where one artist's allegando is another artists's morendo. The morning I am to leave Havana I take a cab to the Barrio Chino, the section of Havana Vieja where, ironically, so many Chinese emigrated years ago to avoid their Communist Revolution. The barrio hearkens back to a Havana which is fading from even its own memory-only one in thirty people I see appear to be Chinese. So many people have left Cuba in recent years. It's easy to feel their absence, here, in this place that was once the main point of embarkation to the New World. When I return to Maryland the temperature here is climbing to the sub-tropical range. I turn on the radio. Elián has gone to the National Zoo for the afternoon with his father.
David Reynolds: On the Cuban School of the Guitar
Miss Red Guitar and the Beasts of the North.
aria Luisa Anido was an Argentine guitar prodigy who studied with Prat and Llobet and who first appeared in concert at nine years of age. Known as the "Gran Dame of the Guitar," she concertized extensively in South America and Europe, making six trips to the former Soviet Union. Good friends with the father of Che Guevara, Anido first expressed and interest in visiting Cuba at the outset of the Cuban Revolution. In 1981, at the invitation of the Cuban government, she finally settled in Cuba to teach and perform. In his 1992 guitarist Aldo Rodriguez published his book Maria Luisa Anido Una Vida a Contramano (Editorial Letras Cubanas) which consists of short conversions between the two guitarists on a variety of subjects relating to the long trajectory of her career. In Rodriguez's book, the Argentine guitarist relates her encounters with Andres Segovia (who advised her to disregard her nerves since, "no one can play in front of me"), Miguel Llobet (who "practiced mentally, very seldom physically"), Emilio Pujol ( "who practiced eight hours and day… and got nervous when he performed"), Alirio Diaz ("a man with integrity"), John Williams ("who always dressed informally"), and Augustine Barrios (who"sweated a lot when he played… and got his guitar wet") The following excerpt recounts the guitarist's layover in the LA airport while on her way to a debut recital in Tokyo.
Where I explain why I Neither Play nor Record in the United States From Una Vida a Contramano by Aldo Rodriguez
Reprinted with permission of the author and translated by David Reynolds
I remember when I arrived in Los Angeles, in the United States-I had first passed through Panama. I was in transit on my way to Japan, and there was a stupid young American who looked at me with an ironic smile:
"Where are you going to?"
"Japan."
"Are you sure?"
"Where else would I be going?"
"Are you sure you're not going to China?"-In those days China and the USSR were very close friends. "No, I'm not going there."
"Are you sure you're not going to China?"
"No, look, don't you see that I have a visa for Japan?" I showed him the passport…
"Fine, but you can't go to a hotel."
"I don't need to if the airport is comfortable."
"You can't stay here either."
I thought to myself 'why can't I stay in the airport?' Finally, we were there a few hours and he got bored with me; I got up and he said:
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to drink coffee."
"You can't you don't have a visa."
"The coffee is right here, in the airport."
"Wait a minute."
Next came a man and woman in uniform, and I thought they were airport personnel. It turned out they were police; then they accompanied me, one on each side, to drink my coffee. I was very unaccustomed to all this because I had traveled quite a bit and nothing like this had ever happened. I thought I was a passenger in transit and did not require a visa. The following day I had to travel, to get a plane that would take me to Tokyo- I had already been traveling for two or three days; in those days the planes were much slower. So they said to me:
"Since it's almost eleven at night we're are going to take you to a hotel."
"Why? I'm fine here."
"No we are going to take you."
The police spoke perfect Spanish, but when we got in the car, they forgot it. I tried to be cordial:
"Well since I'm here, why don't we take a turn around the downtown?"
"What did you say? We don't understand you."
Since I was having no luck with them I shut up; I finally asked one of them "But where are we going, on this road deserted road?"
"What, we don't understand."
Fine. We went to a separate building that was a hotel, so they said. They put me in the hands of someone else, I went up a large elevator, I don't know to which floor; I entered a kind of apartment and they left me with a woman with gold buttons, mean, loud, and always speaking in English. I began to get nervous.
Why don't they give me someone who speaks Spanish? I could explain to them: I don't know why if I have been a good person in so many other parts of the world, why I would be bad here?
I saw that this wasn't a hotel. I realized that she understood everything I was saying. She wanted me to go into a room filled with bunkbeds and to lock me in with a key and I saw that this was a detention center. Then I jumped backwards, and leaned against the wall and began to scream in Creole, and she was screaming in English. I said "I'm not going in there alone! I not going in! I'm not going in!
About this time a young Mexican girl came over, very down to earth, and said to me.
"You're going to have to go in and I will go with you."
Later, the Mexican told me that there had been a woman from Columbia there as well as some other woman for several months. She herself had crossed the border and had no idea when they were going to let her out. After what she told me I thought my wings had been really clipped. I had only brought with me a little bag and the windows there had bars on them. In reality it was a cell; it was something that they used took keep "in truth," people under suspect. No one knew that I was there. This happened on the fourth or fifth of May and I was supposed to debut in Tokyo on the ninth. Later I found out, to make things worse, that Argentina doesn't have any representation in Los Angeles. Well, I didn't sleep at all. The following morning about five o'clock came the nasty policewoman with the gold buttons came in and said to me "Get ready, they're coming to get you in a few minutes."
I looked at her and said, "You learned to speak Spanish pretty quickly. Huh?"
She had understood everything I said when I had arrived. They really made me sick, and the following day the airport police came but this time I didn't say a word. I was the first person on the plane, not by honor or special attention but because of suspicion. Among the good stewardesses there was a girl, the movie star type, that eyed me from a distance and with a certain scorn said "South American."
I looked at her as if to advertise "Don't worry child, in this world there are no small enemies."
…When I arrived in Tokyo, the Japanese, with their courtesy, affection, flowers, and honors, made me forget everything. But I knew I would tell everybody. At that time, the Japanese were against the North Americans because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I remember, in all the beautiful things that they told me, one thing in particular. It was that they were happy that I was not one of the "Beasts of the North."
David Reynolds was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1961. He lives in Columbia, Maryland with his wife Laurie and son Dylan where he teaches guitar at Washington Bible College. Mr. Reynolds has written articles about the guitar in Cuba for Guitar Review, Soundboard, and Gendai Guitar.
Manuel Barrueco The Baltimore Interview June, 25th 1998 By David Reynolds
Perhaps the only place in the world more humid than Havana in the spring, is Baltimore in the summer. A month after I returned from the island, I sat with Manuel Barrueco on his back porch. We sweated, killed mosquitoes, and discussed his upcoming release, which is comprised completely of guitar music from his native country of Cuba. I arrived at the interview feeling slightly unprepared with perhaps a dozen questions. Long after midnight we were still going strong. During our conversation we argued politics, laughed, and endured more than few moments of strong silence as Barrueco thoughtfully filled in the blanks on several subjects; his difficult youth in Cuba, his subsequent life in exile, and what it would take to put him back on the stage in Santiago de Cuba. We also discussed less emotional subjects such as planting with the right hand, dancing naked in Iceland, and how to make yourself invisible. The Cuban child is the father of the American man. A strong and stable sense of identity does not come easy for people who are forced to straddle two cultures. On his fifty-fifth birthday, an uncle of mine wrote a note to my mother asking her who he was; I wasn't that much different. Although I understand the reasons why I put away my past, I was wrong to think that, absent of the material trappings, I no longer needed who I had been. Take away the house and the Cadillacs, and you still have the kid who rode in them. That boy on the dock is not a phantom. In truth, he is perhaps mi yo más mío, the part of me that is most me. -Gustavo Pérez Firmat
On a New Recording of Cuban Guitar Music "Too much time?" I joke with Barrueco as we pour over a small, inacurate, German map of Santiago de Cuba. The guitarist methodically traces the streets and eventually pinpoints the spot, on Calle Corona, where in the shadow of a music school, he grew up. "I know you're gonna say it's been too long but I really think this map is incorrect," protests Barrueco. A few days earlier he had finished conducting his annual master class at the Peabody Conservatory where students from around the world came to study the Aranjuez Concerto. Last year the guitarist gave a sold out concert at Peabody in which his playing was no less than astonishing. An unbeatable synergy of student enthusiasm and audience ignorance combined to produce wild applause between virtually every movement of a Bach suite, lending a kind of "18th hole at the U.S.Open" feel to the recital. Barrueco handled the distractions with typical humility and graciousness. His release of the Rodrigo concerto last year, with Placido Domingo conducting, galvanized the Cuban guitarist as an artist in the absolute upper echelon of the musical world. Barrueco's subsequent release of Latin American music, entitled Cantos y Danzas, included an appearance by Barbara Hedricks performing Bachnias Brasilieras No. 5. The Cuban's recordings of Beatles, Paul Simon, and Chick Corea, have sometimes led him off into a musical direction that ten years ago might have been difficult to predict. In 1994 Barrueco released Some Time Ago, perhaps his most beautifully recorded guitar CD to date. That release represented a distillation of Barrueco's original vision for a recording, which would run the gamut from American pop and folk music through to Elliot Carter and all points in between. The Spanish word for a misshapen pearl barrueco (baroco in Portuguese) is the term art historians of the nineteenth century used to describe the ornamented architecture of the 17th century. It is from here in which our word Baroque is derived. Hence it is perhaps appropriate then, that Barrueco’s recent release of Bach Violin Sonatas (published by Schott) have been met with much excitement. For his next project the guitarist returns to his roots. He has recorded a CD entirely of Cuban nationalistic music. In as much as Cuban classical guitar music draws from it's own popular culture as a primary source of inspiration, I assume that this CD will be the Cuban counterpart to A Long Time Ago; however Barrueco's personal vision could not be more distinct. "The Cuban CD will be all Cuban nationalistic music. Everything will be distinguishably Cuban through the rhythms and so on. There's nothing pop in it, although some of the pieces, like the Canción Triste {by Carlos Fariñas}, have a kind of pop feel." "You didn't record any {Ernesto}Lecuona?" I ask. "Yea, I did," responds Barrueco. "You don't consider him to be popular? " "If you wanted to talk about American music I'd be more inclined to compare him with somebody like Gershwin. I think they used the music similarly and they both had the ability to write these kind of beautiful melodies. There's a lot of music on the CD that's not known to people. When I told people I was going to do the CD they said 'Yea, two thirds Leo Brouwer and then what else?' At one point I wanted to make it with no Brouwer but I thought it would be kind of silly really."
On Learning the Guitar in Cuba Barrueco is from Santiago de Cuba, Cuba's second largest city on the far eastern end of the island. Santiago is considered the cradle of the Cuban Revolution and even today remains a world away from Havana, a city which Barrueco never visited until a couple days before his family left the island. For this reason I was curious as to how much influence from the larger Cuban guitar scene Barrueco was actually exposed to. "At the time I was there {in Santiago}, the people that would play concerts were Brouwer, Ortega, and Elias Barreiro. So whenever they came in to town they would meet with us, and socially also. Also don't forget in my case I was a child. Even when I left Cuba I was fourteen. I think when I met Brouwer for the first time I was eleven. He was already a man in his twenties and so it wasn't a friendship one to one it was more like a puppy trying to follow these guys around trying to learn something. Also, I was extremely shy and so I didn't say a word more than I needed to say which was basically observing them." Barrueco's triumph over the Bach Chaconne when he was twelve is legendary, but there were other pieces he remembers as being significant for him early on as well. "It's funny because I think… one of the first pieces that I really fell in love with was the Folias by Gapar Sanz. I remember seeing Brouwer play it in concert and I was really impressed with that. I just have this memory of going to bed as a child and just being in love with this melody, not being able to get it out of my head, just hoping that one day I would be able to play it. With Castro after that there were no recordings available, so I would hear some of the things people had bought before Castro, recordings of maybe Segovia or Bream. I have concert programs when I was twelve and I was playing Capricio Arabe, Recuerdos , and the Danza Mora." "That was an exercise in trying to be like Brouwer, it's not because I was dying to play the piece, I was just trying to be like him."
For Barrueco, Leo Brouwer was the larger than life idol that is a prerequisite for every teenage boy with a guitar. "I was convinced at the time if there was a God he would be second to Brouwer," says Barrueco. "I had heard that he played the Chaconne when he was twelve so here I am trying to learn the chaconne before I was twelve. And being in Cuba you couldn't find it anywhere. So finally two weeks before I turned twelve somebody gave it to me. So that's all I had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The day before I turned twelve I finally stumbled through the piece." "The Segovia edition," I ask? "Yea, that's what it was. I have no idea how I was playing it, Bach was probably turning over in his grave. That was an exercise in trying to be like Brouwer, it's not because I was dying to play the piece, I was just trying to be like him." "Did you ever meet Rey de la Torre?" I question Barrueco. "I studied with him for a little while in New York before he left to live in California. I think that what he did in many ways was ahead of it's time. In fact I was listening to some of it not too long ago and there's an aesthetic that is definitely ahead of it's time and in many ways he probably suffered from that whole Segovia thing in the sense that that kind of style, Segovia probably overshadowed completely."
