Daniel Bolshoy Interviews Murray Visscher at Guitarfestwest 2011

By Guest on September 6, 2011 in Canadian Spotlight & Interviews, Guest Posts

This post is a guest post by Daniel Bolshoy
from a series of posts pertaining to Guitarfestwest 2011

What could be better? A professional guitarist interviewing another! I’d like to thank both Daniel and Murray for this post and the other posts in the series. - Bradford

Daniel Bolshoy Interviews Murray Visscher

Daniel Bolshoy (photo via Mount Royal Facebook)

This conversation took place as a follow-up to the inaugural GuitarFestWest festival in Calgary in August 2011. Murray Visscher is the artistic director of this new festival, and a guitar instructor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, where he’s taught an impressive number of talented young players who are beginning to make a name for themselves in Canada.

The first edition of GuitarFestWest featured three evening concerts, masterclasses and workshops about yoga for guitarists, flamenco classes and individual lessons as well as ensemble classes and a participants’ concert. All of us who were there came back looking forward to the second edition of what will hopefully become an annual event, and a welcome addition to summer guitar life in western Canada!

1. Before beginning to tell us about the creation of the festival- would you tell us a little bit about your own background and how you decided to settle in Calgary?

I found the classical guitar a bit later in life. I began my musical career as a folk and rock artist working out of Vancouver in various cover bands that toured the west. With the intent of improving my musicianship I started taking courses at Capilano College (now Cap U) and that led to 2 degrees from American Universities in Classical guitar performance. When I returned to Canada I was invited to the faculty of the Victoria Conservatory of Music, where I taught for 9 years. In 2004, by pure coincidence my wife and I were both presented with opportunities in Calgary that lured us from Vancouver Island. So far we haven’t looked back, as Calgary has been a great fit for both of us.

2. Can you please describe the guitar world in Calgary as you encountered it when you arrived, and how it has changed/developed/grown in the last few years.

The only guitarist I knew when I moved to Calgary was Brad Mahon, whom I’d met briefly when I interviewed for the position at MRU. As for the rest of the guitar community, it was kind of like plopping myself in the middle of a big room and saying “here I am, now tell about yourselves”. I quickly found Calgary to be a very warm and open city with a lot of supportive people, and it’s been really easy to fit in. Within my first year here my teaching studio was full, and I had been invited by the Guitar Society to give a recital. I feel like I’ve been part of the family ever since that first year.

I do think that I arrived during a time of considerable change in the guitar culture. U of C was just phasing out its long running guitar program and the Classical Guitar Society of Calgary (CGSC) was in the middle of restructuring the board and reviewing its directions. For a few years, the only formal education available for guitarists was a 2 year diploma from Mount Royal College Conservatory.

Since then, the guitar society has regrouped and is consistently bringing in high quality performers and clinicians, who share their expertise with students from all of the cities institutions, including MRU, U of C and the Suzuki studios. The U of C program is successfully running again, offering undergrad and graduate courses under the direction of Ralph Maier, while Brad Mahon and I have developed an effective guitar curriculum for Mount Royal Conservatory’s prestigious ‘Academy’ Program. Mount Royal College has now become a University, and as the Conservatory and University evolve together, new possibilities for diverse diploma granting opportunities are emerging. It’s been really exciting to be a part of all this growth.

3. Can you tell us where the idea for a new guitar festival was born, and why you thought it had a good chance to succeed?

Murray Visscher

I’ve been thinking about summer guitar programs ever since I came back to Canada from California in the 90’s. I taught at a few BC music camps that had a guitar ‘presence’ but none of them were aimed specifically at classical guitar, so I decided to go check out some successful programs elsewhere. Two of the Canadian festivals I’ve really enjoyed and would hold up as a model would be “Domaine Forget” in Quebec and the “Acadia Classical Guitar Festival” in Wolfville Nova Scotia. Although quite different in structure, both festivals succeeded in generating enthusiasm for all of the participants. After attending a few festivals in eastern Canada I began forming plans for a similar annual event here in Calgary. I had good reason to believe it would succeed because I know a number of guitarists who have shown interest in taking multiple lessons with well known artists who happen to be visiting the city during the summer months. I hoped that if the timing worked, these players could make up the core of a student body.

4. What are some of the benefits you see in having an annual festival, for the students, the city, and the guitar world in Canada?

Let’s start with the benefits to the city. An annual festival means an intense, compact concert series where local aficionados and curious first time concert attendees can see several high quality performances within a few days. The guitar society concert series usually breaks from May to October, so an August concert week fills up a large gap in the concert schedule. August is typically a relaxed month in Calgary, so the people who are in town may have a better chance to get out to some of the shows, and hopefully any classical guitar newbies will become regulars at future concerts.

