The office of Maestro Leo Brouwer sent a congratulatory note for the performance of Leo Brouwer’s ‘Concerto de Toronto’ by Jayant S and Rose Eilert!!! It cannot get better than this, Seriously!!
Recollections: Bill Evans
by Jayant S
DEDICATION: LEO BROUWER AND BILL EVANS

The first time I ever heard the jazz pianist Bill Evans (1929-1980) was on his duet recording of All Across the City, with the prominent jazz guitarist Jim Hall, from their 1969 album Intermodulations. This happened to be at the tail end of a cassette tape borrowed from my cousin Anmole. In those days, you could typically transfer the contents of two long-playing record albums to a 90-minute cassette, with the precious remaining five minutes of tape used for an extra track or two. I can’t remember what preceded All Across the City on this particular tape – it could have been a completely different Chick Corea album, or a John Abercrombie session.
I quite enjoyed All Across the City at first hearing. At that time I was much more interested in what Jim Hall was playing on it, with the piano apparently only providing background color, but the sonic balance between both instruments seemed outstandingly well-done. I tried to learn some of Hall’s phrases off that tape, though I didn’t then have the harmonic capability to understand his chordal playing, or to try and emulate Evans’s piano work on a guitar. There was no way at that time to obtain the entire album, let alone a written transcription.
I could imagine, even then, that the harmonic scope of the piano far surpassed anything that the guitar could do. My own early approach to the jazz guitar was largely based on single-line plectrum work, influenced heavily by John McLaughlin and Al Dimeola, despite the skepticism of my brother Jeta who hoped I’d move to a more tonally complete playing approach at some point. I’d figured out how to name chords with extensions, but had little understanding of progression, substitution and re-harmonization.
My early exploration of basic classical guitar repertoire provided a glimpse of the possibilities that could open up with fingerstyle technique. I realized that I could at least approximate some sort of “pianistic” texture if I played with my fingers, and applied that to some of the less exuberant solo passages by Keith Emerson from the ELP album Trilogy. But that was about it.

In late 1989 I heard Bill Evans for the second time. This was his album Trio 64 featuring Gary Peacock on bass and Paul Motian on the drums in 1964. I was archiving the original spool tape recording to cassette at the National Institute of Design, and heard the album only once through while doing the transfer. It was interesting, but I couldn’t find any potential connection with the guitar, or at least with how I played the guitar then.
In the next few years, I didn’t encounter any Bill Evans albums. My listening exposure to the jazz piano was largely through the work of Chick Corea, which provided considerable opportunities for guitar emulation. In the 1990s the little garage band I had with Ashish Manchanda, John Lucksom and Nikhil Sohoni worked its way through many Corea compositions, sometimes even with a fair degree of success. Of course, the harmonic aspects of these sessions were based on pure approximation.
I met Rosemarie Eilert in May 2006. One of her first questions to me, upon her realizing that I did have some sort of jazz guitar style, was – “Do you play slash chords”?
Now I had, admittedly, heard of “slash chords” (which is a jazz musician’s parlance for compound chords), but had not paid serious attention to them. For me, chordal notation such as A-/D (or Amin/D as alternatively notated) implied playing an A-minor triad somewhere on the fingerboard, and using any available finger to hack desperately at the nearest D below it (or better yet, leaving that D to the bassist). There was no thought given to actually combining the two triads, finding voicings that blended both of them, or putting them in context in a harmonic flow. But then, given the standard tuning of the guitar and the limited number of notes available at hand this is difficult to do at best, anyway.

Rose already had a long-term interest in the work of Bill Evans, and was keen to continue interpreting jazz in his style. Unfortunately, apart from two duet albums and a few ensemble recordings with Jim Hall, there was a notable lack of guitar in Evans’s work, leaving me with little to do. We did attempt to perform All Across the City as a duo, and ploughed our way through Waltz for Debby on which I played a fret-less bass guitar. Apart from my unreliable intonation on that bass, the complex harmony of the latter piece was very far beyond my capacity to follow in real time.
I proceeded to borrow some Evans albums from Rose and bought a few more as well. It was apparent that there was little a guitarist could do with a pianist who sought to emulate the vast harmonic Evans palette while staying within the overall compass of largely acoustic mainstream jazz. It was necessary for me to change instruments and to move to the bass if I hoped to participate extensively in this increasingly fascinating genre. I wasn’t sure how I would approach the bass theoretically and technically, given my lack of formal training in jazz theory harmony. Rose frequently used terms such as “tritone substitution” which left me completely baffled.