On Segovia In 1976 Michael Lorimer introduced Manuel to Segovia at a hotel room in New York. "I began playing the Prelude to the Second Lute Suite by Bach, and he said 'your fingers are very docile, but you should not listen to critics or musicologists and you should dwell more on the dissonance'. So I played it for him that way and he seemed very happy. Then I played Spanish Dance #3 by Granados and he seemed to get a kick out of it, once again commenting on my docile fingers. Finally, I started to play Sevilla and he interrupted me immediately and with lots of excitement in his voice said 'too fast!' I apologized and assured him that I was not simply trying to play it as fast as I could, so he said, "well imagine if you were." I went on petrified to go too fast. When we got to the middle section he began singing along, to show me how to make it sing. At the end he said 'very good, but you should be careful not to become a victim of you own technique!' As I left he insisted on walking me to the door, which I asked him not to do, as he had just hurt one of his toes in an accident. As we were leaving he said 'I hope you become one of the great…' and he finished the sentence by waiving his right hand over his head. This story is one which Barrueco has seldom told, and provides and insight into the stubborn naiveté in which he had resolved early on, to build a career without linking himself to the coat tails of Segovia. "People talk about the Segovia sound. The amazing sound of Segovia and we both know what sounds we are talking about but have you heard the ones around the sounds? Have you heard the quality of the ones that surrounds that one sound {laughs}? It's true! Whenever there was a difficulty he would find a way to take a big chance here musically. So the guy, not only did he get around the difficulty, but it seemed like an amazing musical idea, reflects Barrueco. Everyday I respect more and more the fantastic work that he has done. But having said that, I have to say I was shocked one time I heard a tape of Miguel Llobet's. Because up until that moment I was one of those that was convinced that nothing existed and then Segovia created the guitar in seven days. And then you start seeing that no, Llobet was doing a lot of the same things that Segovia was doing. And I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of the things that we credit Segovia with doing even go back to Tárrega." Andrés Segovia was a guitarist who based much of his interpretation around the problems and pitfalls of playing the guitar. Barrueco however, seems to delight in defying these obstacles for the music's own sake. "I think what I try to do is to hide all the limitations, to overcome them all. To show that the guitar could be perfect, sound perfect. But then you come to realize that if you play by all the rules you become invisible because it's only how you differ from the norm that creates a friction that distinguishes it from everything else. I'll tell you something that happened from my childhood. Brouwer had made a record and he had recorded his Elogio de la Danza, the Ardevol Sonata, Fariñas prelude, and Villa-Lobos Etude 7. So I remember at one of those gatherings I told you about my teacher Monolo Puig said 'My God Leo this is something really interesting this record you made but why didn't you record Sevilla, or something well known like that?' If my memory does not fail me Leo asked him, 'Manolo, if you went to a record store and you saw Leo Brouwer plays Sevilla and Andres Segovia plays Sevilla, which one would you buy?' 'Well, Segovia plays Sevilla,' he said. 'Now that's why I didn't do it.' Said Brouwer. "So I learned that something needs to be different,"
On Interpreting of Music Despite Barrueco's unassailable critical acclaim, for some, his dedication to substance and style over emotional reference seems too "straight" in a guitar world still held sway by the deeply personal playing of many past masters. The interesting thing is this approach was more artistically calculated than might first appear. "What I found to make myself different was to just play things the way they were written. Because such freedom in interpretation prevailed up until that moment, and really the whole atmosphere in the music world was, in general, that I be more strict in the rhythm, that I find by doing that, that's it, I was different which I saw a necessity! I'll tell you something's that happens nowadays. Sometimes I play something in a way that I have difficulty intellectually justifying -but hell I like it. And then what do you do? Do you settle for less, for some rational reason that may even be wrong, or do you go for it? I mean now a days I'll go for it."
"I think what I try to do is to hide all the limitations, to overcome them all. To show that the guitar could be perfect, sound perfect."
Barrueco's playing style is an amalgam of a careful examination of playing styles from a variety of instruments and performers he admirers. "Leonhart was my model for baroque music for a long time and De Larrocha was my model for Spanish music. I tried to incorporate as much as possible, all of these observations. Then one day I realized, you take a d minor chord and play it on the baroque guitar-it sounds baroque, you play it on the harpsichord-it sounds baroque. You play it on the lute -it sounds renaissance. You play it on the guitar-it doesn't sound like anything. It could be baroque it could be James Taylor or anything. So I was convinced that the guitar was at a loss if it would continue on those terms-it had to do what it would do best. And so you have to find out what the sound of the guitar is, which may differ from what you may rationally arrive at. I think if we keep on that line, somewhere way down there we will find Segovia. He went all for the instrument, sacrificing too much, I think, where the music was. I find myself going more in that direction nowadays. You have to do what you can do well and you have to let the instrument do what it can do well."
