One Year in the Studio, part 5

I don't know how long this series will go on for, but there are a couple of other things I would like to mention about the time I spent in Spain. This was perhaps the most productive year of my life due to concentration and focus. Living in a very plain apartment, devoting all my energies to working with the guitar, developing technique and memorizing repertoire--this was what enabled my transition from, to be honest, rather a hack guitarist, into one who could really play. And this happened over only eight months. A friend of mine, a very fine flautist, once remarked that everyone who is really accomplished on an instrument has, at some point in their lives, sat down and gave it their total attention for an extended period of time.

This is true even though it is not something you would glean from most musicians' biographies. The year, or years, of work is interior rather than exterior so there is not much to say about it. The biographies just focus on the achievements: competitions, premieres, recordings, awards and so on. All these come after the "year in the studio." I think one of the really crucial elements is the lack of distractions. I was in a foreign country where I only knew a few words in the language. At first I had no friends to hang out with, though by the end I got to know many of the other guitarists. Here is a group shot of the guitar community in Alicante taken at the end of the masterclass in August:

Click to enlarge

I am the second from the right, crouching down, and next to me on the far right is my friend Klaus Helminen from Finland. Also in the photo are my Irish roommate and guitarists from Belgium, the Philippines, Peru, France, Mexico, England and the US. There were also several guitarists from Japan, though not seen in this photo.

I mentioned the lack of distractions. I had no telephone, no radio, no television, no Internet (hah, in 1974?!?). I went across the street for breakfast. About the only thing I can recall that I spent much time on other than practicing was reading Russian novels. I said before that there wasn't much of a concert scene in Alicante. This is not quite true. There were only a couple of concert halls, but in one of them there was a quite respectable concert series. How respectable? I don't remember all the artists that played that year, but they included Arthur Rubinstein, Paul Tortellier and others of that stratospheric level. So it was also in that year that I likely had my first exposure to really great musicians in a live performance.

I said I was a hack guitarist when I arrived. Maybe I should say I was unformed. But the intensive work I did in Spain put me in a quite different category. After I returned to Canada I went back to work at the Ministry of Education in British Columbia for the winter. I had met Michael Strutt, student of Julian Bream, in Alicante as he came for the masterclass in August. He was a very fine guitarist, he came second in the competition only beaten by a Japanese guitarist who had been there for a couple of years. Michael was on the faculty at McGill University in Quebec so when it came time to take the next step, which I had decided was to finish my degree at university, I decided to apply to McGill. Then, as now, McGill is possibly the finest music school in Canada with an enrollment of around 800 students. When I auditioned, Michael took me aside afterwards and said, "that was like night and day!" What he meant was that my audition was of a very high level. In fact, I was the leading guitarist at McGill for the three years I was there. Michael wrote me a letter of recommendation at the end of my time there that said that I had given more concerts than any other guitarist in the history of the department.

I had a great time in my three years at McGill and I probably should have stayed longer. I got a good grounding in music theory, ear training, music history, performance practice and chamber music. I sang in a small choir, played an obbligato part in the orchestra for a contemporary piece, played in the Canadian premier of El Cimmaron by Hans Werner Henze, played concertos by Karl Kohaut, Joaquin Rodrigo and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, did solo and duet recordings for the CBC, accompanied madrigals, did obbligato lute parts in Baroque cantatas (on guitar) and so on. McGill gave me a host of performing opportunities along with the chance to learn ensemble skills and how to record. I also took private lessons in composition and wrote my first serious compositions. None of these things would have happened if I hadn't laid a solid groundwork of competence on the instrument. I was amused to read that Eric Clapton did much the same, in his case it was working hard learning blues guitar from listening to a lot of records. He called it "woodshedding!"

For an envoi, here is En los trigales by Joaquin Rodrigo that I first learned in my year in Alicante: