Great Barrington — If you ever hear a musician talk about “blowing over changes,” it’s a sure bet you are talking to a jazz player—unless you happen to be speaking with Grammy-winning classical guitarist Jason Vieaux, who will appear in concert at Simon’s Rock’s McConnell Theater Friday, November 4, at 7:30 p.m. (Mr. Vieaux uses a bit of jazz terminology when he discusses his collaboration with guitarist Pat Metheny in the interview below.)
Jason Vieaux is one of the rare classically trained musicians who knows how to improvise real blues licks on his instrument. Also, he knows a lot more about jazz music than you might expect from a classical player. But for that matter, his knowledge of pop music also is a bit startling for a guy who routinely performs four-part Bach fugues on a six-string guitar. And it’s hard to think of many classical musicians who would even think of making their own arrangement of a Steely Dan medley. But such endeavors are actually old hat to Mr. Vieaux.
No one should be surprised to find that Jason Vieaux marches to the beat of his own repertoire. But everything hinges on this: He knows what he wants to hear, because, in addition to playing the guitar since childhood, he’s been writing his own pieces for the instrument. Quite naturally then, he makes his own arrangements of many of the selections on his programs and selects others that satisfy his requirements right out of the box. That’s why, no matter whose music he is playing—his own or Bach’s or Ellington’s—his primary aim is to satisfy his own ear.
The result is revelatory—which is to say, every note he plays is about revealing all of the capabilities and tonal characteristics of his instrument.
But he wouldn’t be able to do that without a fully developed classical technique. Thus, his performances are products of an unusually keen ear combined with the kind of precision that comes from decades of practice (or 10,000 hours, whichever comes last). This explains why National Public Radio called Vieaux “perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation.” (In classical music, precision sometimes comes at the cost of soul.)
Downbeat magazine has written of Vieaux’s “faultless delivery” of Pat Metheny’s “Four Paths Of Light.” But just between you and me and Pat Metheny, Vieaux’s performance must have been quite a lot better than faultless. To fulfill the composer’s deepest musical wishes, Vieaux’s performance would need to be transcendent, since the composer himself is a virtuoso guitarist. (Vieaux discusses all of this below.)
I spoke with Mr. Vieaux by telephone this month and learned a lot about what it means to be a modern classical guitarist. (We’ve come a long way since Andrés Segovia established the instrument’s legitimacy in classical music circles a century ago.) So get ready to think differently about classical guitar.
Our conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
I’m intrigued by your work with Pat Metheny. Isn’t it a bit unusual for a classical player to collaborate with jazz musicians?
It’s been done before. Manuel Barrueco did an album called “Nylon & Steel” about 25 years ago with Al Di Meola, Steve Morse, and Andy Summers. And I know that when I was a kid I used to hear about this group called Sky that Australian guitarist John Williams was a part of for a little while. But I don’t know how much actual improvisation, like blowing over changes, was involved in that kind of thing.
The funny thing about the piece Pat wrote for me is that there’s not an improvised note in the entire piece. For him, that was a really new type of project. There’s always been through-composed bits and pieces, or sections, of his own music for his bands and trios and quartets—the Pat Metheny Group in particular. But this was an instance when he wrote a nineteen-minute piece of four movements for a single guitar, and everything is entirely written out. So that was different for him. That’s a little bit more the kind of thing I’m used to doing, you know, doing two or three world premiers a year, learning something that’s been written for me. So there’s a great kind of reaching across the aisle there, I guess, in a way.
The reason I ask, is this: Everyone knows Metheny is a virtuoso. I figure he could have performed that piece himself. So the million dollar question is, what did he get from you that he couldn’t get when playing it himself?
Well, that’s the thing. It requires a classical guitarist, one of a pretty accomplished level of technical skill on the classical guitar, which he doesn’t really—he would—well, listen: I’m sort of speaking for him, but I think he would tell you that he could not play it unless he had several years of practice and nothing else to do.