On Interpreting the Past S antiago is the most ethnically diverse cities amid what is generally a highly multicultural Cuban society. Much of it's musical culture stems from the Yoruban heritage brought to Cuba through the slave trade and is made manifest in the Santería religion, practiced widely on the island. The beautiful Cantos Yoruba written by Héctor Angulo and recorded by Barrueco on his recent CD are fantastic adaptations of some of these Yoruban melodies for guitar. Nevertheless as a child, an appreciation for the Yoruban culture was lost on him, and it has not been until recently that the guitarist has gained an intellectual curiosity for it. "I was in Iceland in a festival and the day before I played, there was a Cuban painter, Manuel Mendive, a really good painter. He had what you might call a happening, or a performance. It was an all black entourage and he had two drummers seated at the ends of this canvas. He had a singer and three dancers. The singer and the three dancers were completely naked. Completely naked, I mean not a ring, not a sock, not a hairpin--naked! They were playing Yoruban music and they were singing in Yoruban which I couldn't understand -I don't speak Yoruban. So when the muse struck Mendive he would get up and paint either the canvas or the body of the singers. As fascinated as I was by this and intrigued by all this, it was hitting me in the face that Cuba is multi-cultural and that in many ways I couldn't relate to these kind of things. {It} must have been sort of a shock for the Icelandic people, such a homogeneous people in the society when they see that, and then I play the next day." " Maybe they were expecting you to do the same thing." I suggest. "Maybe," laughs Barrueco. Miami a la Vista The vast majority of our conversation gravitated toward Barrueco's memories of living and playing the guitar in Cuba. The stories are unhappy and the frustrations of growing up in Castro's Cuba are manifest and ones in which the passage of time has done little to diminish. "That was an extremely difficult time in my life. It was extremely difficult. People forget that that was not a Communist revolution and in fact I could show you videotape of Castro saying we're not Communist. So it took some time before the Revolution declared itself Communist, not the Revolution, but the people in power because the people did not fight for Communism. So when that happened some people didn't let the children go to school, afraid that they would be brain washed. So for a couple of years I was going to a clandestine teacher. Eventually I went back to the communist school but that was difficult because if you were not a Communist you were a gusano (literally "worm"-a term used in Cuba for individuals who are not communist). I remember being in school and being told to shut up by a teacher because I was not a Communist. That's the way it was in my life at that time. You knew that that was the worst thing you could possible be so you live with this fear that something will happen to your family. My mother happened to be someone who couldn't control herself and sometimes she would open her mouth and say bad things against the government and you'd be afraid that she'd be taken away somewhere. It was really scary" "But then you come to realize that if you play by all the rules you become invisible because it's only how you differ from the norm that creates a friction that distinguishes it from everything else." Forbidden to leave Cuba with anything but the clothes on his back, Manuel borrowed a series of instruments from friends and teachers. "Actually, in many ways, the Ruck guitar I still use in recordings is really the first guitar that I ever really owned. In Cuba, my family had a guitar but the action of the strings was like an inch too high. When I started to show that I had some talent I had a cousin and she lent me a Yamaha. Then the conservatory had a guitar made for me by Aquilino Pérez, and the Conservatory gave it to me to play. I broke the guitar. I was rough playing with some of the kids and I put a hole through the top. When we came to New Jersey, Rey de la Torre lent me a Miguel Company guitar and I used that until 1972 and {then} I bought the Ruck guitar. "If I was afraid living in Cuba then I was even more afraid to come to the U.S. Because all we heard about was the violence, the discrimination, the imperials Yankees, and how America despised us. I honestly can tell you that I was truly petrified when I got off the airplane that people would be like shooting at us. So the feeling of being here and not being shot at was exhilarating. It was an incredible high, it was mystifying. Seeing family I had not seen for years. I was so impressed with the wealth of the country. Juan Mercadal taught me from the time we were in Miami and never charged me a cent for any of it. He couldn't have, we didn't have it." If things got better for Barrueco in Miami, then it would not be long before his happiness would come to an abrupt halt. The entire family was uprooted from Florida around 1968 to Newark, New Jersey. And the effect on the guitarist was so profoundly difficult that he stopped playing for a year and a half. Having no other direction to point his life but music, Barrueco took the first three catalogues in the school's guidance office that offered guitar programs; Peabody, Mannes and Boston Conservatory and applied to each one. He auditioned for Aaron Shearer in Baltimore, despite not having played in all this time. A phone call from Shearer offered Barrueco a full Scholarship at the Conservatory. "Mr. Shearer I have to tell you something", responded Barrueco to the offer. " I haven't practiced the guitar, I don't know if I'm going to get into it again, I don't know." "Don't worry about it," responded Shearer sympathetically. Barrueco didn’t. " I was a pretty bad student for the first year or two. I didn't practice. I partied all the time and was really totally miserable. I would practice fifteen minutes before the lessons, I mean for the whole week. That was it!" "My relationship with Shearer was a rocky one, a difficult one. Then one day I realized that there was something between the guitar and myself and I didn't know what it was. You have to realize that ever since I was a child I was so convinced that the guitar was the center of the universe. The world existed because of the guitar. I mean for me psychologically it was also a refuge of all this stuff that was going on around me. I had a lot of hang-ups. I thought I was the most hideous, unlovable person to have walked the earth and all of a sudden, because of the guitar, I was a desirable thing- a child protegee. At one point not long after that I said to myself 'I'm gonna give this thing a shot and see what happens'. And so I started to practice, it was hard like hell. I had no desire and no discipline. Then one day I said I'm going to set myself certain goals and if it goes well I will continue, and if not, I'm going to give up the guitar." Barrueco did not give up the guitar. He won the Concert Artist's Guild award, a date with the National Symphony, and subsequently got second place in the famous Toronto competition from which he received enormous recognition. Although his relationship with the guitar remained intact, Manuel himself had changed. He no longer sought the unconditional companionship of the instrument, but rather desired to integrate his love for the guitar with a resolute commitment to its demands. "I'm not the kind of guitar person that just pulls the guitar out to play. I never do that, never ever. When I was young I practically slept with the guitar. Now I don't practice much with the guitar but also I have an endurance problem. I practice, actually, literally with the guitar it's three hours. I do 45 I rest 15 I do 45 then I take a couple hours then I do 45 I rest 15 I do 45 and that's it. So I have to make that count. I've had to become extremely efficient with it." On Being Weird and Uninteresting I wonder what Manuel's impression is of the younger generation of players he encounters today. " At the highest levels it bothers me that I see too many times young players, amazing young players, that call themselves professional and they stop developing. That bothers me a lot because I see a lot of wasted time around that way. People that could be amazing guitarists and they're not {developing}-artistically. The guitar world is an extremely idiosyncratic, closed, world and one has to be careful not to be closed into that world, not be critical of that world because I enjoy that world, but our vision must be bigger that. Because of these idiosyncrasies we do things that are just weird and really uninteresting musically. I find the best performances I hear are from some of the students here and there. If we all had to begin again it would be a totally different guitar world. I think what happens is that each generation is better than the one before and few of us would survive if we had to start again."
When Last We Met I Was the Student and You Were the Master It is an irony of the passage of time, which finds Barrueco teaching in the same halls at Peabody where he once did battle with himself, the guitar, and his teacher Aaron Shearer some twenty-five years ago. When Manuel passes Manolito in the hallways the words of Darth Vader "When last we met, I was the student and you were the master," must ring familiar.
