There is something intimate, personal, and vulnerable about sharing a space with a musician — unplugged. Such is the case of experiencing the classical guitar, which is a rare thing on Maui. Once a year Ben Verdery draws students and audiences worldwide to come to this tropical paradise to celebrate this instrument.
I learned to play the nylon-stringed instrument at the age of 12 but never got past the first position. It was useful to learn chords to accompany songs. That’s how I wrote the class song for my high school graduation at Kubasaki High School in Okinawa.
Class Song, Okinawa, Japan
The first time I heard classical guitar came two decades later in Cartagena, Colombia. I went there because of the reference to “Cartagena” in the movie “Romancing the Stone.” While I didn’t find romance, I did fall in love with the classical guitar.
The Cuban artist-in-residence asked if I knew the Aranjuez Guitar Concerto. I said no. He put the score in front of me, and we began to play in front of an audience rehearsing at the music school in Cartagena. Little did I know that I was playing the orchestral part on the piano which would become part of my piano guitar duo repertoire with Robert Bekkers, who has since played it with several orchestras, all without amplification.
That’s how I got introduced to the classical guitar — in Cartagena. It was a defining moment, in hindsight. The plucked music of nylon strings changed the way I interacted with music.
When I returned to London, I met an English classical guitarist busking on the south bank of the River Thames. He invited me to the international guitar festival at West Dean College, a beautiful location for life-long learning and personal enrichment. There, I was admitted into the lowest of eight levels of guitar ensembles and enjoyed a week of heavenly bliss. We performed the famous piece of Gaspar Sanz which Rodrigo used in “Fantasia para Gentilhombre,” an antiphonal piece for the guitar and orchestra.
Guitar ensemble class at classical guitar festival, West Dean College, England 1998
Unfortunately, to play the classical guitar properly, I would have to grow nails — a taboo for the pianist I am. The next best thing is to play piano with the guitar or hear the guitar as background music in my every day life, which spanned the years in Utrecht, Netherlands. Below is a recording by the Amsterdam-based composer Heleen Verleur of our rehearsal of the piano guitar work she wrote for us.
As I type this blog, I am listening to the versatile music of the Andrew York streaming from his website to accompany my memories. It has been a very long journey. And it’s about to happen again – a concert of three classical guitarists at Maui College on July 10th – while I spend my summer sightreading the guitar and piano transcriptions of Gregg Nestor with Robert in Boston.