I'd been studying with Gordon cross kick guitar teacher in Manchester and I
carried on my college also in Majesty also with Gordon still as my teacher and
I'd already studied it with Gordon for four years and Gordon was the first
person to say to me well maybe we've gone through what we need to go through
you maybe you could go to somebody else but honestly at that time there were two
things one I didn't particularly have an idea of another type of guitar teacher
than Gordon he was perfectly fine as far as I was concerned in the way that I was
going generally speaking and guitarists eclis speaking but on the other hand I'd
also heard from a friend of mine who'd left the music school prior to college
he left one year early to go to college and I bumped into him at college while I
was still at school and he was telling me about this incredible teacher Greek
teacher who taught all instruments and he said it's amazing he was a violinist
I played the third Mozart concerto for him through and you know he spent three
hours on the first two bars and this is a guy you've no idea what this what this
guy can teach it's unbelievable and he was telling me it spend about half an
hour telling me about this Greek teacher whose name I didn't I didn't capture it
was something and so when I went to college I think I had in the back of my
mind honestly the memory of this thing that there was some teacher there that
was very special and so I was looking for a piano teacher I'd had a marvelous
one by the way also in Rochester and assisted on having her because I've
heard heard her pupils that heard her playing and I said no I need that that
can teach she was very difficulty she was marvelous not in a harutunian
daughter of a very famous composer alexander auditory and one of the main
armenian composers after Khachaturian she was she was an incredible virtuoso
pianist and very very demanding so for guitarists in Brazil she had the kind of
stage of real to building up technique very slowly and
very meticulously and very very you know demanding of the students and so I
wanted to carry on my studies with piano and they didn't the course that I was
taking they didn't necessarily give you as a piano teacher I said well there
isn't any space but you might try this Greek teacher called George hygienic us
and he's there because he sometimes takes second study pianist you know he
he listens to everybody you might try him and I went into
George's room there he was sitting on his own and he recognized me he'd see me
on the BBC competition aha playing the concerto he liked it a lot he he liked
the guitar he had taught guitarists in the past and he said oh you played
really well and actually the final was there's winner of the strings we know
the of the keyboard etc and and etc so that was the final that he saw playing
Verdugo Concetta and he was so enthusiastic about that and told me his
life story over about three hours they you know his meeting with no house and I
just I've been really always reading no houses book the art of can of language
one of my favorite books on music no I was like you know about noises and he
was so happy to have this kind of interaction I think also and also the
people he mentioned he had been close with Edwin Fisher all these some great
great people from the past and then he played piano for me and I almost fell
off my my chair the way he played the piano the sound that he could get and I
said how do you create that sound it's all we can discuss about that later it
was something a great topic for him you know but he was the person who could
inspire amazing things in his students and he had a very what we thought it was
this kind of Socratic approach in the sense that he wouldn't just give you the
answer he would try and through questioning and answer you know through
dialogue you were trying to provoke you to find the answer yourself and this was
very often a very very long drawn-out process wasn't something you could do in
one neat little hour his lessons were Homeric
long you know and I covered the whole spectrum you know it would be Greek
literature be philosophy everything will be taken in and it wasn't for everybody
some people found that just way too much they just wanted an hour of piano lesson
thank you very much let them go on to something else with her journey cos it
was a complete almost a kind of a way of life really that music and life were
inseparable who you were and how you played were one
thing basically and so this was the depth to which she went and he was like
that to me George really was music he personified it and he had a tremendous a
tremendous generosity the most generous person you could ever meet he was just
you know he would take a pupil and take them for days and days and days and help
them and I was always thinking he's a virtuous the community should be
practicing instead of teaching so much but he was a real giver he loved he
loved people he loved dialogue I was always laughing and provoking laughter
than everyone so he lightens the whole situation college could be very very
heavy dark and full of angst and he was the person who lightened everything and
people came out of his classes laughing and feeling their life was demise was tottaly different
I think it is great that a university was open to including this kind of instructor.