Then I came across the 1977 album You must believe in Spring by Bill Evans. This session, with Eddie Gomez on bass and Eliot Zigmund on the drums, was actually released after Evans’s death in 1980, and is a representative showcase of his late-period piano style.

I was intrigued. Gomez was playing free-form bass passages that effectively countered the sparse, introspective piano texture, rarely resorting to either conventional walking bass patterns or high-speed improvisation. Zigmund’s drumming was noticeable by its frequent absence, or by being present only just above the threshold of hearing. Every track on the album, including their interpretation of Theme from M*A*S*H* which was by then a Bill Evans staple, demonstrated ensemble expressiveness at its finest. And I realised that, instead of worrying about complex harmonic computation, I could hope to play this music by ear and textural judiciousness. Eventually, that is.
I gained more confidence as mainstream jazz bassist over time by practicing and performing frequently with Rose and learning about harmony and detailing from her. Shifting to an electric upright bass helped significantly, as this instrument provided a cantabile and almost horn-like character that essentially worked along rather than across the strings. While substantial harmonic study was still required, the process was facilitated for me with a complementary aural approach. Two duet albums that Evans recorded with Gomez (Intuition and Montreux III) became regular listening, with their complex interaction between the musicians, free timekeeping, and dynamic contrasts not typically heard in jazz. I came to actually prefer this duo tonality to the more usual trios that Bill Evans led. This format was used by Rose and I for our first performance for the Poona Music Society in 2011.
In recent years, I have been listening more closely to Evans’s piano work. There is an entire lifetime of learning embedded there, regardless of what style or instrument one plays. He brought unprecedented sophistication and authority to the jazz piano, and is appropriately regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of jazz, still highly relevant to musicians today. His controlled approach to timekeeping (including his well-considered use of rubato – which appalled jazz traditionalists at the time), textural control and dynamic expression is also useful listening for classical musicians. Bill Evans provides an interesting musical link between the two worlds of mainstream jazz and Western classical music, with his own Chopin and Debussy influences being markedly evident in his work. Even for a classical guitarist, the effortless fluidity with which Evans plays his single line phrases and shades his block chords can suggest a vast library of expressive possibilities, particularly with right hand guitar technique.
The large number of albums recorded by Bill Evans as a leader, and his own contribution to sessions by others such as Miles Davis, showcase a musician who was constantly seeking and evolving, never content with his own achievements. His early performances on the legendary Kind of Blue sessions in 1959, led by Davis, reveal what was by then already a responsive and reflective piano style. He went on to lead his first trio with Scott LaFaro (bass) and Paul Motian (drums), notorious with its distinctly “non-jazz” flavor. Their interpretations demonstrated collective improvisation, with an equal role given to drums and bass, without much of the conventional rhythm section in evidence. Over the years, Evans worked with several bassist and drummers, constantly refining his ensemble style. His last few recordings with Gomez, Zigmund, Marty Morrell (drums), Joey LaBarbera (drums) and Marc Johnson (bass) indicate to me, tantalizingly, that Evans could have taken jazz piano into further unexplored territory had he lived for another decade: virtuoso improvisation, yet with the wide and controlled expressive scope that is normally heard only in Western classical music.

Looking back at the enormous recorded legacy left behind by Bill Evans, one point stands out. He largely chose to record and perform music by others, including some jazz “standards” and even non-traditional sources such as Michel Legrand and Claus Ogerman. However, his own written material remains somewhat less well-known, despite having a high degree of inherent expressiveness, improvisational possibilities and compositional completeness. My forthcoming performance with Rose on 14 January 2016, with the kind support of the Poona Music Society, aims to present some of his own writing as piano-bass and piano-guitar duets.
Recollections: Leo Brouwer
by Jayant S
DEDICATION: LEO BROUWER AND BILL EVANS.
