Summer Time off for Donnie!/GFA DECEMBER 2nd 2012 / Tidbits

I decided to take the next couple of years off from the scene here in Concert/ Workshop/ Masterclass ville in the Big Apple. Since 1955 I have performed in public and never taken a hiatus at all! Don't get me wrong, I LOVE performing but I need time to smell the roses and look back on my life. I was hoping that I would get some readers of this blog to my August 15th concert but NOPE! I also posted on the New York Classical Guitar Society Website ( which I that was a slam dunk to attract an audience)-nope! I have spent my whole life supporting my colleagues by showing up at their concerts etc but I see that has not put money in the Donnie bank so life goes on.

I was devastated last December 2nd when I auditioned for the GFA Symposium evening concert and did not make it. I played an excellent medley of Luiz Bonfa and thought I was a shoe in. I have been playing these pieces most of my life and have never had the slightest problem.In the 70's I took a lesson with Maestro Bonfa at Manny's Music store when Luiz was in town to buy some strings. Here I was among all my dear international colleagues: DENNIS KOSTER, ANA MARIA ROSADO and so many great artists who know my playing well. One of the two judges I had a run in with previously because I told him I didn't like how he treated one of my supreme artists. He made a promise to my friend and didn't have the courtesy to say he couldn't deliver on his promise. All it took was a couple of moments to email my friend or take a minute to phone an explanation but nope. It is so hard for young artists to get a break in this rough concert world of ours and we should be kind to each other and respectful for the hardships we, as artists must endure. That is what ticked me off . I will not name him, but I took that exclusion as "Payback" for my just defense of my colleague. When the names were read, I would have bet anything that the last name on the evening Guitar Roster would be mine.I was the last to audition in a room that was terribly stuffy and both of the Jurors Jumped out of that room at my last note like bats out of hell. When my name was not read I immediately when to he men's room and vomited. I was never in my life so hurt by the fraternity I grew up in and loved so dearly. I left for the day holding back tears and several rounds of vomiting. I have written this overview of the incident many times but have not posted it. I will not mention the names of the judges involved but this has stayed in my heart much too long and as I have taken the summer off playing around the city for the 1st time in my life, I have been looking at my Guitar life here in New York and in particular the Classical Guitar Community. This incident was an insult to me and I feel Weird to post this but I must let go the pain and I know I must be crazy to do it on this public forum but I want these two "Judges" to know how deeply their decision cut into my heart and this was the only way to let this terrible pain find peace.

I have made the decision to stay off the scene for the next two years with the exception of my Music Under New York gigs around town.I have been asked why I have not been seen and must say that I need a change and don't need to be a one man support group for the the New York Guitar community. I am a worn out by so many who promise to show up at my gigs and never make it. I play my ass off each and every time I perform and used to be deeply hurt when people ask me "When are you playing"? I really want to hear you" and there is their empty seat staring at me. We in the arts have to prepare for those terrible moments of personal hurt. Even when we are far and above those of whom we must compete for a place in the limelight, we have to learn how to drag our hearts off the floor and carry on. I heard that a decent amount of great young artists I know didn't make it to the finals of the GFA and was stunned because I was going to attend but had to pass due to poor health. I am a member of the GFA and applaud their event and competition and they consistently produce phenomenal winners. It is a monster event and they do a hell of a great job. Competitions are so unfair to the human spirit but I guess it serves a purpose in the careers of the musician. You have got to know how to take it. I almost threw my heat in the ring and actually started to prepare earlier this year but felt with all these great young players around the world, I would get my 63 young ass kicked good and down the block and around the globe! NAW I am no glutton for punishment. I remember a few times in my performing life when I auditioned for an event and stayed beginning to end so I knew who my competition was and saw that I performed an excellent set but was not chosen. In these cases I saw that the judging panel was looking for something else so I was not selected. This happens in all of our fields of endeavors. I love the great book on Competition that was published by one of the greatest exponents of our craft DENIS AZABAGIC. I also enjoy his performance dvd and teaching dvd. DENIS delivers the facts of competition life in minute detail since he has lived it and I must thank him for sharing the truth with us. Well that is enough on that. YEP! GOTTA HAVE THICK SKIN IN ORDER TO CARRY ON!