is that well it was I mean he was in conflict with that college they wanted
they they weren't comfortable with someone like that around because you
know he he he provoked ideas you know people to think for themselves to be and
to start to be kind of rebellious now to go against the the normal things that
the accepted norms in and to to do more extraordinary things you know the other
part of the story is the fact that George's open-class he took in quartets
TNS financed everybody singers also ensembles and the repertoire was right
across the whole spectrum and he was always talking about the relation of
movement and sound the way that violinist person takes a bow and moves
around into an ax and that space between the notes is
articulated through the movement so you feel that curve I mean imagine si for
someone and that that that curve there is a physical can be you know expressed
physically through the technique so it becomes a kind of physical technique you
know that area and on the guitar I was feeling kind of always limited because
the amount of movement that you can create isn't directly the hand to the
fingers on the strings I was I was doing it sort of indirectly through the left
arm but I'd be anything what if you know I could have a way of sitting where I
could have this move directly in in relation to sound as a pianist as or
violin as a cellist etc and that was really the beginning of the thought
process and at the same time I was also doing Alexander Technique and yoga and
and concerned about posture - somebody sent as well to sit well you know and
not to be you know trying to sit it's always a complicated position to sit
well in that you are able to one is able to do it but it's not so easy
after this thing I was talking about and some deeply questioned my approach etc
at the same time I was also making decisions of what not to do for example
there was a lot of pressure to go in for another competition especially the
Toronto competition that time everybody was saying you must go in for that
competition as a huge pressure and I said I remember for about four days
thinking about that on my own I think this is one of those moments in life or
you can go this way or you can go this way because if I went to that
competition I think I would still be playing this way some people might think
that would have been a better guitarist who knows but at that point I said no
for this change to really take place I need to get rid of everything and I you
know I need to find find some solutions which no one's gonna be able to give
give me from the outside so I had an Easter holiday where I just spent three
weeks walking and thinking and and and come to
the collusion it's not possible I can't think of a way that this is gonna be so
I've been my parents used to go to the lovely island the Isles of Scilly off
the south east south coast of England for for Easter holidays lovely place
this arendt a little flat there and we used to walk on the beach it's very
beautiful and so I went back on my own because I had two concerts quite
important concerts to play two concertos one of which was live on radio 3 BBC
Radio 3 which was playing for the first time the Barclays links back to Qatar
Concetta and a couple of days before plane the consequence sure to also both
of them in Scotland and so this was now about 10 days before those two concerts
and I was on my own coming through my grandmother's place she was all so silly
so I was there on my own and I was watching just that evening the
television and there was just as the adverts were there I took the guitar and
started playing and then looked what what what I had though sitting on the
floor and I realized this is it this is the this is it
because now my arms are free in the egg legs were perfectly comfortable holding
the guitar that was really my my Eureka moment I understood then what people
mean by that every K in Greek you really is like a lightning bolt you know
through your life that was one of the great moments in my life and and that
The apple fell on your head. Newton's apple.
was that was the telling when I was so excited I mean I just was dancing around
the house you know because I think I felt this is that for me and sure enough
I play those two concerts sitting on the floor in that position immediately and
you might think that well that's that's a little bit scatterbrained for someone
to immediately do that I should have you know be more cautious about things but I
really felt immediately that I was playing better I really did and the
critic in Glasgow for the BBC who had heard me previously quite a lot it's it
sort of followed my progress said he felt that I was playing better in this
new position he said that in the critic as well which was very nice to read as
But I really wanted to see the conductor's face the moment
Ele foi muito paciente.
So you placed a carpet on the floor and sat on it?
And you took off your shoes?
And the maestro was wearing his concert attire?