"I'm not the kind of guitar person that just pulls the guitar out to play. I never do that, never ever"
Barrueco is sincere to a fault on the subject of teaching the guitar and he speaks whole heartedly about his experience trying to guide young musicians. "I learned you cannot teach somebody who doesn't want to learn" he says, laughing." I know that now." "Do you want to expand on that?" I ask. "Can I?" responds the guitarist jokingly. As I sit with Barrueco and we discuss teaching and practice I am struck by how entrenched the Cuban's thinking really has remained in his work with Shearer; vocabulary, approach, and principles of this school of guitar are still in many ways very much intact and have perhaps even been magnified as he has now taken a greater role as a teacher himself. "I once read," says Barrueco. "That one of the biggest compliments that can be offered someone is that what you have to offer becomes common knowledge without people realizing where it came from. Meaning that a lot of things that Shearer has contributed to the guitar world a lot of people don't even know it comes from him. Shearer had a vision of a guitarist. I actually asked him once about 'that imaginary guitarist of yours' and he laughed a lot at the question. What happened in working with me, some of those goals were not exactly the same. I was not the type of player-personality that was going to do everything that somebody told me to do if I didn't believe in it. So sometimes I we would run into trouble. Having said that I wouldn't be whatever I am if it wasn't for Shearer and if I had it to do all over again I would go study with the guy and I would fight him again. That's literally what I would do"
That Which Ye Plant So Also Will Ye Reap Planting of the right hand fingers as a technique for practice has perhaps replaced "nails" or "no nails" as the most volatile technical issue in the history of the guitar. What makes the subject so much fun is that nobody quite agrees what they are talking about, making the possibility for misunderstanding an absolute certainty. "To me one of the great mysteries of the universe is this whole deal about planting." Says Barrueco. "And I don't know where the hell it comes from or where it 's going. I don't do that consciously. My whole thing is doing it right the first time. I'm into the slow part of practice. I would just try to bring the finger out slowly and land in the right place. I think about very smooth continuous movements kind of like Tai Chi. If you really look at the movement of a finger it's not one continuous movement, it's little jerky motions that take place and I've tried to control them as much as I can and it's harder to control when you go slower. I try to make sure it's one smooth movement as much as possible, I try to make sure it goes right in front of the string, not any further than it needs to be, and that it lands in the right place. I believe more in that, just slowing it down and make sure it's right. Next Year in Cuba? One year ago after a masterclass, I spoke with a Cuban about my recent travels to the island. He listened disapprovingly and commented with complete conviction "you know within the year Castro will be dead." This type of rhetoric has been going on for years in the hearts and minds of Cubans on both sides of the Straits of Florida. However, in the words of Gloria Estefan, "forever's come and gone," and still Castro continues to reinvent his revolution and despite all odds, to hang on. Additionally, the Clinton administration has done much to extend an open door to the dictator of late. Meanwhile the average Cuban living on the island will tell you that they are a Communist with all the conviction of an American who proclaims that "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." I pose the question to Barrueco as to what it would take to put him back on the stage in Cuba in the next century? The pause, which now follows, is interminable. "I believe that life is a very precious thing. I believe very deeply in the right of self- determination and freedom. To live one's life the way that one wants to live it, individually, and as a group. I couldn't possibly support anything, anywhere in the world or even give the illusion of support to something that is forcing the people to do something that they don't want." The visible Manuel Barrueco. Bound up inside, along with the anger, one nevertheless senses that the guitarist has knowledge that his position among the Cuban Diaspora is unique; and that music everywhere is the world can be a powerful dictator of peaceful change. Leo Brouwer once wrote a programmatic composition for the guitar based on the story of a musician cast of out of his country only to be called back in desperate days to lead his people to higher ground. "The only way I would swallow the anger that I have toward what's happening over there, I would swallow my pride if there was something that would lead to leaving this behind I would go there. Anything less that that -no way in Hell." "I've been asked more than once to go. The last time I was asked was when people were dying in rafts coming over. "Somebody asked me there 'what would it take to bring you.' I said you gotta be kidding {you think that} I'm gonna give any kind of support to what's causing this?" "I always make it a point to meet Cubans I meet all around the world. If you speak to them long enough they'll start crying it's just a matter of time. I can't go there and take the chance that I'll be presented as the guy who was taken as a kid and, now that he realizes the glory of Communism and the Maximum Leader that he's back to share with us. And then have no way to have any kind of media to say this is not true, this is not what it is. Because that's what they will do. That's what they will do." Long after the tape machine clicks off Manuel Barrueco is still speaking animatedly about Cuba and the difficulties that the Castro government has created on both sides of the Straits of Florida. The stories of pain and repression commingle with a sad affection for people and places the guitarist struggles to retrace, like those distant streets on the small map of Santiago de Cuba which now seem to be somehow missing, or curiously altered. "The Cubans here in America are really a forgotten people. With time one hears and sees more and more tragedies: families separated, and people dying before having a chance to see their homeland or loved ones. And you know what's weird?" asks Barrueco, sounding himself, a little bit lost. "It happens more as I get older. The feelings get more intense." A dedication in the liner notes to Barrueco's Cuban recording reads as follows:
Between Havana and Miami lie the Straits of Florida. In these waters many Cubans have died in pursuit of their dreams. To those victims, and to their dreams, I would like to dedicate this recording. -Manuel Barrueco
¡Oye Mi Cuerpo Pide Brouwer! The 10th Havana International Guitar Competition and Festival Teatro Amadeo Roldan Havana, Cuba May 13-20 2000 In Memory of Masuro Kono
By David Reynolds
May 15, 1953 Mother's Day. Isle of Pines, Cuba
"Here began, really, our great battle of ideas, in this model prison, that we had left better prepared for the following stages of struggle that were to follow…" -Pedro Miret Prieto
W hen the conspirators were released from prison for their attack on the Moncada Barracks, Fidel embraced the officer in charge of security. Not letting the propaganda slow for a minute, he quickly held a press conference at the Isle of Pines Hotel in Nueva Gerona. At five o'clock the next morning, when his train arrived in Havana, admirers jumped aboard and lifted him onto their shoulders, thrusting a Cuban flag into his hands. Releasing Castro on this Mother's Day was a decision Batista would regret just six years later when the former prisoner would once again roll into the capital, this time on a tank, to take possession of the government.
May 15, 2000 Havana, Cuba
Forty seven years later the official rhetoric surrounding the Cuban Revolution is still in high gear but nobody seems to be paying much attention. From the airport, my taxi's radio is boldly broadcasting an earsplitting censure of the United States and its record of handgun violence among children. The moderator interviews a woman concerning the previous day's Million Mom March on the Mall in Washington and the recent shootings at the National Zoo. He attempts to tie in the gun theme to Elián Gonzalez but the little boy's relevance to handgun violence seems tenuous at best.