My first exposure to Leo Brouwer – the name and the music – happened sometime in 1981 when I heard the German guitarist Wolfgang Condin performing at the India Habitat Center in Delhi. At that time, I had been a largely rock-preoccupied guitar player for a few years, with only a vague idea about the world of the classical guitar. Yes, we knew it existed out there, like a luxury yacht wafting disdainfully past us mere scruffy fishing boats, bestowing upon us only a whiff of its grand being. At that time, very little recorded music was available at all, and sheet music was almost completely inaccessible in Darjeeling where I grew up.
My experience with classical guitar repertoire till then was limited to studies of easier Spanish and Italian pieces, and the odd Bach transcription, all of which had been laboriously hand-copied for me by my brother Jeta. My cousin Anmole was a frequently pestered source for sheet music to copy, as well as for advice on guitar matters in general. Fortunately for me, I did have some listening exposure to Western classical music as such through a few dedicated, knowledgeable and well-intentioned music teachers at school. To be able to decipher written music at all, I had to repeatedly ask my sister Jaya for help, as she had been through several grades of piano at school. For me, then, “reading music” involved painfully counting staff lines and using an intuitive (and glacially slow) algebraic method to count time. But actually being able to memorize and play through these pieces was enough to tell me that yes, there is actually a bespoke luxury yacht out there in the dark open waters. And that you must have a footstool to even get a look-in.
Condin commenced his recital with Leo Brouwer’s Canticum.
I was transfixed, as was much of the audience, though almost certainly not for the same reasons. I looked around me. The well-dressed, elite cream of Delhi’s cultural circuit seemed appalled. Deeply appalled. This wasn’t what a harmless little guitar concert was supposed to deliver?
For me, listening to Canticum was curiously reassuring. I realized in a flash that classical guitar music was not only about the plink-a-plonk Carcassi and Carulli studies which I already detested then, or the sparse and clinical counterpoint of Bach, or even necessarily about the footstool (though Condin did use one). Classical guitar music – indeed, all real music – was about sonic texture.
Condin went on to assuage ruffled sensibilities by playing fluffy staples such as Fernando Sor’s Variations on a Theme of Mozart. I’d stopped paying attention by then, wondering who Leo Brouwer was.
In subsequent years, I continued to play the guitar, generally preoccupied with jazz styles, with substantial exposure to rock and pop performances on the side. Somewhere out there, the classical guitar yacht still cruised on. Sheet music remained near-impossible to buy, but the Xerox Corporation did make hand-copying redundant in 1980s India. I made the occasional attempt to play repertoire pieces when I could find and photocopy them, including works by Agustin Barrios. La Catedral and Gavota al Estilo Antiguo were played with due seriousness on a Hobner H120 steel-strung acoustic guitar – for at that time I didn’t own, or could source, a real nylon-strung classical guitar (it was rather strange to discover, long after, that Barrios recorded frequently with steel strings). My brother made me a wooden footstool which was a big help.

Then, one day, a friend showed up with a photocopy of Leo Brouwer’s Elogio de la Danza.
I played through it. It displayed everything I then expected a Brouwer work to be – dissonance, dynamism, complex timing – visceral texture. I was intrigued with the indication for the second movement – obstinato and not ostinato. It seemed that Maestro Brouwer had a sense of humour, after all.
I’ve studied several pieces from Brouwer’s oeuvre since then – El Decameron Negro, Hika: In Memoriam Toru Takemitsu and Cuban Landscape with Bells for the Trinity College LTCL and ATCL recitals, Sonata and Preludios Epigramaticos which were featured at a recent PGS recital, Variations on a Theme by Django Reinhardt, Canticum itself, Tarantos, many of the Estudios Sencillos, Cuban Landscape with Sadness, Un Dia de Novembre, and a few more. I’ve not even really touched the tip of the iceberg that represents his prodigious output and makes him a quintessential figure in the history of the classical guitar. Leo Brouwer began his career as a composer-guitarist in his teens. An injury stopped his performing career, but as a composer and orchestral conductor he has continued to remain extremely active. His compositional style itself has evolved, passed through transitions which continue even today, and has created a tremendous body of work, bristling with unique tonal innovations, which provides guitarists with a lifetime of study.
I’ve been very fortunate to have had a handful of lessons with Adam Khan and Veet Ohnemus, who have both studied with Brouwer. These sessions were helpful in providing essential insights into interpretation. My first meeting with Adam was marked by an enthusiastic handshake, during which I couldn’t help exclaiming “I’m so happy to shake the hand that must have shaken that of Brouwer’s!”
