Spring into Spring Performance Contests

Springtime every year presents Guitar Arts students the opportunity to participate in local performance Contests. They work hard to prepare and get excited when they do a good job. If they don’t work so hard to prepare and don’t do as well, they usually learn from that experience, too.

Our first Contest 2012 was in February thru the Conroe Music Teachers Association.  Area students in grades 7 thru 12 perform for a judge who decides whether or not they are qualified to compete at the State level later in the year. Two of our students competed and both were selected as Local Winners who will represent the Conroe Chapter at State.  Kudos to Andie Aranda and Rohan Robinson for this accomplishment!

Andie and Rohan will represent our Studio as well as the Conroe Music Teachers Association at the State Competition in June.

Last weekend seven of our students competed in the Performance Contest sponsored by the Cypress Creek Music Teachers Association. This one is open to all levels and has both Solo and Ensemble categories.

2012 YAC Winners are:
2nd Grade: 1st Place Alexander Black
3rd Place Caleb Tiesman
4th Grade: 1st Place Kate Douglas
5th Grade: 2nd Place Emma Schermerhorn
6th Grade: 1st Place Aaron Parish
7th Grade: 2nd Place Andrea Aranda
Elementary Ensemble:   3rd Place Alex and Caleb

Intermediate Ensemble: 1st Place:  Kate & Emma

2nd Place: Max, Andrea A. and Aaron

Winners in this years Local Young Artist Competition

And, of course!! The obligatory silly/crazy picture:

Congratulations to all participants!

“THE BEST TIME…”

The best time, if you can be someplace quiet and outdoors, is the last few minutes just before the sun rises, when ALL those birds get so excited in their anticipation of those first rays of light …

It’s a treat, isn’t it? Like they know something we don’t- or maybe it’s that we’ve just forgotten.
Dr. Michael Montgomery, Univ of Arkansas Music Faculty

Reading this quote by Dr. Montgomery this morning reminded me of a precious time I had with my 5 year-old granddaughter recently.  She visited for Christmas, and one night she and I shared the sleeper sofa in the den.

She woke up while it was still dark and was cuddly in the early morning. I asked her if she had ever seen the sun rise. She said she had not.  So, we sat together in the big, overstuffed chair by the patio door to watch the changes outside the door and inside the room.

The first thing we noticed is the sky got a little lighter.  Then more…then we heard the birds begin to sing. More of them joined in as the sky got lighter.

Finally, the street light turned off and we noticed we wouldn’t need to turn on the light any more to be able to walk safely around the room.  That’s when we knew the sun was up and the day had begun.

It was such a sweet time..she talked later of the sky getting lighter and the birds singing. And the street light going out…one of my friends said she will eventually forget the gifts she got for Christmas, but never that first experience of the new morning we watched and shared together.

I know I won’t.

CALIFORNIA GUITAR TRIO

(NOTE…So far, I’ve never gone to a concert with a plan to review it. In retrospect when thoughts start mulling along with questions and the urge to look things up, they are often followed by writing stuff down. That’s all this is. I went to a concert and now I’m writing stuff down.)

We enjoyed a live performance of California Guitar Trio in Concert here in Houston last night at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck.

“SHORT SUMMARY”
(for those who like to read to the end and skip the Opinions and Technical Stuff in the middle)

If you enjoy live music, CGT is worth checking out! It’s instrumental guitar music, as you might expect. They do a mix of recognizable covers – both popular and classical – as well as original tunes, and you do not have to be a musician yourself to find it entertaining and engaging.

California Guitar Trio

“OPINIONS AND TECHNICAL STUFF”
Having become aware of the group previously, their Christmas CD recently crossed my path and I downloaded it a few months ago. It was interesting enough to get me on their website where I found out about this concert and bought tickets.

Here’s what caught my ear: the guitars sound different. There is processing and use of effects, but that wasn’t it. My husband insisted there was a harpsichord on the recording, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t it, either.

The sound wasn’t like guitars in standard tuning. The range was all over the place. So, it had to be either alternate tunings or a mixture of standard guitar with soprano or ‘high-strung’ guitar. Or something.

I read enough to know that they all studied with Robert Fripp (can’t say I know very much about him, either) and that he encouraged experimentation with tuning and with sound processing.

So, that was it for knowledge of the group beforehand.