At this point in my life I still hope to release the queue of posts I have written for you on paper. I have a great report itching to go about the great 2013 MANNES GUITAR SEMINAR! This year's main focus was on Building a Career as a Guitarist and had the best group of people giving the nuts and bolts of this tough life.

Before I jumped on to my blog I decided to check out some you tube videos and as always found another excellent performer on our great instrument: LAURA HUSBANDS who was plying a great piece magnificently "Prelude and Danza by Spanish composer Julian Bautista.I worked on this composition around 30 years ago and loved it so I was interested in seeing and hearing what she did with it and W O W !!! Her playing was FANTASTIC. She has a great attack and her note articulation was so clean. Whatever instrument she used was SUPERLATIVE. She made great use of tone color and her interpretation was supremely "SPANISH"! I loved it and look forward to checking out her other videos.

As you may have observed from my past posts, I love to give a huge amount of credit to our great Female artists because I believe they don't get enough notoriety. No I am not a dirty old man. I just believe that our great women of the guitar deserve much more respect. As a matter of fact I had a very sweet visit with the great Rose Augustine about a week before her death at her factory and one of our points of conversation was should we have a Woman's Concert Series. She felt there should not be unequal bent to the woman as performers even though Rose admitted that the field was dominated by males. If I had the bucks, I would publish a monthly mag just featuring female Classical/Jazz Guitarists! Music is not gender based! A woman can play just as magical and aggressively as a man SO THERE!!

Related to my previous paragraph I must relate a couple of "female" based reviews I have done in a previous discussion group over a decade ago. I love to give an "YOU ARE THERE" feeling to my review of concerts and I comment on several aspects of the performance. I remember all too well well how some reader attacked me with "You don't like female players". That was a lie. It just so happened that I told exactly what I experienced. Both wonderful artists are still magnificently on the concert platform at this time. One artist chose to perform the ARANJUEZ which is the most performed Guitar Concerto in History. She blew a couple of those RODRIGO scale runs and I mentioned it in my review which was 98 percent positive. The power of the internet is all consuming and dangerous because some of her students asked her about that. People are always looking for the negative point of view. Well I met my colleague at a concert at the 96street "Y" and first thing she said was "I have a bone to pick with you"! I knew immediately she was referring to the review because I thought quite heavily when I wrote it if I should mention the slipping of the scale runs. I told her ( and she agreed ) that that review was a glowing positive review and that I only mentioned it because it is the most well known Guitar Concerto and there would be some people in the audience who would be astute enough to say "Hey - she missed a couple of scale runs". This great artist then relayed the reason for the misfires- two of her former teachers were in the audience and made her a little nervous. Of course so many people want to bathe in negative talk and especially with this world wide medium , some of you out there are ready to pounce on anything you want to bend out of context.
 My second artist is a phenom who has had a life of excellence and at one point I had to stop attending here concerts because she didn't "reach past the concert stage"! Town Hall is an excellent small concert hall here in New York and my man JULIAN BREAM and JOHN WILLIAMS both played there. I remember as if it were yesterday that I was going to give my lady one more chance with my money because she sounded so great on cd/record but didn't have enough "Guts" in the concert hall to reach into the audience with her personal sound.This concert was marred by a woman in back of me who kept rattling her bracelet throughout the concert. I let that woman have it at intermission. Back to the performance. I was in a 5th,6th row center orchestra seat in town hall but could hardly hear her so I stopped attending her concerts for years until she decided to use some amplification and wow! What a great change.Anyway that is enough of that for now. I only mention these experiences to relate how in the quest for honesty and truth in reporting an event, you really have to make very sensitive choices and pick thoughts that may be the truth but hard to humanly accept. That is when you have the vultures try to kick your butt online and attack you for expressing your opinion!