guitar I felt so comfortable and so domestic you know and there was a huge
audience out there the main hall in Glasgow with the BBC there I couldn't I
couldn't tell you how relaxed I felt well playing for the first time the
blueness politic attack you attack each other live on radio it was quite strange
and that was the really the beginning a very nice beginning and for the whole of
that year that first year was a wonderful period for me basically
because that was the year that I later went to Brazil for the first time I met
celeea became my wife goes and I went to Greece for the first time was George I
played for the first time in his festival I mean it was like you know
everything was beginning it was the kind of the spring everything everything was
flowering for me and it was a it was translated a very
very sort of fertile period in my life and and so right through those two years
after two years I began to dig deeper into what I could do with this position
yeah and articulate those are those wings that I have in a particular way
you know and the risk could go this way and the other way and I never forget a
thing that George used to tell me about his his teacher for a while he had many
many teachers but one of his teachers was at what airman who'd been a people
of Schnabel the marvelous pianist and he said the story about he was on the Cubs
cusp of his career and he had his debut with Nicky and the Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra playing for to play concerto Edward Edmond right and he was days
before that debut and had a lesson with Schnabel and Schnabel just said you know
you know this wrist thing you can articulate in this way in this way this
way and then you get the phrase something like something very simple
like that sounds innocuous you know but it was enough for Edmund to suddenly be
thrown into a complete chaos just that movement of the wrist said meant that
all of a sudden he was felt absolutely incapable of playing the piano he felt
like a complete beginner and he felt absolutely suicidal before this debut
concert because he felt I'm just hopeless now I just can't do anything
nothing worked just from that one movie sounds another thing many but this is
this is a true story and something a little bit on though along those lines
happened to me about two years in that I suddenly digging deeper into what I was
able to do began to feel that that insecurity that I couldn't suddenly deal
with the instrument the confidence that I had before and I was certainly things
were thrown out of balance and that was a very difficult year for me extremely
difficult it was the year that I actually finished college and
people beginning to react what I was doing quite strongly they it was no
longer a little bit little nice thing which might last for a little time then
he'll go back to this he's in the real thing he'd been doing for two years
maybe this is serious and shouldn't be tolerated you know this is baloney yeah
People thought that you had gone too far with your playing.
yes this is the thing of the fact that you really the further back in the new
house has talked a lot about this in his book his description was quite useful in
some ways there's a military allistic this sort of simile and he uses but it's
actually very useful he used to talk about the fingers being the kind of
soldiers at the front but the further back you go the more you get the general
you get there you get the overall view and the strategy that can guide the you
know the campaign of those of those foot soldiers at the front right so very
often we think just here as you say would work very very concerned about
fingers fingers fingers but if we're able to go backwards the strength really
is increased the further back you go you're able to do with just one movement
here you know what what so many movements do there and be able to
actually to organize groupings of notes phrases etc at sentences from a single
movement and so the the the use of the wrists I think is well it's not only me
of course the things to say it's a whole tradition especially in string playing
Christ always used to say and and cells as well that the lungs of the string
player are in the wrists they breathed there and a wonderful story again of
which is a pertinent to this and might be a little bit of a again a parentheses
but when he was beginning cello the orthodoxy of the cello technique in in
his youth was that you had to have books under your arms and practice this way to
avoid movement and he and he found this dreadful and he rebelled against that
and probably was heavily criticized for talking about throwing away those books
and using that movement because it not only was it not not beneficial but it
was very positive in in phrasing and articulation and the
other wonderful story on the other side another parentheses is a shopper who
developed to a very very sophisticated degree this relation of moving the sound
the articulation etc but when he was a young pianist he went to Paris to study
with Cal caprara who was the virtue of the time at least yes the list in the
list line and a Cal prima had invented this thing where you had a wooden sort
of bar just be just beyond the keyboard where you would rest your arms right and
you'd play here so that again minimize absolutely the movement so that you
would have complete a completely static approach behind the fingers and shopping
and as soon as he saw that and had one lesson with companies so this this is
not only not for me but I wanted the absolute opposite of this you know it's
absolutely I want absolute freedom in order to articulate everything and this
is very much the line that I start developing and it's very interesting
that in playing this way when I talk to a cellist or a violinist about the
relationship of articulation and my posture they take it as a given of
course I mean it's this what but if as you say in guitarists ik terms it's
strange because the whole because of the the posture the which of the posture the
emphasis is is is in a different direction it's a totally different
direction it does tend to be more finger orientated and and so obviously I think
when there are limitations you might say all those limitations I you know close I
kind of adore but in in the arts it's very often the case that limitations as
to are stimulants as well for creativity and so for example when you see Segovia
placing his arm there he is amazing what he's able to do to compensate for that
situation sooner to do have a shop two fantastic
things and one of the things one of the logical reactions of my parents was
saying looking but the very day for example that I put my spike in to my
guitar was the day Segovia died it just so happened that way it was the very day
he died and I came back I was staying with my parents at the time I came back
from the local village there in Edinburgh
just outside Edinburgh where my friends lived with a new spike very proud of
that and all the television they were showing Segovia and one of the films of
Segovia in homage that evening and they quite normally and was a very healthy
reaction I think watching Segovia playing so marvelously and turned around
to me and said what's so wrong with that
you
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