In phase.

Well, it would seem that my last post about abandoned art turned out to be pretty prophetic since I haven’t been here since August. But, I’m back, and it’s been an interesting few months in flux. I learned that I was to become a father. I said farewell to my twenties. I reached Mt. Rainier’s most magnificent and treacherous summit -the pinnacle of my mountaineering career. I studied and labored intensely for the cause of music; reaching over 1,000 St Louis residents through the awesome work of the St Louis Classical Guitar Society. And I have tried to find a bit of stillness to reflect on what type of person I will be in my 30’s. This has meant saying goodbye to some childish things, and fully recommitting to the life I’ve been fortunate enough to choose for myself. In a way, I feel as though I have been gestating alongside my soon-to-arrive daughter and that when she comes a new iteration of myself will come with her. One hopes it’s for the better. 

As I prepare to spend this day finishing an important movement of my piece Ten Kingdoms, I think back to what -in hindsight- was an important concert I went to at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2012. It was Philip Glass’ epic 5-hour opera “Einstein on the Beach,” graced by his presence. It was an important concert for me because it codified that there is freedom to write the music you want to write without regard for judgment, or rules, or appeasing intellectual critics and conventions. It was revelatory to see such a warm audience reception for such an atypical work. Of course, I had seen “far out” music before, but never on such a scale and for such an extended period, and never with such a full house. And to see how appreciated this could all be was really eye-opening. It was just all of us in that room, grooving and zoning out;  stepping out for a hot dog and re-engaging; Yawning, squirming, laughing and tapping along together.

That’s not to say I’d see it again, but after that concert I strangely felt a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders. I set out to fully make the art that speaks to me, and invite audiences to come along for the ride. As Rumi famously wrote, “beyond notions of right doing and wrong-doing, there is a field, I’ll meet you there.” 

“[Art] is never finished, only abandoned.”

— W.H. Auden paraphrasing the poet Paul Valery. 

Last week, I was fortunate enough to see the jazz guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel live with Allan Holdsworth at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads festival in NYC. I wasn’t familiar with his work but left with a great admiration for his mastery and craft - him and Allan really stood out in a sea of pentatonic licks and machismo shredding. I’ve since bought several of his albums and have them on infinite loop in my mp3 player. I’ve been a huge fan of big band ever since I discovered the music of Charles Mingus and this music and video are simply phenomenal at what they do. It leaves me with with a thousand questions and thousands of ideas for my own compositions. I sometimes wonder if jazz musicians admire what classical musicians can do in the same way that I admire what they can do. 

On a side note, while I appreciate Eric Clapton and his presenters for doing such a fantastic job bringing an array of guitarists together for this 5 hour marathon, I have to call them out for not having EVEN ONE featured act be a woman. Seriously? What decade are we living in where the only announced woman of the entire 5-hour evening was essentially a backup singer for Doyle Bramhall II?  We left the event determined to buy any future daughter of ours an electric guitar and take her to see all the great female guitar players out there. I mean, if Beyonce and Michael Jackson can tour the world with female shredders, it’s not clear to me why the Crossroads festival can’t find a lead spot for a single woman in a lineup of 30 guitar acts. What message did that send to all the young women in the audience? My wife and I were not alone in this thinking. Shameful!

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. - Calvin Coolidge

I want to tell you a story, trust me when I say the story has a happy ending. Back in late October, I finally, finally, completed a project that was roughly 2 years in the making, I released my debut solo album, “Something New.” I can honestly say that I can’t remember a time in my life where I have undergone anything as psychologically and emotionally demanding for such an extended duration. Now that I've had several months to reflect on things, I’d like to synthesize some thoughts…as part of the healing process. :-p

When I first embarked on this journey, a colleague of mine warned me of the sorts of emotional toils making the CD could create. When she made her own solo CD she suffered so much psychological trauma that she thought she had developed physical ailments that made it impossible to play the violin. Several doctor visits later it was made evident it was all in her head. I’m not certain if I got to that point, but I did undergo at least a year of CD-related anxiety and stress, and even suffered a bout of despair when I realized a virtuosic arrangement I had made and invested dozens of hours in had to be scrapped from the project. 