"Not much positive about the U.S. today," I comment glibly.
"Well, you know, this child….," says the driver, unable to muster enough enthusiasm to finish the thought.
I neglect to tell the cabby that I have left Eliáncito back in my home state of Maryland where he seems, from all accounts, to be thriving at the exclusive Wye Plantation. I know it's just a matter of time before the driver asks me where I am from. I'm trying to remember how to say "Zanzibar" in Spanish. "Soy Zanzibareño," I rehearse under my breath. Every once in a while I spot a T-shirt with a picture of the motherless Elián on it but the intrigue down here seems to be more a "flavor of the day," than a righteous outpouring of patriotic fervor. If there is hope for a rapprochement between Cuba and the U.S. it must lie, I think, somewhere in the mutual apathy shared for this boy's final place residency. On the bottom of one of the shirts I half expect to read: MY PARENTS WENT TO THE RALLY AT THE U.S. INTERESTS SECTION AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT. As we cross over the Almendares River into the Vedado section of Havana, a modest billboard announcing Mother's Day reads "Today, the most noble part of you." Yesterday, Cuban musical icon Leo Brouwer conducted a Mother's Day concert as a part of the 10th Havana International Guitar Festival and Competition. The program consisted of back to back performances of the guitar concertos, de Cojímar (the fishing village of Hemingway's the Old Man and the Sea) by Robert Valera, de Volos (No.6) by Brouwer, del La Habana (No.7) by Brouwer, and Aranjuez by Rodrigo. Soloists Rosa Matos, Costa Cotsiolas, Joaquin Clerch, and Rey Guerra performed these work respectively. At a press conference, Brouwer, permanent president of the festival (it's a Cuban thing and you wouldn't understand) has said that this year he hopes to achieve a "festival inside of a festival," recreating the atmosphere of the jam sessions so familiar to Cuban culture. But in reality, the festival might better be described as a festival inside of a festival grafted onto another festival. During May the Huella de España (Impressions of Spain) is center stage in Havana. It is a celebration of Spanish heritage consisting of a series of concerts and exhibitions running concurrent with the guitar festival, and bringing the likes of the Romero guitar quartet into Havana. The Cubans are particularly fond of the Romeros since the patriarch of the quartet, the late Celedonio, was born in the Cuban town of Cienfuegos where his father was working at the time. A concert by guitarist John Williams, who performed Brouwer's Decameron Negro, has inaugurated this year's festival. At a press conference when Brouwer refers to Williams as 'the most important guitarist of the century,' one is left speculating as to exactly which century he might be referring. The accolade, however, may not be entirely premature. In Cuba, Castro decided that the rest of the world was a year early when it ushered in the millenium and will presumably be holding its celebration this coming January. If you pay attention, you will hear this "20th Century" reference a lot in Cuba this year. The Communist slogans and billboards have faded in number and visibility here of late and the propaganda has taken on a kind of low-level insider's rhetoric. While the century in Cuba may still be split, the concerts are back to back. One might question the wisdom of scheduling of two evening concerts each night at 6:00 and 8:30 p.m., but this agendum only highlights the enormous amount of guitar that the festival offers every two years in May. Perhaps Czech guitarist Pavel Steidl offers the most delightful performance of the week. His every phrase verily drips with musicality and a substantial emotional path. Performing on both a modern and nineteenth century instruments (in works by Mertz, Coste, and Legnani as well as a composition of his own), this player offers a variety of presentation that the current guitar scene is tacitly screaming for. His performance is so engaging that Brouwer, stationed somewhere in the third row, is handing out high fives to other members of the audience well before the performer's string of encores begin. Argentine guitarist Eduardo Isaac shares the evening's split concert. His broad, round sound is a welcome compliment to Steidl's period instrument. The concert's highlight is Isaac's arrangement of selections from Maria de Buenos Aires by Piazzola. This week in Cuba, only a few months after suffering a heart attack, Brouwer runs from press conference to podium, to guitar competition, to rehearsals and concerts like the Conejito Eveready. In a masterclass, he pours over details of his Elogio de la Danza with as much enthusiasm as though this were 1964. The peripatetic Cuban has an ebullient joy for all things musical that would seem to be perpetually boundless. One evening I visit the Teatro Trianón to watch a documentary on the life of Brouwer. The Cuban is shown in his apartment in Havana amid a firetrap of tapes, scores, letters and recordings. During the film we see clips of Brouwer playing the Aranajuez concerto with the Cuban Jazz group Irakere, Brouwer with electric guitar recording pop music, and Brouwer in the 60's conducting a Baroque ensemble in Europe. A portion of the video is dedicated to the composer's work with the late filmmaker Tomás Guiteréz de Aléa (Guantanamera and Fresa y Chocolate). There is an interesting clip of an interpretive dance choreographed to the music of Elogio de la Danza interspersed with the composer underscoring Stravinsky's influence in the work. The line between documentary and docudrama is occasionally blurred with clips of the Cuban preparing the Havana Symphony for their Concerto de Volos with guitarist Costa Cotsiolas, the player to which Brouwer has been most closely wed in recent years. On the podium, Brouwer is filmed erupting into frequent temper tantrums that threaten to make Toscanini's direction appear emotionally detached by comparison. The beautiful Teatro Amadeo Roldán, (the festival's new home) has just finished being refurbished last year by the state after having been gutted by fire twenty years ago. The Teatro sits directly in front of the headquarters of Alicia Alonso and the famous Cuban Ballet and is convenient to some of city's best hotels. The building contains two halls: the Sala Caturla (capacity 276) and the Sala Amadeo Roldan (capacity 889). The former, outstanding for its acoustics and intimacy, is the finest guitar performance facility that this writer has seen. In both halls air conditioning ducts placed in the back of each seat permit not only a comfortable environment, but also zero ambient noise during recording and performance. At the spiritual apex of the festival, Finnish guitarist Timo Korhonen single handedly derails the event with, what can only be described, as the most bizarre spectacle in the history of guitar festivals. After performing a Bach sonata, the Finn leaves the stage that immediately goes portentously black. Next, an enormously lengthy description of Kurt Schwitter's Ursonte is broadcast during which time, we learn, Mr. Korhonen has spent the last six months developing his own personal interpretation. Unfortunately, no amount preparation could be sufficient to prepare the audience to for what soon follows. Reappearing on stage, sans guitar, with a dozen pages of text in hand and, the Finn performs said