While Brouwer’s solo work is well known and regarded in guitar circles, his ensemble writing is relatively less noted by guitar players. This is despite the fact that he has prolifically composed for films, has written for guitar ensembles and has 11 Concertos to his name. The first work I heard representing this facet of Brouwer was the Concerto de Toronto as recorded by John Williams in 1998 with the London Sinfonia, Stephen Mercurio conducting. This Concerto, written in 1987, is marked by a relative absence of dissonance and complex timekeeping and reverts to an almost classical-period sensibility which makes it very accessible to listeners unfamiliar with Brouwer’s repertoire.
I obtained the sheet music for Concerto de Toronto out of sheer curiosity, including a piano reduction of the orchestral score by Daniel Toussiant. Since then, I’ve played through the guitar parts, been astonished by the sheer finger-friendliness of Brouwer’s writing, and wished that I could find a pianist who would agree to play the piano reduction to actually perform the work. I even tried to sequence some of the piano score as a MIDI file just to hear what was intended, and realised that it needed a real pianist.
I welcome the opportunity that has finally arisen to perform the work with a pianist, with the kind support of the Poona Music Society. This blog will capture moments and changing perspectives from the musical journey that has now commenced, to culminate in the recital on 14 January, 2016.
And, my classical guitarist friends might well ask, why Bill Evans? He is known for his contribution to jazz piano, right?

More to come in the next post. Soon.
Notes on the concert
Held at Gyaan Adab on the 7th of November 2015, Expressions was a classical guitar recital that featured works by Leo Brouwer and Nikita Koshkin, both among the best-regarded modern composers for the guitar. The music was threaded with a narrative-expressive component featuring prosaic/poetic passages created by a collective of writers – Jaya Parhawk, Sohan Akolkar, Bhairavi Vaidya, Ashutosh and Anoop Kumar.
The spoken texts that were part of this concert are available both on this page and to download as an e-booklet.
Expressions:
A contemporary guitar recital.
An introduction by the guitarist
I. El Decameron Negro – Leo Brouwer (1980)
1. El Arpa del Guerrero
2. La Huida de los Amantes por el Valle de los Ecos
3. La Ballada de la Doncella Enamorada
II. Preludios Epigramaticos – Leo Brouwer (1981-83)
III. Sonata – Leo Brouwer (1990)
1. Fandangos y Boleros
2. Sarabanda de Scriabin
3. Toccata de Pasquini
IV. Expressions – Anoop Kumar & Jayant S (2015)
1. The sad tale of Popeye the Labrador
2. A shout out to Billy the tiger
3. Biji’s last smile
V. The Ballads: Suite for Guitar – Nikita Koshkin (1998)
1. Allegretto
2. Moderato
3. Con Moto
4. Adagio Molto
5. Moderato
An introduction by the guitarist
“Expressions” came out of an opportunity to present modern classical guitar music before a discerning audience in Pune with the support of the Pune Guitar Society and Gyan Adaab. While I had been thinking about performing material by Leo Brouwer and Nikita Koshkin, prominent guitar composers, for some time, I had remained apprehensive about the actual accessibility of this music, given its subtlety, abstraction and tonal freedom.
It occurred to us that there was already a strong sense of embedded metaphor and near-episodic flow in much of this music. Would it work if we invited a few interested writers to prepare narratives rooted in their own, unguided responses to the music, and then delivered these in performance, interspersed with the pieces themselves? It was highly engrossing to communicate through the process with the writers over several weeks, with exchanges about the musical features of the pieces, discovering their diverse reactions and resultant expressive output, and putting it all together with Anoop’s spoken delivery. For me as the guitar player, a new perspective was added while developing the musical interpretation of each composition, and the ways in which the writers heard and wrote from the music was very inspiring, if occasionally confounding. 
Anoop brought up the insight that there is also a curious visual link between this music and the work of the great 17th century Spanish artist Diego Velasquez, as well as the celebrated re-imaginings of some of his paintings by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Francis Bacon. Perhaps, this is because of the occasionally-discernible Spanish musical roots of this music, or maybe the notion of long- term artistic influences finds analogous threads here.
These, then, are the compiled narratives for each piece in the program, preceded by my own comments.


These, then, are the compiled narratives for each piece in the program, preceded by my own comments.
– Jayant S
I. El Decameron Negro
– Leo Brouwer (1983)
Leo Brouwer, originally from Cuba, is the single most preeminent composer for the guitar from the second half of the twentieth century.With a prolific output ranging from atonal avant-garde works to orchestral compositions and film soundtracks, he remains as active as ever.This three-part set was inspired by a collection of African folk tales by the German anthropologist Leo Frobenius, though the stories implied by the music do not actually exist in the collection. Nevertheless, Anoop chose to reconstruct the stories from the music, using the sonnet form to complement the lyrical tonal character.
Reference Recording:
Elena Papandreou: Brouwer Guitar Music, Vol 2 – Naxos Catalogue No 8.554553 
1. El Arpa del Guerrero
(The Harp of the Warrior)
He returned. unslept eyes, sunburnt skin;
laid his weapons at the chief’s feet
“Exiled I maybe, but your son I still am
and wish to fight and die beside my kin.
After the battle if I still stand
I will merge again into the wilderness
and if I die, let the vultures have my flesh.”
The great chief rose and held out his ageing hand.
For weeks the battle raged
and he fought and bled besides us
laying a blow for a blow
making music not with the gut of a harp
or the sound of his voice,
but with the singing string of a bloody bow.
– Anoop Kumar
2. La Huida de los Amantes por el Valle de los Ecos
(The Flight of the Lovers through the Valley of Echoes)
Fear gave us wings, as we took flight
me and my own true love who
of her own volition, deserted,
the warm hearth of her family,
that chilly night to be with me now, cold and uncertain of the way
lost in a maze, knitted out of
the thicket of twisting trails kneeling occasionally on the golden ground to pray
To the spirits who spat
our words back at us
and led us in circles, tired and slow
At twilight I sang for her
a blues to a rhythm
plucked on the string of my bleeding bow
– Anoop Kumar
3. La Ballada de la Doncella Enamorada
(The Ballad of the Lovesick Maiden)
Was there a breeze? I felt it not on my skin
I heard not the gossip of the birds
nor saw the sky blush with the sunset.
All that I could taste was the anguish within
As night descended, like a curtain over a stage
I rifled through the emotional registers
one at a time, few hours for each
Denial and depression, bargain and rage
I thought of the man who always hoped
that when his battle was done
and it was finally time to go
he would have in his hands
the empathy of the gut stringed harp:
not the fatal coil of a bloodied bow
– Anoop Kumar
II. Preludios Epigramaticos
– Leo Brouwer (1981-83)
This enigmatic and introspective set of six short preludes by Leo Brouwer was based on haikus by the Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez (1910-1942).The music claims a wide textural compass, but then so do the haikus. Anoop compiled the transliterations here from online sources, with some editing for coherence with the music.
Reference Recording:
Elena Papandreou: Brouwer Guitar Music, Vol 2 – Naxos Catalogue No 8.554553
1. Moderato: The dawn wishes to be itself, just as you are wholly woman.
2. Tranquillo: Sad men, if they don’t die of love
3. Lento: Enveloped in your skin, I tie and untie my own
4. Allegretto Moderato: Laugh, everything laughs, all is mother of levity
5. Pesante: You caught my heart mid-flight and today hurled it down
6. Poetique: I endure with three wounds: that of love, that of death, that of life
III. Sonata
– Leo Brouwer (1990)
Leo Brouwer’s Sonata was written at a time when the composer had begun to fuse his then-recent tonal style with elements of his earlier avant-garde dissonant approach, resulting in a new and highly diverse compositional language.A complex and highly textured work with tongue-in-cheek allusions to older composers, the Sonata provided an interesting and lively stimulus for three different writers to come up with ideas.They worked individually on their narratives, without looking over each other’s shoulders!
Reference Recording:
Graham Anthony Devine: Brouwer Guitar Music, Vol 3 – Naxos Catalogue No 8.55419
1. Fandangos y Boleros

Stillness…
a note
then a ripple of sound that throbs through quiescent limbs
as they catch the plangent rhythm
of the troubadour’s tune.
Feet flexed,
the body sways
head uplifted, arms out-flung
a gentle glissande accelerates
Sometimes a swinging cadence takes beguiling hold.