For students, I think the benefits go much deeper. What I’ve noticed in other established festivals that I’ve attended is that most of the students, even the ones who live thousands of miles apart, know each other from previous years, and they look forward to getting together and sharing the experiences that they’ve had since their last meetings. Students see their friends come back with new pieces, improved technical skills and more sophisticated musical ideas and they are all inspired by one another’s success. I really feel that these summer programs have had a positive impact in eastern Canada, and that’s one of the reasons that we see so many fine young players emerging from Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. Developing a similar positive environment for young players in the west will certainly fortify an already strong Canadian guitar landscape.

5. Tell us a little about the guitar program at Mount Royal University, the various teachers there, and what benefits your students are enjoying.

The guitar program at MRU is quite diverse. At present, I believe we have 6 classical guitar instructors, 2 flamenco instructors and 2 jazz instructors. For classical guitar, students can sign up as young as 3 yrs old in the Suzuki guitar program (new this year), and continue in various programs until they complete a post-secondary diploma. Students of middle-school and high school age can participate in the Conservatory’s ‘Academy’ program, where guitar students meet once a week to rehearse with designated ensembles, take classes in technique and performance practises, perform in monthly recitals and participate in masterclasses with visiting artists. We usually bring in at least one high profile clinician each year, so our students have had the opportunity to work with people like Lorenzo Micheli and Matteo Mela of Soloduo, as well as David Tanenbaum. With so many performance opportunities the students always seem to do well in exams and competitions, and many of them have gone on to do well in post secondary classical guitar studies.

6. The opening night concert featured the Oberon Trio, of which you are a member, you have recently released a CD, and you premiered new works in this concert as well. Could you talk about this group a little bit?

The Oberon Guitar Trio are Brad Mahon, Ralph Maier and me, we came together in 2007, shortly after I moved to Calgary and we’ve been performing together steadily since then. Last year we released our first cd, ‘Music of Our Time’, a collection of recent works written specifically for guitar trio by Canadian composers (..mostly…we snuck a Stephen Dodgson piece in there..).

7. Can you tell us about the new pieces on the program, and about the unusual combination between the modern instruments you used in the first half of the concert, and the repertoire for these instruments, and the 19th century guitars you used in the second half? What are some of the challenges of performing on such different guitars in the same night?

Since recording our cd, we’ve been approached by several composers wanting to write music for us. The opening night concert featured a performance of “Seeking Searching and Hunting”, written for us by Seattle composer/guitarist Michael Nicolella, and we also premiered “Incantatio” by Pascal Sasseville Quoquochi. Pascal wrote “Soupirs d’espace”, one of the pieces on our first album, and after listening to our recording he did us the great honour of writing a new work dedicated to the trio. What both of these composers have in common is an uninhibited ability to incorporate idioms of modern guitar music into multi-movement concert pieces, which seem to fit us as a group.

In contrast, we dedicated the second half of the concert to the music of the romantic era. Although this music is not what we typically program for our recitals, we all really enjoy playing in this style and we were happy to finally have the appropriate opportunity to perform some of the works. I have a small collection of replicated nineteenth century guitars, so we decided to use them for the concert to add to the authenticity of the performances. The set of trios by Henrik Rung required 3 ‘standard’ size guitars, while the Diabelli trio was scored for standard, terz and requinto guitar. These guitars are considerably smaller than the modern guitar so an obvious challenge is adjusting ones technique to fit the instrument. The sound is also more delicate which can change the way the performers react to one another, but overall I think that the sound fits the music so well that adjustments become somewhat instinctive.

I think that what is most interesting for us about the diverse program that we played is that we find ourselves working simultaneously on two separate recording projects, one project being a cd of music dedicated to, or commissioned by us, and the other project being a recording of romantic music written for three guitars played on replicated period instruments. We’re all pretty excited by that.

8. Can you tell us about the impressions you had from the first edition of the festival, did you feel that the festival met your expectations in terms of registration numbers, audiences, and overall artistic/educational quality?

I’m really pleased to say that I feel the festival succeeded in every way. We had great clinicians who were received very well by the students and the concert audiences all went home happy. I think we achieved everything that we set out to accomplish for the first year, and now we can focus on building registration and filling every seat at next year’s concerts.

9. Is this the beginning of a beautiful new annual festival on the Canadian Guitar landscape? What projects would you like to realize in future editions of Guitarfestwest?

I do believe that this is just the beginning of at least one new Canadian festival. Classical guitar is a growing culture in the west and there is easily enough interest to sustain an event like this annually. As far as future projects, I think I’ll spend the next few years sticking to and refining the formula that worked this year, but adding at least one new face each summer to bring new ideas for students and fresh repertoire for Calgary’s concert audiences. Maybe someday this festival will turn into a ‘migrating’ event that visits all of the major centers in the Pacific Northwest. …wouldn’t that be fun…?

Guest post by Daniel Bolshoy

Guitarfestwest 2011 posts: