Hello, everyone! We are here in São Paulo with the great guitarist Marcelo Kayath,
one of the great figures of world guitar.
For those that do not know, Marcelo won some of the most important
guitar competitions in the 80s at the young age of 20
and has now returned to professional guitar with a new recording for GuitarCoop.
We are here with an exclusive interview,
made especially for you.
Thank you, Paulo.
I'd like to begin by asking you about your musical education.
I know a lot about you
and you were a particularly strong influence on my generation.
When I first saw you play at MASP in the 80s,
it was a decisive moment for me, for my wish to pursue music
and guitar-playing professionally,
but I know a few stories about your trajectory that
I'd like to ask about throughout the interview.
Before we move to those, however, I'd first like to start by asking about your education.
Who were the teachers that were most vital in
enabling you to play the way you did at such a young age?
Well, there are a few different answers, here.
I had many influences. The first, obviously,
was that of my mother who was a pianist. My mother was a piano teacher
– she always played at home –
and I grew up listening to my mother's playing.
That was a crucial influence from a very early age.
I actually did not begin playing guitar very early on.
I was no prodigy.
I never began at the age of five or six. On the contrary,
I had my first lessons when I was about 11 or 12 years old
with Leo Soares at Rio's ProArte. At that time,
ProArte was a very fertile musical environment.
After that, I studied with Prof. Jodacil Damaceno,
who was also important to me because Jodacil was
incredibly influential in fixing my hand position, in my way of holding the guitar.
Before I studied with him, I was always told that I had some talent
– that guitar-playing came somewhat naturally to me –
but Jodacil was very focused on the issue of hand-position
and inculcated in me the importance of finding the best possible position
not only for the guitar itself but also in how to move the hand along the guitar.
but after that, Jodacil left to become a teacher in Uberlândia,
in the interior of Brazil, and I was left without an instructor.
in the interior of Brazil, and I was left without an instructor.
both Sergio and Eduardo Abreu,
and they served as mentors and teachers but
there was no formal teaching relationship between us.
There was no weekly formal lesson,
but at this point, I really needed a formal teacher
– someone that could tell me what to do on a weekly basis –
and so I left to study with Turibio Santos.
Turibio was very important to me at the time not only because
he was an outstanding teacher
but also because he taught me how to be an artist,
that is, how to be a professional guitarist.
He taught me everything: how to sit on the stage,
how to set up a recital program, how to prepare for a performance…
He even reminded me of some very obvious things like
sleeping well the night before the performance, how to take care of my nails,
how to eat properly, and how to plan a travel schedule.
So Turibio was crucially important musically, for my guitar-playing,
but also in this respect, for teaching me
how to behave as a professional guitarist.
As far as education is concerned, this is basically it.
We have the impression, when we see you play,
the false impression that everything is very easy
or very natural and so I'd like you to comment on all the work and the preparation,
on all the time you invested in order to prepare for these big competitions
and perhaps to give a tip to the younger generations. For example,
I know that you focused on one specific repertoire
and engaged in the task of cleaning up your playing
that was extremely meticulous and disciplined,
but the impression we have when we see you play, given your capabilities,
It is really hard to imagine how much you've worked to get to this point.
There is no magic, here.
We can have talent and some sort of affinity for a particular instrument or activity
and I certainly what I think makes a difference in a competition
setting is exactly what you described, the preparation.
My secret for competitions was the following:
first, only play pieces with which you are absolutely familiar.
If you can, avoid learning a new piece now and attempting to play it
at a competition three months from now.
I don't think this works
because the contest is a situation in which you are nervous and tense
and it is a lot easier to perform works that you know backwards and forwards
and have tested in many situations,
so I always tried to organize myself in such a way that
I was only playing pieces that I had known for a really long time.
Of course, every so often the contests included a mandatory piece
and I would have to start studying that some time closer to the competition
– maybe two or three months earlier – but in general,
only played pieces that I knew well and had tested in numerous recitals and concerts.
For the mandatory pieces – and there were always one or two –
I had a very particular strategy. I woke up at 7am,
sometimes still very sleepy, still tired,
and started playing the required piece.
I did not warm up my fingers, I did no scales, no arpeggios, no legatos.
I did nothing. I just picked up the guitar, put it on my lap
and started playing the piece at the appropriate speed.
The piece didn't sound great, of course, but at least
I learned which sections were worse because in that context…
this is the worst possible context for performing any piece.
Over time, I began to successfully be able to play the piece even at 7 am
and, this is funny, at the Toronto competition,
the second round of the competition…
Because of lack of availability,
the organizers decided that some of the contestants were going to perform
in the morning and there was a lottery for time slots.
I was given 7am.
At least for me, then,
the second round of the contest began at 7am,
but I was prepared for that, I had prepared.