Here are some of the tunes they performed with any opinions or technical commentary, as applicable:

Walk, Don’t Run
Sleepwalk
These two and the next one, as well, go into the ‘Cover Tunes’ category
All immediately recognizable to baby-boomers who, by the way, comprised most of the audience. They were all-well played and pretty straightforward.

Bohemian Rhapsody
Near the start of this one, the mic was turned toward the audience by one of the Trio members. So, everyone started singing. Except me. I never listened much to Queen….So, I felt a little left out. I guess you enjoy it more if you know it. My 12-year old student who was with us was excited – he said he’s very familiar with Queen.

Andromeda
Chacarera
The Marsh
Melrose Avenue
These are all CGT originals. The first two appear on their 20th Anniversary Celebration CD “Andromeda” which was released in 2010 and is their first release containing all originals.
Regarding Melrose Avenue – It has recently been arranged by a guy from Houston and will soon be available to tens of thousands of orchestra directors in the US and Europe. We were instructed to tell all of our friends. Done!

Toccata and Fugue in D minor (JS Bach)
This one’s a ‘Classical Cover Tune’ that was preceded by a story that Bach used to play it as a sort of sound-check to test the organs where he played and that he really ‘cranked it up’ (as much as you could in the 1700′s, I guess…)

Prelude (from the PFA, BWV998)
Note: it was introduced as “a Prelude by Bach.”
It was also explained that Robert Fripp had his students practice something called “Circulation” and this piece was done in that fashion.

‘Circulation’ involves playing a note and then passing it to the next person in the circle. Fripp taught that you also passed your ‘energy’ with your note be it positive or tension-filled.

So, for this piece, the first player begins w/ the first note, the next guy plays the second note and on it goes, to the end. The time signature is 9/8 and there are only 8th notes throughout, so that meant it was consistently 1-2-3, 1-2-3 with no pause.
They stated also that, depending on how things went, it could be…unpredictable. As in ‘let’s see how this goes.’

Which made this the MOST INTERESTING thing in the entire concert to me. Now I want to apply this technique with all of my guitar ensemble classes, and will be reading up for more information. I see in my internet searches today more reference to CGT pieces based on ‘circulation’ and will be checking them out.

Immediately following the Bach piece, Bert (player #1) tossed another note, circulation-style, to Paul who tossed it to Hideyo …. and the next thing you knew it became -

Echoes (Pink Floyd)
Which is another tune I also do not know and had never heard, but my table-mates were familiar with it. And loved their rendition of it.

Encore Pieces -
Ghost Riders in the Sky / Riders on the Storm
Happy Trails

Since there were two shows and we were at the early one, I appreciated the fact that they dispensed with the usual walking on and off the stage while we applauded for them to return and said they would just save the time and give us the encores.

That was nice.
(By the way – most, if not all, of these pieces are available on YouTube. Many have been posted by trio member Paul Rich at  this channel. )

CONCLUSION (of my opinions and technical stuff)
The range of the guitars was obviously higher than standard tuning. And lower. Among all three players, there was never anything that looked like a standard chord shape to me. I learned after the concert that the tuning (referred to as “New Standard Tuning” is mostly in 5ths. From low-to-high it’s C G D A E G. Which explains the extra-low notes I kept hearing as well as the extended range above.

Very interesting and surely produced some unusual but nice sonic differences. What if all guitars really did play like that and there was a repertoire for that extended range? Maybe there is and it’s just that it’s all passed me by until now. Kind of like Queen and Pink Floyd. ha.

There were lots of stories about studying with Robert Fripp and they were all interesting. There was also a range of effects applied including slide playing and distortion. While it’s pretty typical to use a slide on an acoustic, I wouldn’t have thought applying distortion would sound as smooth on a jazz solo or rock solo, but it did. And there was no feedback. Nice.

I’ve seen lots of jazz guitar concerts. I’ve also seen lots of classical guitar concerts. But I haven’t been to a lot of concerts like this one. These are all good players, the originals were innovative and harmonically interesting. On the surface, one might say jazz and classical guitarists are more serious.  But if you did, then you would have to say this group is more fun.

Reconnecting and Replaying

It’s about time this Blog got back on track accomplishing it’s purpose in life.

Today I introduce former student Mark Mueller. He took some lessons here in junior high. A few months ago I met his parents at a wedding and they told me he’s still happily playing his guitar and using it in his job working with youth ministry. He’s graduated from college, married and living in Idaho.