sonata. The narrative sonata is comprised entirely of unintelligible syllables interrupted by sporadic vocalise, guttural melancholic grunting, and frequent violent eruptions of the phrase "reke the bebe". Initially suspicious that the performance isn't, in fact, a brilliant gag, the audience howls in thinly suppressed hysteria for the first ten minutes. It eventually becomes evident, however, that the joke is on the audience. Twenty minutes, and three movements later, those who still remain in their seats reward the performer with a polite round of applause; for in matters of guts over glory the latter is always the hero in Havana. Following Ursonte, Mr. Korhonin further endears himself to the audience with Henze's Royal Winter Music a work whose spar melodic accessibility further saturates the lobby- a narrow colonial affair not geared to handle the length and breath of Mr. Korhonen's artistic vision. Downsizing a program for the benefit of a festival can be a tricky artistic accomplishment that on this evening goes unrealized; and all this is to the detriment of the second half of the evening's performance, Noche Flamenca that does not get under way until almost ten thirty. The festival's two mainstays Costa Cotsiolas and Shin Ichi Fukudu return again to the festival, the latter, premiering a work dedicated to him by Sergio Assad. Assad's work contains all the dense complexity that one has come to expect from that source. For the second half of Fukudu's program he returned with Japanese Jazz guitarist Kuzumi Wantanabe who jammed against Fukudu's Villa-Lobos Prelude #1 for all it was worth. Despite it's engaging effect, when two guys from Japan fly to Cuba to combine American jazz and Brazilian classical guitar music one must be suspect that the apocalypse is close at hand. A reflective moment occurs at the end of the concert when the two players dedicate an arrangement of the Beatles' The Fool on the Hill to "Brouwer and is love of the Beatles." The songs dulcet tones seem to drift out of the Teatro and up the steep hill to the Revolutionary Plaza itself. The next afternoon, I am invited to the home of Aldo Rodriguez, Cuba's first major competition winner. On our journey from the concert hall to his apartment we pass the U.S. interests section were a mob has gathered. Cuban guards have the street cordoned off and a man on a ladder with a megaphone is trying, without success, to organize the unruly group. "Is this another protest about the child," I ask.
"No, they are in line for visas," says Rodriguez.
Rodriguez is the picture of grace and hospitality-a gentleman's gentleman. He gives me a tour of his apartment with a magnificent view of the sea, a panorama partially marred by the rigging set up on the Malecon for the Elián demonstrations. On the wall in his studio hang several pictures of himself taken last year with Fidel Castro. He regales me with a video, method book, and a score of his work. During the week Mr. Rodriguez performs the Fantasia Para un Gentilhombre that the newspaper Granma reports is played with "precision and stature bringing emphasis to the melodic power, the nobility of it's inflexions, and dignity of expression." Such is the great success of this performance that the second movement is repeated for the audience. That night, the Cuban, Jorge Luis Zamora, winner of the 1993 Radio France Competition and former student of Aldo Rodriguez handily rips through his program of virtuoso repertoire. This player has a vast technique and a no-nonsense musical sensibility that surely ranks him among those at the top of the guitar world. Zamora opens his program with Brouwer's arrangement of Piazzola's Death of an Angel. Virtuoso works like Seis por Derecho by Antonio Lauro, and Guajíras de Lucía by Paco de Lucía fill his program. After each work the crowd erupts in applause reminiscent of the finals at Wimbledon. Zamora closes with Danza from "La Vida Breve" by Manuel de Falla. Two-thirds of the way through Zamora gets tripped up on a measure and is forced to repeat the work only narrowly escaping the same pitfall on the redo. Despite a standing ovation the humble Zamora refuses the encore. During this week in Cuba the country is rife with competitions of one sort or another. In the resort area of Varadero, the Russians are back. A contingent of Russian chess players has come here for an international chess championship. Just west of Havana, at the Hemingway Marina, is the annual sword fishing competition that American author founded fifty years ago which Castro himself won in 1960. The following year the writer shot himself in the head. When I arrive at the section of the marina known as Papa, the fishing boats are all out for the day. All that remain are an enormous inflatable snowman, a small banner announcing the competition, and three guys from Atlanta nursing their hangovers. On my way back from the marina I decide to take a look at the Superior School of Art which houses facilities for Dance, Music, and Art education. The grounds of the school, a country club before the Revolution, now house a rag tag collection of buildings of such architectural disparity that only EPCOT Center might rival their eclectic assembly. From inside the main building drifts the sound of a clarinet while a trumpet student stands in the courtyard practicing Vivaldi. From out of one of the administration buildings a boy emerges chasing two fat pigs into the street in the direction of the Vivaldi concerto. Say what you will about Cuba, there's no high and low culture down here- it's all just culture. As for the guitar competition, it is conquered by the sheer bravery of a 21 one-year-old blind Rumanian, Ionna Gandbrabur, who arrived in Havana accompanied by only her guitar and her fearlessness. She sails through the three rounds to claim second place. The third place was given to the Cuban, Alexis Javier Méndez and first prize left deserted. Nineteen guitarists from six countries (only one from outside of Latin America) vied for the top prize of $5,000. Also gaining entry into the competition this year was fourteen-year-old Cuban guitarist Yasser Rodriguez. The Cuban contingent was chosen from a national competition, which took place in December. The competition winner performs with the Havana Symphony on the last day of the festival and claims to be the only competition to afford this opportunity. One is given pause, nevertheless, to question this practice of leaving a first prize vacant in guitar competitions. I suspect that if the winner of chess championship were given a second place or the angler with the longest swordfish a consolation prize there would be quite a tale to tell. Perhaps the difference lies somewhere deep within the nature of the musical beast where one artist's allegando is another artists's morendo. The morning I am to leave Havana I take a cab to the Barrio Chino, the section of Havana Vieja where, ironically, so many Chinese emigrated years ago to avoid their Communist Revolution. The barrio hearkens back to a Havana which is fading from even its own memory-only one in thirty people I see appear to be Chinese. So many people have left Cuba in recent years. It's easy to feel their absence, here, in this place that was once the main point of embarkation to the New World. When I return to Maryland the temperature here is climbing to the sub-tropical range. I turn on the radio. Elián has gone to the National Zoo for the afternoon with his father.