Winning the first prize is a little bit of luck because
sometimes something happens the day of the competition
and you are a little lucky. It is a mix of work, talent, and luck.
Now, it is also important to practice thinking that you are going to win.
Or if not win, at least get close to winning
because if you don't prepare yourself to win,
you won't have the strength to study,
to dedicate yourself for many months.
The person who will win is doing that.
If you don't do that, you have no chance,
and so it is that: a mix of repertoire choice,
dedication, small tricks like this one of waking up at 7am,
and believing in the possibility of victory.
Look, in my time, the Toronto competition
was only held once every three years
and so I did not even know who was going to be there
or if I had a chance to win,
but I stuck a piece of paper in my mirror at home
and wrote: "You will win the competition."
So everyday, when I woke up to brush my teeth, I read that message
in the mirror and it began to penetrate.
Over time, I began to believe, to believe in me, and that is the most important.
When I walked in to perform, I knew deep down that
- I didn't know whether I was going to win -
but I walked in with the conviction that I had a chance of winning
and I think this makes a difference.
There is one other thing.
One thing I always did in competitions was never to
watch my competitors performing.
I never did this
because sometimes you get impressed with a person's playing,
but the people who need to be impressed are not you
but whoever is on the judging panel,
so I remember that in one of these competitions,
I sat there warming my fingers – I was going to perform
in a half-hour or forty minutes – I heard someone
playing Estudo n. 7 by Villa-Lobos – with those incredibly fast scales –
with extraordinary perfection.
Then the guitarist stopped and followed up with the scales of the Chaconne.
Again, perfection.
He continued with the Nocturnal by Britten. Once again, perfection.
And then I stopped. I stopped playing entirely.
I put my guitar in my case and thought:
"It's over. The competition is over. This guy is going to win."
And so I got up and went to watch him because he
was playing with his door open and he had an appearance…
He was a tall man, slender, with very thin fingers. He looked like Paganini.
I just stood there and watched him warm up, warm up, and warm up,
and the more he warmed up, the better he played and
that had such an impact on me
– he was going to play immediately before me – that I thought:
"Well, the competition is over. It is obvious that he is going to win,
so I don't have anything else to lose."
Surprisingly enough, this gave me a sense of peace and tranquility so
I ended up walking on stage with absolute confidence.
Afterward, I found out that he didn't get through the very first round
because he walked on stage exhausted.
He had practiced too much in the dressing room.
He walked on stage exhausted and didn't get through the first phase
and he was a great guitarist.
If he had prepared some other way, perhaps,
he could have easily won that competition.
These things happen, this is life.
Your art, it derives basically from sound.
Some guitarists don't focus on that.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Do you have anything special that you do?
Do you file your nails in any particular way?
What do you do to get this incredible sound out of the instrument?
Well, a few things. The first
is that my mother was a pianist
and while she didn't know anything about the guitar,
she understood quite a lot about sound
and so she was always listening to me and telling me
to search for the most beautiful sound.
"Oh, this sounds beautiful"
so I grew up with my mother telling me about beautiful sounds
My first teacher, Leo Soares at ProArte plays beautifully,
he has a beautiful sound, and he taught me that guitarists should play
with both volume and beautiful sound.
Jodacil Damaceno, who was heavily influenced by Segovia,
shared the same priorities. So all of the time I was told…
I never had teachers that focused on speed,
that only wanted me to play faster and faster.
"Ok, here is the metronome. Swallow it."
No, I had a slightly different background.
Every single one of my teachers was focused on finding this beautiful sound,
a beautiful and projecting sound.
When I was young, I practiced in my mother's house in Rio de Janeiro
and it was located in a neighborhood…
The apartment was quite big but it was pretty loud
and located in a busy street so you could always hear
the noise of the cars and buses outside and I…
Well, I don't know where I got this from…Crazy me,
I practiced in the middle of the living room.
I never practiced in the bedroom because
the living room was the noisiest place in the house.
I had heard a story then…
Ah, I'll sound like a crazy person with this story, but
when I was a child, I heard a legend about a Greek man,
a man who was supposedly one of the greatest orators in ancient Greece,
and that he overcame his timidity and oratory problems
He practice by placing stones in his mouth and speaking before the ocean,
close to the ocean, where the sound of the waves would muffle his voice.
His aim was to try to "beat" the ocean by doing this.
I think I had this story stuck in my head at the time and I thought:
"Oh, I'll overcome the sounds of the street"
and so I positioned myself in the living room,
exposed to all the noises outside, and pretended that I had to overcome them.
and every so often, my mother would come by and say:
"Oh, that doesn't sound beautiful" and I would try to improve the sound,
but I was never focused on playing as fast as possible.
I was never taught to do that.
