A very unusual gig

 Back when I lived in Montreal I was approached one day to do a recording for one of Canada's Olympians. She was a dressage rider and, alas, I forget her name. The fellow that approached me, whose name I also forget, employed me to do a recording for him of the first movement of this piece, the Concierto Andaluz for four guitars and orchestra:

This was exactly the music the Olympian needed for her routine. It was planned out in great detail and as a consequence the music needed to be edited to fit her routine. Some sections had to be abbreviated and others, perhaps shifted around. To be honest, I forget! And I no longer have the score. So how were we going to do this? The contractor, who I will call the Producer, had used music software to both do an orchestral accompaniment and a score. He reduced the four guitar parts down to three and I was asked to record the three guitar parts, using a click track, over the computer-generated orchestral accompaniment. It wasn't too difficult to reduce the four parts to three as the real reason this concert is for four guitars is that it was written for the Romero family who toured as a quartet: Celedonio Romero, the father and Celin Romero, Pepe Romero, and Angel Romero, the three sons.

Sadly, I don't have a copy of that recording which I would love to hear about now. I also don't have a recording of my performance of the Concierto de Aranjuez with the Victoria Symphony which may exist somewhere in the vaults of the CBC.

When we were working on the project, I think it took about a week or so to learn the parts and do the recording, the Producer said let's go meet the Olympian and her horse who lived on a farm in the Laurentians to the north of Montreal. So we drove up one day and I met the Olympian, a very nice young woman. She took us over to the stables to meet her horse, probably more valuable than every car I have ever owned put together. He stuck his head out of his stall and whinnied. She introduced me and I patted him on the forehead and gave him a carrot. He regarded me with quite intelligent eyes. I couldn't help but think that he was the real star of the show and we were just his assistants. He was the one that was going to dance to a Rodrigo guitar concerto, after all.

Sadly, I also forget his name!