And a few weeks ago he uploaded a video to YouTube to earn a spot opening a concert for Tyrone Wells – a singer-songwriter hero of his.

Helping former student with view counts in YouTube contest

He actually moved to the forefront of the view count early on and stayed there quite a while.Then as the deadline grew closer, some apparent heavy-hitters found out about this contest and uploaded videos garnering views in the tens of thousands very quickly. All he has to do is be one of the top ten. That gets him into the next phase of the competition.

So, here I am still watching and hoping Mark stays in the count. I was proud of him for the good showing in the opening stages of the contest. He’s not a touring singer-songwriter (yet, anyway!) but he was on top for a while…

Now, here is the point. Mark doesn’t know this, but he left something behind when he moved on from his guitar lessons here. We were working on playing fingerstyle. He’d never had any problems with it before, but one day couldn’t seem to get it right. It was out of the blue…as he got up to leave, I noticed he was chewing gum.

Hence, the Andrea Cannon Research Department on Gum-Chewing and Finger Alternation now had all the evidence necessary to ban the stuff at guitar lessons.

So, there it is – that’s where the rule came from. I have certainly told this story – over and over again. Never mentioned the particular student – but now that he’s famous, I thought it might be nice to put the facts together.

Well, good luck in the Contest, Mark!!

Here’s the YouTube link for his cover of Tyron’s Tune:

FLICKR

All-new, updated website is on the way…

Meanwhile, a new flickr account is figuring into the ‘picture’

Here’s an experiment…an attempt to embed a link for a photo set. Let’s see what happens…

“Event Posters”

This is a fun set with event posters from Festivals and Workshops where I have worked.

MORNING MEDITATIONS…

Each day during my visit to Alexandria, I’ve spent the first half hour sitting in the back yard enjoying the coolest and quietest part of the day. Yesterday the crows were cawing loudly in conversation back and forth.This morning there is no sign of them, but I have a quiet robin for a companion as well as a variety chirping birds and insects.

Perhaps later, I may post some thoughts on Concert Preparation in the aftermath of my solo performance yesterday. Always thinking about better ways to do that. On that front, it seemed to go particularly well this time.

Alexandria Concert 2011

My niece got some short videos to share with her mom who could not attend because of work. Here’s a very brief and fuzzy excerpt from the Brouwer Etudes.

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

Getting started tomrrow morning with the ALEXANDRIA SUZUKI GUITAR INSTITUTE

ALEXANDRIA GUITAR

Keeping the blog caught up should be easier this week since I have access to the internet!  There are overdue posts on the conclusion of the GFA not to mention a 9-day event in Austin last week that was really good – the AUSTIN Suzuki Guitar Institute.

For now – something totally unrelated to being here in Alexandria. It’s a new video from a 10-year old phenomenal guitarist from Hungary.  I’ve followed his playing on youtube and am very impressed. Hope you enjoy it!

Back later with more!!

All About Groups.

GROUPS!   I think it’s the word of the day…..five group events shaped the Third Day of GFA Convention events…

EDUCATION COMMITTEE MEETING  May not sound exciting…but the idea is to plan strategies to place more teachers in guitar programs in schools. There are lots of facets to this – as you know, good guitar programs don’t grow on trees. It’s always inspiring to get together with others and share ideas.

YOUTH SHOWCASE   Ensemble performances featuring groups selected by audition.  First up, the Mile High Guitar Ensemble coached by my colleague Steve Bondy.  AND including students who have been in classes with me thru the years in the Colorado Suzuki Institute.  How fun to see them here and enjoy their wonderful performance!  Also featured in the Showcase today was the Helios Quartet.  Last Thurday at my studio in Houston, this Thursday at the GFA Showcase.  They were great as always and received a pretty impressive ovation!

Mile High Guitar Ensemble in the Youth Showcase

Helios Quartet in Legacy Hall. (note the cinnamon-bun looking objects on the wall behind them (!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GUITAR ORCHESTRA REHEARSAL   On Sunday a volunteer guitar orchestra will perform two pieces under the direction of William Kanengiser of LAGQ fame.  Our first rehearsal was this afternoon.  At first, it was a little uncomfortable. One of the other members in my immediate vicinity is one of those high-strung performers who felt the need to let us all know he was pretty important.  Usually in groups like this, everyone is pretty friendly… Oh, well. By the end of rehearsal he seemed to relax a little. So, maybe he won’t end up impeding the fun-factor.  Updates (as always!) to follow…

SOLODUO IN CONCERT  Tonight’s Feature Concert was Lorenzo Micheli and Matteo Mela – the guitar duo of Italian virtuosos. Their sense of ensemble and the smooth manner in which they finesse a melody is just incredible. They play everything from memory and flow seemlessly through their selections…Every performance is amazing.