I soon began to listen to Segovia and later,
at the age of 18, 19, or 20,
I became close with the Abreu brothers
and began to approach the guitar like an orchestra,
that is, to think of the guitar as a small orchestra
in which every sound is available to the player.
In this view, you can achieve anything, from a very sweet sound
to a very
very metallic one,
and it is up to the player to be able to gauge it and use
the different colors in the best way possible,
whether it be imitating the brass section,
or making something very smooth here,
or on the other side.
And so this search for the different sounds of the guitar…
This is something I heard once in an interview with Julian Bream.
I think the greatest advantage of being a guitarist is exactly that,
that you are able to search for different colors
to create a conception of music within
this understanding of the guitar as orchestra.
How would you say the guitar in Brazil compares with that of the world more generally?
Brazilian guitar in my view was characterized by exactly that,
it was playing beautifully, playing with good taste, with volume,
trying to… We had great examples:
Turibio, the Abreu brothers, and later the Assad brothers, and so
there were always important references for all of us.
This is what we were all searching for.
How this is different from guitar-playing abroad I sincerely do not know.
Sometimes I see certain schools abroad where people
play in a way that is perhaps less colorful,
not valuing different colors as much, or dynamics, or timbres,
but I don't know if that is a country, a school,
or a teacher, or simply a coincidence.
I think that we should treat each case separately.
What I do know is the following: Brazilian guitar
has its tradition, a tradition that stems from
Villa-Lobos and João Pernambuco
and that is undeniably influenced by popular guitar.
My friend Yamandu is out there, for example,
playing with extraordinary talent and success.
Popular guitar is part of our culture,
it affects our way of playing,
and so Brazil has its own unique cauldron of influences.
The same way one might say that
pop guitar or blues guitar affects guitarists abroad…
or jazz guitar... Each culture has its own approach.
Because of your influence, I have returned to using a metronome in my practicing.
Henrique had taught me this
and you revived it by saying:
"Look, Paulo, use the metronome in the appropriate way. It will help."
I think it might be interesting for you to share some of your insights
on the metronome with all of us.
See, I've always practiced with a metronome.
I think the metronome is an important tool.
Since my mother was a pianist, she was very strict when it came to rhythm.
She used to tell me: "Music without rhythm isn't music;
it is a patchwork quilt without form, without shape."
And so the importance of having a strong rhythmic sense
was something that was always present in my playing
and that I inherited from my mother.
Turibio also has this as a signature feature of his playing.
He was very precise.
He even made his students count: one, two, three, four
as they played so that they couldn't stray away from the rhythm.
The Abreus too, I don't have to tell you, were…
I came from a school that was rhythmic,
What I really think is this: once you have already figured out the piece,
once the rhythms are already in place,
and if it is necessary – because the metronome is not always necessary –
you have used the metronome to interiorize
the rhythms and understand how the music works…
Once rhythm and musicality already coexist within your playing,
it is always necessary to add an extra breath
of vitality to the piece, an extra breath that only the artist can give.
That is when you are actually making music.
Music has to have that breath, that expression,
the musicality superimposed on an absolutely precise rhythmic substructure.
How do see the expansion of the guitar today?
I think that the guitar, like everything in life,
is always changing.
When the guitar moved from Tárrega to Segovia,
it underwent profound modifications. Segovia provided an
entire new ordering to the guitar, a new way of approaching it.
When the guitar moved from Segovia to Bream and Williams,
and later to Barrueco, David Russell and many other greats
that have many a difference in our instrument…
The guitar is always evolving. This is how things are:
we are evolving, evolving as musicians and as an instrument.
In the last few years, however, I think that we have been running the risk
of failing one of these evolutions.
I think one of the paths we have taken
as players may not have been the best one,
and this is the path of excessive harshness,
of overly metallic playing.
This is a phenomenon I called, in an article I recently wrote,
"treating the guitar as if it were a piano."
Now, of course, a piano has many colors, many notes,
but what I mean to reject is the notion that one should play
everything in the same way, that one should play everything too neatly.
This style doesn't please me and I think this approach
was a detour from the proper path
of guitar-playing and that it is harmful to the instrument.
It is important to remember, at the same time,
that there are many other guitarists around – whom I call "poets of the guitar" –
that are out there making music, searching for real music,
each one playing in their own way.
I think the guitar is moving forward
and the instrument itself is evolving.
There are already people searching for new techniques of guitar-making.
I think that it is attempts such as these that keep the flame alive.
I have no doubt
that in twenty years
– and I hope I'm still around then to see them –
we will see great things,
we will be able to witness musicians doing incredible things
with the guitar, things we had no idea were possible.
It will be fascinating to see them in action.
My only hope is that people continue along
this path with joy and pleasure in making music.
This is all I wish for.
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