Picture yourself showing up for your first recording date, armed with a ton of virtuosic music that you’ve spent years researching, composing, re-composing, and arranging. You are on the clock and don’t have time to warm-up. Should I have changed my strings a day earlier? There are a dozen microphones facing off with your entire field of vision. Did I play that too fast? There is a man in a cordoned off room talking at you through a speaker about everything you could be doing better. Did I bend that string out of tune last take? The heat from the spotlights is knocking you out of tune. Should I have filed my nails differently? You know some part of what you record on this one day of your life is going to eventually be the permanent finished product. No, it was too slow! It is just you, and you knowing that all of the success or failure of the project rests entirely and literally in your hands. This is just a taste of the first day in the studio, and an example of why the process forces one to either let go, or go insane. 

After intermittently undertaking these sessions for a year, I was left with several hours of recordings and soon learned that a CD is actually made on the editing room floor. You sift through hours and hours of takes in order to build a coherent and enduring musical statement. Make different choices, get a completely different CD. And of course, some trade-offs have to be made: Do you choose perfect intonation or precision? Do you choose the beautiful vibrato on the 7th eighth note, or the take where you spontaneously moved your right hand an inch in the other direction to get a different timbre?…etc. etc. I can think of nothing more tedious than the hours I spent making these choices during the summer of 2012. 

Though, now that I’ve come through the other end of the process, I actually think finishing and releasing this CD is one of the proudest achievements of my career. And I learned so many lessons from the undertaking that every time I’ve recorded in the studio since has been much easier. It’s been thrilling to hear praise from colleagues and see people from around the world enjoying my art, and [UPDATE] As of August 2013 the CD was reviewed in Classical Guitar Magazine and was given high praise for being “beautifully played and recorded." 

I’ve concluded that it’s likely impossible for artists to fairly evaluate their art because it’s too personal for us. Sometimes I listen to my album and think there are moments of true originality and brilliance. Other times all I can hear are the things I would have done differently if I had more time and resources. But at some point, you have to let go and put your art out into the world, because nothing is perfect, and waiting around for perfection is a surefire way to never put out anything. 

All I can say for certain is that I know the album is sincere, and has something worthwhile to say, and that means a lot to me. As the famed guitarist Julian Bream - who also disliked the recording process- said at the end of his book A Life on the Road, “I don’t think I’m a great artist, but I know I’m a good one, and that I have got something to say, however modest. And I am happy to be alive, and to be able to say it and say it [through music] with some eloquence to people.”

Until the next one. - Thomas 

This past weekend I had the great privilege of premiering my first guitar duet in the esteemed Brooklyn Conservatory of Music as part of a benefit concert. I was joined by the wonderful guitarist Madeleine Davidson, who commissioned the piece for the event -as well as several other wonderful musicians who contributed that day. 

The piece is called Ten Kingdoms and is based on the writings of the 16th century Spanish friar Bartolome de las Casas, who famously documented the atrocities committed by the Spaniards in the Americas. After a friend on facebook posted a video citing his writings, I immediately bought his work “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” and couldn’t put it down. He begins the book by mentioning how “no fewer than ten kingdoms” had been completely depopulated and then goes on to describe the process and events that led to this devastation. A pretty amazing history lesson you probably skipped in school. 

At the concert, we premiered the first movement, which is based on the text: “Those that arrived from the remotest parts of Spain…and who pride themselves in the name of Christians.” It imagines the excited feelings of those Spaniards setting off on the perilous and naive voyage for riches in the New World; completely oblivious to the events that await them and the natives. 

The audience seemed to really enjoy the work; with its inappropriate joyfulness and dark subtext. I’m very grateful that it was so well-received, and I’m even more excited now about finishing the other movements I’ve sketched out, as soon as I get some more time and knowledge. Until then…Thomas

Pilgrimage -  “a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance." 

Baptism - "a trying or purifying experience, potentially of thought and character.”

I recently returned from my own two-week pilgrimage to my home state of California this month. I went with some friends to climb the 14,179 ft snow-capped peaks of Mt. Shasta, and to baptize myself in the spectacular and sacred Klamath Native American site of Crater Lake - which the tribe used for vision quests for centuries. It was a welcome bookend to one of the most demanding years of my professional life and I am a better man for having done it. 