We’ve met several times over the years and, you know, he’s really fascinated by a professional classical guitarist’s ability to play, say, a Bach fugue, a three- or four-voice fugue on the instrument. That’s something that requires many years of specific training that he simply hasn’t had. It has nothing to do with his talent level.
He wanted—and he’s talked about this in interviews—he was trying to write something that he couldn’t play, even write something that would really stretch me, as well. You know, it took a lot of practice hours to get it ready. It’s one of the more difficult things I’ve had to learn.
Earlier, you mentioned improvisation. When I heard your performance on YouTube of Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” I would have bet money you were improvising authentic blues licks.
Those are my licks, and I play it differently, you know … when I get bored of those licks I insert other ones in there. I’ve been improvising since I was a kid. But I don’t do it in a professional arena, because it’s just not my thing. I work in another sort of, you know, the way someone works with oil on canvas, or whatever, and I work as a sculptor or something. It’s not that I can’t improvise. Every time I pick up the guitar I improvise or write something. It’s just that 99 percent of that stuff doesn’t ever materialize into anything.
But you’ll agree that your ability to improvise really does set you apart from most classically trained players?
I suppose so. I mean, it’s always come naturally to me. I’ve always done arrangements, I’ve always pulled things off the radio—from the Top 40 when I was a kid—and did little impromptu guitar arrangements, just for kicks. I never thought of it as anything more than that.
But you have such a good ear—being an improviser and composer—that it must inform all your creative choices, all your programming choices, because you are gifted with a really special understanding of what will be most flattering to your instrument.
Thank you. I appreciate that. I try to choose things that actually sound … like the violin sonata by Bach actually sounds very good on the guitar. And I’ve had enough feedback from all my violinist friends around the world, and they say it sounds terrific because they understand that on a polyphonic instrument like the guitar, which is kind of a cross between a string instrument, like the cello, and a percussion instrument like the piano, that it kind of contains both of those worlds. So when you play these three or four voices at the same time, of course it is very difficult to do. But it’s no more difficult to do on the guitar than it is on the violin. It’s just that guitarists can sustain or connect a lot of those voices together on the instrument. The instrument itself can actually handle that.
I like the Barrios waltz. It’s a beautiful thing, kind of in the style of maybe a Chopin waltz brillante. It’s by Agustin Barrios, the great Paraguayan virtuoso, and that piece makes the guitar sound huge!
Sometimes when you commission things from a composer they don’t always really know how to make the guitar sound bigger. They try to impose sort of pianistic kinds of runs or string-like kinds of things on it. But I thought Pat Metheny, for example, did a great—well, him being a guitarist understanding the instrument more—I think he did a fantastic job with that piece.
But, yeah, I do like to play things that suit the guitar very well.
Is there anything else about your program that you’d like readers to know about before they hear you play on November 4?
Well, actually, one of the things on the program … there’s going to be a piece that I wrote during the pandemic called “Home,” and it’s a tremolo piece. Tremolo is a type of technique in the right hand where you play a melody very quickly with several fingers going at the same time, kind of like a sustained sound on a mandolin would be with a pick. I composed a lot of music over that time period a couple of years ago when I didn’t have any concerts.
And then there’s a wonderful work by the great Cuban guitarist Leo Brouwer, and that’s an original work for the guitar, like mine is. But this is bigger. It’s called “El Decameron Negro,” about 18 minutes, a three-movement work inspired by West African folk tales. It’s really a masterpiece of the modern literature.
A couple original guitar pieces by the great Jorge Morel, who passed away last year. He was a big mentor of mine. I got to study with him in Rochester, N.Y., and in Ashtabula, Ohio. He was a really big influence on me as a kid growing up in Buffalo. And he’s another guitarist who had a full command of American jazz language and history and Brazilian pop tunes and everything—but he had a fully developed classical technique, I mean a real virtuoso.
So I’m going to close with something like that and maybe play another one as an encore, if I get one. Also my arrangement, maybe, of “What a Wonderful World” or the song from “Willy Wonka,” “Pure Imagination.”
————
See Jason Vieaux Friday, November 4 at McConnell Theater on the campus of Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Mass., at 7:30 p.m. Ticket information here.