Then changing to quick, twirling
pirouettes
a whirling shadow jetes before
a kaleidoscope of sound.
Rainbow hues of once-heard music tantalize
as they eddy and break… again… once again
then slow and fade away into
Stillness.
- Jaya Parhawk
2. Sarabanda de Scriabin

From old patterns emerge new insights.
The telling details,
the hidden turmoil.
For the vanity of the wise,
is grander than its reflection.
To see purple,
in the red.
The screaming and the decayed.
The layers begin to peel,
with the passage of time.
Almost confessing,
The riot within.
To see the other,
is to see the self
– Bhairavi Vaidya
3. Toccata de Pasquini

Remember how as a child you squinted into Pleiades to conjure up more stars ?
Remember ?
This is exactly the same.
We are all here –
The proud parents in the mirror,
the blond-fident princesses,
the self-conscious servant girls,
the Zorro caped figure in the shadows at the back,
even the moon-faced midget
and the painter himself – all the way to the left.
Picasso spent a few years learning to paint
like Velasquez and the other masters
and then a lifetime to paint like a child.
It is time for you to learn to see,
for in seeing, just as in listening
and in painting;
the ‘how’ is as important as the ‘what’.
– Anoop Kumar
IV. Expressions
– Anoop Kumar & Jayant S (2015)
Not a “composition” in the classical sense of the term, this was a collaborative attempt at providing musical support to a narrative. Some motifs are predetermined, but most of the music and texture is essentially improvised, following the spoken delivery.
1. The sad tale of Popeye the Labrador
Crow black, arthritic
and deafened by the years
he would limp behind us
into the practice place,
lie down between the air conditioner
and the drummer,
put his head on his paw
and sleep, as the band
raged through covers of
Nirvana and Pearl Jam,
rising up occasionally
between songs to let out a bark,
protesting the silence
2. A shout out to Billy the tiger
Children watched him wide-eyed, mouth agape,
hands, clutching food, frozen mid-air
as he leaped across their TV screens.
Now his joints creak with the years.
His eyes are filled with buttermilk.
His teeth, memories littered across the forest.
In a large fence, erected to save him
from Oedipal attacks and treacherous falls
he chews on the dead meat, they bring, for hours.
Every once in a while he still stands up
and against the setting sun stretches himself
to his full height, raises his head, open his mouth.
and whimpers.
3. Biji’s last smile
Last time I saw her smile
was when the doctor fitted her
with a hearing aid, and
the glacier cracked for a while
under the tickle of sounds,
heard for the first time in months.
(not words, just electronic squalls,
but sounds nevertheless).
– Anoop Kumar
V. The Ballads: Suite for Guitar
– Nikita Koshkin (1998)
The prolific Russian composer Nikita Koshkin has written a substantial body of work for the interpreter of the modern classical guitar.The Ballads Suite is rather more accessible than Koshkin’s usual approach, being based closely on the folk, blues and rock influences that he grew up with. Each movement was assigned to a different writer for independent literary interpretation, and the results display surprising diversity.
Reference Recording:
Elena Papandreou: Polka Papandreou/Ballads/Prelude and Waltz – Naxos Catalogue No BIS-CD-1236
1. Allegretto
Let these words not tell you what to feel. Let them not be a precedent.
What you are about to hear is a ballad.
A ballad is a verse set to music; this ballad sets music to a verse.
What’s the verse?
Let this ballad not tell you to
dance with abandon,
to smile in quiet anticipation,
of what’s to come and nothing in particular.
If you listen, you’ll hear your own verse.
– Sohan Akolkar
2. Moderato
In the new Naishapur*, the Cup is leaking red drop by drop, word by the word
In the new Naishapur, a heresy is sneaking by falling leaves – this tale is heard
He factors in- scorching days of longing
He then factors out the intrigue of stars
He multiplies the Moon-shadows prolonging
and divides and divides and divides – the vagaries of Mars
In the old Naishapur, the daggers are gleaming fangs are bare, eyes blood-shot
In the old Naishapur, the Faithful are scheming How they shall leave the Faithless to rot.
He corrects his calendar, steals from Time in midnight lamps filled with soot
he seeks the Magicks of abstract symbols they haven’t so far yielded the root
In some Naishapur, the roots are real
In some Naishapur, its only the leaves
In some Naishapur, it doesn’t matter how what you do you always end up taking a root
of minus one
In some Naishapur it is complex.