"Soloduo" in concert. (again, note the 'cinnamon buns' on the walls behind them...!)

GATHERING AT CANNON’S  The crowd GROWS!  It was standing-room-only tonight!  A tough way to enjoy drinks and snacks. However, as they say, it was apparent that in spite of it, a good time was had by all….tomorrow night will likely be even bigger.

Seeee you then!

“Chattahoochee” is an unusual word…

Columbus is a really cute town. Well, I guess that statement should be clarified to say that the area in which I’m staying is really cute. Friendly, clean and accommodating.  There are a lot of military personnel in town here who are stationed at nearby Fort Benning. There were several on my flight and on the van ride out here. They’re everywhere! So, thought they deserved a shout-out in the blog about Columbus.

The GFA Convention is taking place at Columbus State University with all concerts at the River Center, adjacent to the School of Music.  Guess why it’s called the River Center??? Well, the close proximity of the Chattahoochee River, that’s why.  Here’s a picture!!

Chattahoochee Riverfront near the River Center

First thing today at 9am Alvaro Pierri gave a technique class.  His concert was such a big hit that there were lots of us there at 9am, guitars in hand, eager to hear what he had to say.  I’ll sum up this way – he’s pretty far above us.  He had some ideas he wanted to communicate. In the process, he did meander and what he did say will change your approach to everything you play.  So, he advised go very slowly and thoughtfully as you implement changes.

Here are a couple of quotes:

“Use the ‘big finger!’”  this referred to the use of the arm to support the hand so it doesn’t have to move as much.  He advised this with applications for both hands and did give a couple of examples.  Shifting the left arm keeps us from over-crunching the fingers.  Using the right arm can alleviate the need to change hand position when making quick string crossings – especially over many strings.

“Why not shift the guitar?” He is able to move his guitar very high, to the left and to the right by shifting his legs (on the footstool!) and somewhat his arms and body as well.  I’ve heard the idea of moving the guitar before, but not to the extreme that he demonstrated.

The 5pm Concert featured Nigel North with a program of all John Dowland compositions on the lute. This guy has made over 200 recordings.  His bio said he ‘thrills and mesmerizes audiences…’ it also used the word “stunning.” Well, I’ll say it’s very good lute-playing.  Not sure about all of that thrill stuff.   The evening concert was David Starobin.  Both of these artists I had not seen before, thought I’ve long known of them. Both sounded great.  For me, the concerts are the main attraction of this convention…

Back at ya again tomorrow…

On The Chet Atkins Parkway…

Arrived in Atlanta today to attend the GFA Conference and Competition.  The Final Destination being Columbus, the next step was a 90-minute shuttle ride which, at least in part, took us along the ‘Chet Atkins Parkway.’  If I hadn’t looked up from my facebook updating at just the right moment, I would have missed the little sign which indicated that… [ "In Harris County (north of Columbus), the Georgia DOT has dubbed Interstate 185 as the "Chet Atkins Parkway", in honor of the legendary country guitarist who lived in the area during his teenage years." ]

Columbus State University’s Guitar Department under the direction of Dr. Andrew Zohn is hosting guitarists from all over the world for this annual event.  And the town of Columbus could not be happier.  One person working behind the desk at the transportation company asked about how many guitarists I thought might show up for this.  All I could tell him was “Lots!!”  He was very excited at the prospect and I could almost see little dollar signs flickering like a cash-register in his eyes

The Concert Artist Competition which reaches it’s thrilling conclusion on Sunday evening, began with closed sessions today.  Other than that, the only events were registration and an 8pm Concert featuring Alvaro Pierri – a fantastic kick-off for the week!!

Food and networking  after concerts is happening at the Cannon Brew Pub and Restaurant.  I enjoyed the iced tea and when the manager saw my name tag, he gave me a “Cannon Brew Pub”  official t-shirt.  Nice!

My new 'Cannon' shirt. Nice place to network

Stay tuned….more classical guitar excitement comining up this week…