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

New York, New York. This is the next piece in my Scenes from America series. Last fall, I was asked to write a piece for the wonderful NYC guitarist Kenji Haba. I decided to write one about the city since I had been spending a lot of time there. It’s fitting that I did since I ended up moving to Manhattan mere days before Kenji premiered this work in a city church (pictured below).

The piece tries to do three things. It tries to convey the idea of a “New York Minute,” to juxtapose the calm sanctuary of the Grand Central trains vs. the claustrophobia and chaos that I feel once I am bombarded by the exiting crowds, and to express the unrelenting industrial drive that could create and sustain such an empire. Basically, it’s a day-trip to the city.

Although my music has been performed before, this was the first time I was actually able to be in the concert audience, and it was a wonderful experience. It was also an honor to be involved with Vox Novus and the great work they are doing for new music and homeless advocacy at Jan Hus Church. All in all, having my piece “New York, NY” premiered in NYC the week that my wife and I moved here made for a nice welcome to our new home. So far so good.

Curiously enough, the atmosphere of tension and excitement is favorable to a good performance. -Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years

Luckily, tension and excitement abounded this week in my Philadelphia debut. Aside from having two concerts with completely different music, I also had to finish up my teaching for the semester, attend my wife’s ordination in Long Island, and prepare for our move to Manhattan this month! Tension and excitement indeed…

This time, the Fates brought me to West Chester University for another iteration of Alicia Hall Moran’s “Motown Project,” a highly original fusion of classical and Motown music that examines race and class vis-a-vis the American experience. The concert was for the West Chester Poetry Conference, one of the largest of its kind in the country. It was a multi-day affair and we closed out the week’s events. It’s an honor whenever I am surrounded by such talented musicians, and I can earnestly say that we really turned it on and ended up performing a truly unique, artistic, and downright moving set. The standing ovation we received was a welcome acknowledgement of our sweat (must have been 80 degrees in the theater at one point!), and it was a blast.  

The next concert was a solo recital for Church of the Holy Trinity in the heart of Rittenhouse Square -the main park area in Philadelphia. It was in an absolutely gorgeous church sanctuary with unbelievable acoustics for guitar. For the first time in my life, I found myself in the rare predicament of actually having too MUCH music prepared for a recital. But, I feel that I’ve finally found a set of music that truly speaks to me on an emotional level, and this allowed me to fully “let go” and focus solely on expressing my love for these pieces. In short, I felt really “on” that day and was completely immersed in the moment. It’s a spectacular feeling. The audience was right there with me and it was a genuine pleasure to share an afternoon of art-making with everyone in that space.

Thank you Philly for such a warm welcome, you’ve won me over. Video from the recital will be coming in the next few weeks. Let me know what you think by clicking on the URL link below. -Thomas

Thankfully, the world has gotten smaller for musicians. This has allowed me to not only perform classical music from around the world, but also to be paired up with musicians from a variety of styles. One instance of this was a few months ago when I got together with sitarist/violinist Rachel Golub and tabla player Dave Sharma for a concert in New York. 

Since there is no repertoire for classical guitar and sitar, we were charged with the fun task of making our own. This led to some cool moments of fusion and original compositions, but as a performer, one always remembers the concert moments when things are just “happening.” Well, this concert had one musical moment in particular that I’d like to share with you.

Through the process of preparing for this concert I learned of something called a “Jhala.” Basically, after the raga has been established in the Alap and the ensemble is in full force on the theme in the Gat (Drut), the piece concludes w/ a Jhala by getting faster and switching to a sort of sitar strumming pattern that builds to a climax, and this is awesome. I think part of the reason that I enjoyed it so much was that there was a musical conversation taking place between the three of us that wasn’t rehearsed. And when you don’t know your exact way to the finish line, reaching it and seeing that all your teammates are there (and alive) is all the more satisfying! -Thomas

What did you think of the Jhala? Share your thoughts in the comments section by clicking on the URL link below.

Salt Creek, California - This is something I’m working on. It’s a movement of what will eventually be a set of sketches called “Scenes from America”. This movement is called “Salt Creek, California,” which is a beach from my adolescence that I have (mostly) fond memories of (pictured to the right). The outer sections use alternating measures of 7/16+5/16 which can also be heard as ¾ with syncopated accents (4+3+3+2; but that’s messier to write). 

This was commissioned by Yale alum and Canadian guitarist Bruno Roussel for a repertoire book he is publishing in Canada. More coming soon, let me know what you think! 

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UPDATED 3/8/2011:  

A friend once told me “if you don’t like a piece, make it better." I’ve since decided to revise this piece to better reflect the range of feelings I have about Salt Creek beach in California. So, this is the new draft I’m working with. A bit more contemplative and longing than the original: Walks with girlfriends as the whitewash nips at your feet, dropping into a wave at daybreak, philosophizing about life over a bonfire, watching the sunlight spread across the water as it sets, and nostalgia for relationships come and gone. I think that’s all represented here now in a way it wasn’t before, and I hope you agree that it is in fact, better.  

Share your thoughts in the comments section by clicking on the URL link below.

The performances had a certain cliff-hanging quality which you wouldn’t normally get in rehearsed, or even over-rehearsed, performances. I mean, we were actually sitting on the edge of our seats, watching each other like hawks. But that’s what I reckon to be real music making. -Julian Bream: A Life on the Road

This week had me playing in two huge concerts and I must say I’ve had an absolute blast despite all of the stress and hard work. I’m becoming addicted to these unfamiliar musical situations and opportunities to play with other people from the wider non-classical guitar music scene.

The first concert was a fundraiser for the Music Conservatory of Westchester, where I teach. The dean, Jean Newton, invited me to perform with fellow faculty and virtuoso flutist Stefani Starin for roughly 30 highly accomplished people and trustees. After settling on some appropriate repertoire we were able to put on a really enjoyable and balanced evening of music, with Jean and Stefani playing a lovely Bach sonata in between. What was most enjoyable for me though was the set of Brazilian choros we ended with, that had a sort of free and improvised aspect to them that had the audience actually laughing aloud- in a good way! I’d never performed choros before and it was a great experience to play that music and be right there with the audience. 

The next concert was at the renowned Le Poisson Rouge in NYC with the phenomenal singer and composer Alicia Hall Moran and her Motown Project ensemble. One of the greatest things about this project is that it forces one to be creative, spontaneous, and able to make something new every performance rather than simply going and playing your allotted notes at your designated time and calling it a day. There’s room to express oneself, linger, improvise, and genuinely surprise each other. Of course, that sort of spontaneity initially can be terrifying shocking for a classical player, but the fusion of classical lines with Motown and jazz improvisation led to several profound and extremely unique moments of music making and spontaneous audience clapping-along that made it all worthwhile.

Share your thoughts in the comments section by clicking on the URL link below.