My Father at Play
Nestled in the cross hairs of Haleakana- the world's largest inactive volcano-and the West Maui Mountains, sits the Hawaiian village of Kihei. If you breath deep, and you want to, you can smell them burning the cane this morning; way back out in the fields where the black clouds of soot and ash billow upward against an enormous azure expanse of sky. Down along the beach on this day in early August, a strong breeze sway the palm fronds in an asynchronous choreography while, far below, two dogs fight over a small coconut bobbing in the surf. A Hawaiian woman combs the sand for a certain strain of seaweed, as her grandson lags behind at an unmeasured pace. At St. Theresa's Catholic Church just around the corner, Yale guitarist Benjamin Verdery, dressed in shorts and a tie-died shirt, wades through the Prelude to Bach's first cello suite with a Hawaiian student from the big island. Verdery pulls a hymnal from a pew and begins playing a psalm to emphasize to the class the importance of good sight-reading. Above both the teacher and his local disciple is suspended an enormous Crucifix. A sign in Hawaiian reads "This is Jesus King of the Jews." On the top of Verdery's beat up Greg Smallman guitar is glued a photo of the Dali Lama. As Verdery wipes his brow, he lifts his guitar above his head. The Dali Lama seems to lock eyes with Christ for a moment before reclining once again to the guitar case. The teacher wipes his brow with a black sock speckled with tiny fish, which is pulled snug across his forearm. "How many extras should we add to this music?" he questions the class. "I like to do more than most of my friends. More bass notes, harmony, and color but the thirds you are playing in the chromatic section sounds like the blues. I like the blues, but not here." And it's true. The blues do seem out of place here, in this pacific paradise where all things seem so light and momentary. No blue allowed -only azure, cobalt, jasmine, turquoise and teal need apply. In fact, when choosing an appropriate location for a guitar masterclass there are apparently three rules of thumb: Maui, Maui, and Maui. Ben Verdery has got all three right and his love affair with the Hawaiian Islands is a long one. "I was working for Affiliate Artists and they called and said 'we think we got you a residency on Maui.' So I said… 'I think I'll be free, I think I could do that.' I got off the airplane into the airport and said this is fine I'll stay right here. I used to look out my window while practicing and see whales. It was ridiculous. I had such a connection with this place. I never felt anything like it. All I could think about was coming back so I started having my own classes here. It wasn't like a festival, it was about teaching and learning and then practicing. What an amazing thing if people could be here and experience this beauty and see how it transforms their playing. Because nature is so powerful here and its so removed. That to me is the most wonderful thing. If someone could be practicing here and be affected by the nature and take that home and have it affect their playing." Driving north on the coastal highway toward the whaling village of Lahaina at sunset it's easy to see the power and beauty that this island set's in motion. Clouds, which cut across verdant mountains, spill into the horizon as thought one is driving into center of the sky. On the left, the setting sun splashes streaks of orange and purple above the ocean whose rolling white caps carry surfers to the palm lined shore until dusk. Students from Honolulu as well as the mainland, Germany, New Zealand and the U.K. have traveled here to sharpen their guitar skills with Benjamin Verdery. Perhaps his most profound endorsement comes from former students at Yale who return to study with their mentor. Verdery keeps the classes light with a quick sense of humor and large quantities of hard candy, which he passes liberally throughout the class at frequent intervals. "There are a few different notes in your playing. I don't want to say they are w r o n g but they sound d i f f e r e n t," Verdery is fond of saying when pitch errors pop up. Verdery's strength as a teacher lies partially in is his eagerness to work with a student's own musical ideas rather than immediately eradicating or supplanting those which appear to not immediately work. He brings little in the way of prefabricated musical or technical agendas to his teaching, but rather, a keen and eager appetite for musical possibility. "The main feature for me in this is performance. That it's a lot of learning but that you come to perform. So what I'm interested in his to have people to come prepared and that we work on the music and of course technique but that they get to play for people." By the third day of the class, attendance drops to a need-to-play basis as participants are lured to the island's far-flung coves and beaches. Not to be out foxed, however, the wily Verdery sheds some questionable Karma by scheduling frequent rehearsals of his composition, Scenes from Ellis Island, for an end of the week concert. The work, requiring twelve parts, has players arriving to afternoon rehearsals with snorkels, fins and boogies boards in tow. In the late afternoon the local homeless drift to the church for a supper provided by the Red Cross. One wayfarer with her little girl in tow passes by, astonished to see fifteen guitarists rehearsing in a room that she is accustomed to seeing completely deserted.
"Are you just visiting?" inquires the woman in wistful amazement.
"I'm a visitor wherever I go," replies Benjamin, and launches the group back into the hypnotic sequences of Ellis Island. In addition to the solo repertoire, a flute masterclass given tangentially in Maui's upcountry by Keith Underwood, gives guitarists a chance to interact and perform duets during the session as well. On the second night of the masterclass the Yale professor performed a well received concert in Makawao which included transcriptions of Jimi Hendrix, movements from some Towns and Cities as composed by the performer, Bach's Cello Suite #6, and Verdery's arrangement of a Tibetan Prayer Song. The later, is a work included in his recent Alfred publication of mostly intermediate and advanced guitar music peculiarly titled Easy Classical Guitar Recital. Outside of Kihei, Makena Rd takes you to the North end of the island past resorts with glamorous Day Spa's and long green golf courses. The road then dips down to the sea where a quaint church hosts a final sunset concert for members of the class. As the sun sets, it lights the cemetery in an iridescent red. The performers stroll through the cemetery out toward the sea to watch the bright ethereal ball fold into the ocean. Some of the tombstones that surround the guitarists contain pictures of the loved ones entombed there. On one such stone is a picture of a man with a guitar in his hand. The caption below it reads My Father at Play. The church's Hawaiian minister bestows a lei to each performer in a solemn ceremony before the concert which underscores the gracious uniqueness of the culture these players have wandered into. Each guitarist in the class performers a solo of his own as, outside, the crimson sky fades to black. The night ends with a performance of Ellis Island. Two thirds of the way through the piece, Verdery directs a member of the ensemble to stand and commence juggling as the other member of the group rage on. Next, flautist Keith Underwood appears at the back of the church, stands, and joins the ensemble in the piece as swirls, pel mel, to its conclusion. "Not wrong, just different," Verdery might say.
"The Dali Lama reminds me that this role I've created as a father or a musician is just that, and that the important thing is to communicate to the audience," says Ben later of his view on performance. For most of the participants it was a long flight to the island, however the blend of nature and spirituality there quietly guides musicians on Maui to new frontiers in their journey toward understanding of themselves and their relationship to the guitar.