– Ashutosh
*Naishapur is the birthplace of Omar Khayyam
3. Con Moto
Full bends and half turns
The maze and the tunnel
Pain, love, joy and sorrow
All that we understand
And everything beyond
– Bhairavi Vaidya
4. Adagio Molto
Like the songs we used to sing in uncomplicated, hopeful times…
Like a peaceful interlude ……… Waiting …….. behind a long-unopened door,
Moments come back, with their own savour and fragrance
And we are present…. in times past.
Singing the simple songs of hopeful times
In a peaceful interlude we are living once again.
– Jaya Parhawk
5. Moderato
In her dark and dank shawl she gathered
all of us frightened little boys
turned a few into fighting men
and rendered the rest as broken toys
dragged us through the endless desert
for weeks on end and then
left us, a buffet for the vultures
all the toys and all the men
The heat logged us into a trance
The wind was music, so we dance
– Anoop Kumar
Starting the journey
by Kuldeep Barve
The Background
The Pune Guitar Society (PGS) started in May this year. We realised that as guitarists we play mostly in isolation and wanted to do something to change that.
But what would a society like this aim to achieve? We spent some time just thinking about this and here is what we came up with:
- Organize classical guitar concerts, workshops and masterclasses
- Advocacy for the classical guitar
- A facilitator for guitar students and teachers
- Providing mentorship
Act as a repository of all kinds of information related to the classical guitar. - Developing a culture
- Focus of quality of musical understanding and performance.
- Encourage learning between different genres keeping focus on classical guitar.
- Maintain a reference library of books, audio etc.
- A resource for national classical guitar events
The PGS will be a member of the Indian Guitar Federation, get up to date news on guitar events across the country and spread this information to its members.
PGS since May 2015: A brief summary of activities
In the last few months, the PGS has been active in organizing concerts, masterclasses and workshops. We also introduced the idea of monthly meetings for local classical guitarists as well as improvisatory guitar players, creating a unique opportunity to perform in front of peers.
Successful initiatives since May 2015
- Concerts at public venues
- South American Guitar Music by Veet J Ohnemus at the Gyaan Adab Centre.
- We did a lecture/demonstration at The Loft
- Monthly Meetings
- There have been 2 meetings of the PGS. These meetings are an excellent opportunity to play for fellow guitarists and listen.
- Workshops and Masterclasses
- Masterclasses with the Basel Guitar Duo
- 1 full day Workshop with Veet J Ohnemus
- Facilitators
- The PGS was able to facilitate shooting of a music video for Veet J Ohnemus.
The Coming Months
The Pune Guitar Society has some very interesting initiatives lined up over the next few months!
- September 19: Expressions: A contemporary classical guitar recital
Concert at the Gyaan Adab Centre, Pune – Jayant S (Guitar) and Anoop Kumar (Narration).
This is a first of its kind event. An evening with the music of 20th century composers Brouwer and Koshkin. The music will be threaded with a narrative-expressive component featuring prose/poetic passages created by a collective of writers.
- October 23-25: Concert and Workshop by Samuel Klemke (Germany)
- December 11, 12: Concert and Masterclasses – Madhavan Somanathan (India)
- January 19 (tentative date): A dedication: Leo Brouwer and Bill Evans
Jayant S (guitar and upright bass) & Rose Eliert (piano)
The way ahead
It has been a fantastic journey so far. This forum gives interested musicians a chance to interact and learn from concert performers and enhance their musical skills and knowledge. It has gotten us in touch with budding guitar players and musicians keen to explore and learn more. The feeling of having a group of self-motivated musicians to interact is a great incentive to learn and improve.
We believe a lot can be done in terms of fostering and cultivating a culture for the classical guitar. The PGS believes that classical guitar players have to be more receptive to other genres of music as well to be.
The masterclasses and workshops have made us acutely aware of the musicianship and study which goes into becoming a musician and a classical guitar player. The Pune Guitar Society will continue to strive for serious musicianship and cultivating serious interest in the instrument going forward.
We look forward to interaction/exchange with more classical guitar communities and groups across India. We at the PGS are well on our way and will continue to focus on classical guitar related activities in Pune and elsewhere in India.
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