Archive for April, 2011
Youth vs. The Other Thing
The hot young whippersnapper vs. the seasoned maestro. Which is more exciting? Which is more satisfying at the end of the day? In the latest in my series of increasingly ridiculous comparisons (which are always a good excuse to listen to some good music) let’s see if we prefer the young or the, ahem, mature. Here are Bream and Williams as kids playing some standard repertoire and then as full-fledged guitar gods, playing the same pieces many years later.
It turned out to be very cool to hear a trio of great guitarists playing great guitars in a great room (yes, it’s all great). Line Forms Hear is guitarists Scott Morris, Steven Thachuk and Julian Coryell, and though Julian plays a lot of steel string he played nylon on two out of the three tunes they recorded for us. Scott played a 2006 Simon Marty, Julian played a Kenneth Brogger ’1890 Torres’ or a Michael Peters ‘Scott Morris’ model, and Steven, a lefty, took no time in flipping the nut, saddle and strings on a guitar by Sergio Abreu and somehow managed to stay in tune.
I mentioned that we had donated a guitar to the Sacramento CG Society to help them raise money to cover some expenses for last week’s West Coast guitar society roundtable discussion. The winner of the guitar, Craig Austin, sent us a photo and an email that I thought was a great story. I’ll use his words to tell it:
“Since I don’t play, I wanted it to find a good home with someone who will appreciate it and more importantly use it. The young man in the photo is my best friend’s son, Sean Williams, an up and coming guitarist from Davis. His specialty is jazz/blues electric guitar, but he spent 2 years at Berklee College of Music in Boston and just completed his Bachelor’s degree from Hayward State. He currently has 38 students in Alameda and teaches mostly on the acoustic so it definitely found a good home. Thanks again for a wonderful concert and a chance to win the guitar.”
Here are some cute little videos from Otto Vowinkel on how to change strings if your guitar has a 12-hole bridge.
Daniel Roest and the Sacramento Guitar Society hosted the first West Coast Guitar Societies Roundtable, with our friend Dr. Matt Hinsley as keynote speaker, and we certainly hope it will be the first of many (first annual, maybe?). GSI was happy to provide a guitar that was raffled to raise funds to help defray some of the costs, and by all accounts the event was a huge success. I’ll let Daniel tell you the rest…
Christopher Davis has a really interesting interview with Ricardo Iznaola over on the Classical Guitar blog. I’ve used Iznaola’s Kitharologus on and off for years, and I always have a xerox of the arpeggio pages handy for when my hands don’t want to move. He helped me get my hands sorted out about ten years back, and I really like his approach to technique, but his approach to pedagogy may be even more interesting. Read the interview here.
Guitarist Eva Beneke stopped by last week to play some guitars and played us some of her own compositions from her debut CD ‘Coming Home’ (available on iTunes) as well as Villa Lobos’ Prelude #2. You can find out more about Eva on her website.
Musicians need pencils. So I wrote a pencil review.
From Scott Collins over at GuitArchitchture. This stuff got me thinking:
Guitarist Tom Farrell came in the other night to play a few guitars, including guitars by Bernd Martin, Teodoro Perez, Pablo Requena and Rafael Moreno Rodriguez and we got some great videos of his playing.