I see I have been online for the last two hours and still have more thoughts to express. Just in case I somehow loose this post let me send it out to you before that happens.

ROLAND DYENS and GOHAR VARDANYAN - GOOD TOGETHER!

There is a great tie-in of my recent posts on my two dear friends : ROLAND DYENS and GOHAR VARDANYAN. Roland just published a series of 100 pieces for the Guitar which covers various levels of technical and musical topics and the company STRINGS BY MAIL has a wonderful series of GOHAR playing several of these pieces and teaching the fine points covered in these marvelous pieces. You will find that GOHAR is also as brilliant  a teacher as she is a guitar virtuoso. I just finished viewing several of the pieces and what a treasure they are! I think you should jump right in there and experience the videos for yourself! ROLAND knows the Guitar inside out and upside down and always gives exact details on how to play his compositions and arrangements. As I mentioned in previous posts, ROLAND DYENS is a giant in the Guitar world!! I mentioned him as a "Bottomless Pit of Creativity" and I firmly stand by that statement. There is only one ROLAND DYENS!!!

DONNIE PLAYS SAINT AGNES LIBRARY AUGUST 15TH 5:30 PM

I will be giving a concert next Thursday August 15th / 5:30 pm at the St. Agnes Branch of the public Library . The branch is located at 444 AMSTERDAM AVENUE in Manhattan at 81st street.I will be presenting a program of SPANISH AND LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC. Juicy tidbits by several outstanding composers and I hope to have a ball. The Library concerts are slim these days due to budget cuts but hopefully there will be more Donnie GIGS in the near future! Hope to see you there as the 63 year Guitar plucker will prove to you that there is indeed life after 30! SEE YA LATER!!!!
 

The Bottomless Musical Creations of ROLAND DYENS!!!!!

Go to the YOU TUBE and look for the performance of my dear friend and colleague ROLAND DYENS as he performs "The Delights of Jet lag" on the Acoustic Guitar Magazine collection of Videos! I was surfing to find out some performances of my favorites and noticed this performance and just had to alert you to the greatness that is the awesome artistry of ROLAND DYENS!

Since the early 60s, I have heard the greatest Guitarists in the Classical and Jazz Genres and let me tell you ROLAND DYENS IS THE MOST CONSUMMATE GUITARIST ON THE PLANET!!! I have known my dear friend for several decades and just when I thought he has done it all, he tears me a new learning curve!!!! As a virtuoso Guitarist he just knows all there is about our instrument. He can play in several tunings and calls into service every imaginable guitar technique in his brilliant compositions! He starts off the above work by performing harmonics with his right hand interspersed with " Hammer ons " with his left hand. Of course it would be a bit difficult to carry this work on in any decent size hall because the carrying power of the instrument while performing the legatos/hammer ons, are tough to pull off! I remain a rabid fan of my dear friend forever and when he visits the City, we somehow get a chance to have a meal and talk about all sorts of guitar and non guitar topics. ROLAND really stuns me every time he plays and we are so fortunate to have so many you tube videos available of his fantastic performances and beautifully sculpted compositions. I don't know what type of blood you have ROLAND, but I'd love to have a few drops!!

There is NO ONE LIKE ROLAND DYENS ON PLANET EARTH!!!!!!! Just look at the huge body of work he has put out! STUNNING!!!!!! I must say that as far as I am concerned he walks on water and dwells in the rarified realm of MOUNT OLYMPUS with the GODS. If you EVER get a chance to attend a ROLAND DYENS concert, GET THE BEST TICKET AND PREPARE TO BE AMAZED AT THE WIZARDRY OF OUR MODERN DAY LISZT! I am crazy about great Guitar performances no matter what the genre and ROLAND has them all beat! I know that is quite a statement but his videos should convince any doubting folks out there!!! My Man Roland. PLEASE CONTINUE to SHOW US THE MAGICAL WORLD OF OUR GREAT INSTRUMENT AND THANK YOU!