I am not entirely sure what I was searching for this trip, but I suppose some part of me was looking for a little perspective on the year’s events - big concerts, new faculty appointments, working on CD edits etc. In short, I was looking to do something legitimately ‘hard,’ as opposed to something merely tedious or stressful; to better understand the distinctions between the three.

I’ve been ascending the peaks of California since I was a teenager and it was good to return home. Climbing a mountain has a funny and helpful way of trivializing a lot of things in life. You are forced to contemplate the possibility of your -or your companion’s- demise; to push yourself by overcoming pain, nausea, fatigue, and sleep deprivation; to ponder infinity in comparison to your own worldly aspirations. I find that climbing is a good way to take time each year to do these things in a sustained way, lest one get absorbed in the daily ups and downs of the rat-race.

All in all, it was a fantastic trip. We reached the summit of Mt. Shasta with many adventures along the way, met numerous travelers going through life in numerous ways (model scale train enthusiasts, Spencer: The world’s alleged best waiter, a nostalgic widow, a petrified but trash-talking cliff jumper, etc.). And I can think of no better way to baptize oneself than the way we took a 15-foot leap of faith into the purifying 38 degree water of Crater Lake. 

As the summer winds down and I prepare for a new concert season, I am thankful to be alive, to have good friends and colleagues, and to keep searching for a place to do all things tedious, stressful, hard, and beautiful with this gift of music. I’ll meet you there. -Thomas

Back in November my guitar duo with Christopher Mallett, Duo Noire, played an outreach concert at Lyons at Blow Elementary as part of our artist residency for the St. Louis Classical Guitar Society. Recently, the society continued the relationship with the music teacher there, Mark Clark, and donated 40 guitars to the school to begin a classical guitar program. I am absolutely thrilled that Chris and I got to play a part in the truly awesome work that the St Louis Guitar Society and society president Bill Ash are doing. Here is a Fox news video and article about the donation:

http://fox2now.com/2012/04/13/guitar-gift-hopes-to-inspire-grade-schoolers/#ooid=g5dWhnNDpsvLRLc3NVCp1atibNck4ifj

And here’s a link to the St Louis Classical Guitar Society where you can make donations to their programs and help them get classical guitars in more low-income public schools!

http://www.guitarstlouis.net/

Starting at 8:10, there’s an interesting discussion by Alvaro Pierri on what truly makes a good classical guitarist. It reminded me of how my former teacher Ben Verdery would sometimes mention the Buddhist teaching that one should always strive to keep “a beginner’s mind.” A lot of wisdom coming from both of those men…

Footage from a concert I gave this summer in Philadelphia at the Church of the Holy Trinity. One of my favorite pieces for guitar: the prelude from Federico Mompou’s Suite Compostelana.

Chicago, Illinois - It’s finally done! A few weeks ago I got serious about finishing my piece Scenes from America and devoted all of my free time towards completing the Chicago, Illinois movement. I’m very happy with it and definitely think the tons of rewrites and time that went into this were worthwhile. This movement took me a good year to fully realize, delayed my CD, and generally caused me a ton of anxiety and grief throughout 2011. Sheesh! 

I think it took so long because Chicago is a very special place for me. I lived there for four years while I was getting schooled (literally and figuratively) at the University of Chicago. I spent countless nights taking in the local jazz clubs, symphony shows, and theater productions. I gave my debut recital at Chicago’s Smart Museum. I was in Chicago when I learned that my mother had died, and it was in Chicago that I met and later married my wife. Needless to say, Chicago and I have HISTORY, and it took time to put that history into the music.

The piece is an homage to one of my favorite composers, jazz bassist Charles Mingus, and it was also inspired by the work I’ve done with soprano Alicia Hall Moran and pianist Jason Moran. All three of them seamlessly blend classical music and jazz into a unified and original narrative and have been huge inspirations for me. As a result, the piece starts and ends with a basic jazz head but morphs into a more intense classical baroque texture in the middle. This texture gets increasingly complex and modern (paralleling my university music studies) and then we are brought back to the opening theme. After this recapitulation, an exotic scale run blows in and takes us away (from the city, from loved ones, and from my adolescence). At least, that’s the story I hear. 

So, Scenes from America Vol.1 is done. CD coming soon. Hopefully the next piece I write will come a little easier and be a little less heavy- perhaps some Romanza variations :-).- Thomas