An Interview with Jérôme Ducharme

A big thank you to Peter Powell and Jérôme Ducharme! Peter is studying at McGill and generously offered this interview. I’ve seen Peter perform and he is a guitarist to keep a look out for. I’m looking forward to seeing more from him! I think Jérôme Ducharme is well known to most of you. You can also look at a post about his new position at McGill as well as see this introduction to Peter Powell.  Thanks – Bradford

An Interview with Jérôme Ducharme on November the 3rd 2011
This is a guest post by Peter Powell 

Peter Powell: I thought I would start by asking you what you’ve been up to since winning the GFA?

Jérôme Ducharme: Well that’s only six years to fit into a few sentences (laughs). The advantage of winning the GFA were the contacts I made on the tour, there isn’t a lot of prize money but I met lots of people. I have been invited back to perform for different guitar societies I visited on the tour a few times over the past six years. I’ve also had a few concerts just out of the blue, and there’s the Mel Bay DVD I recently finished filming and should be out in the next few months. [Jerome also got married, received his Doctorate Degree last April from the Université de Montreal, and now has a beautiful baby daughter]

P: How are you finding teaching at McGill?

J: Before the GFA I taught mostly beginners, the master-classes during the tour were my first real contact with teaching at a higher level, but there was only one lesson. After the tour I had a few more advanced students come to me for a few lessons but now that I’m at McGill I’m enjoying having a group of students who I work with towards a concrete goal [Jerome currently has seven students at McGill]. It’s nice to have serious students who listen to what I tell them and apply it without having to be told again and again. I have some very dedicated seven year olds but sometimes teaching younger students feels like baby-sitting with a guitar in my hand.

P: What are you currently working on?

J: Well, as I said, I just finished the DVD for Mel Bay. I was also honoured to contribute a piece to a CD of Patrick Roux’s works (Fabio Zanon and Soloduo are a few of the other artists who also contributed to the cd). Lately I’ve been preparing for something that’s unusual for me; a chamber music concert, we’ll be playing string quintets by Nikita Koshkin and Castelenuovo-Tedesco, at the Montreal Conservatoire (http://www.jeromeducharme.ca/Site_Jerome/Concerts.html).

P: Is there the possibility of another CD on the horizon?

J: I tried approaching a number of record labels in the past, but not much success. I will probably try again soon. There are a number of projects I’d like to do. I’d like to make a whole cd of variations on La Folia written for guitar, I’d also like to do a CD of Quebec composers and of the complete works of Takemitsu and Villa-Lobos.

P: What were your “Musical beginnings”?

J: I am from musical family. My mom played piano as an amateur but she had formal classical training. I remember coming back from school and hearing her playing. It was always the same three pieces; a Chopin Pollonaise, a Beethoven Sonata and one of the Italian Concertos by Bach. I was always surrounded by a lot of classical music growing up. I made an attempt at learning the piano at aged six, it didn’t go very well. Later on, under the “bad influences” of some friends, I started listening to rock music, which is what lead me to the guitar. My mom put me in classical guitar classes though. I eventually ended up selling my electric guitar to pay for a better classical guitar when I needed it.

P: What is your favourite cd’s?

J: There is one cd of music by Josquin des Prez which, after a while, I always need to listen to again. It’s a recording of two masses on the song l’Homme Armé sung by the Tallis Scholars conducted by Peter Phillips.

P: Who are your biggest musical influences?

J: Certainly teachers I had. My first teacher was very influential, his name is Andre Morissette, he was actually a student of Alvaro Pierri. He was a very dedicated teacher, he would lend me piles of scores and recordings. I was a very passionate about music and I ate it all up, it was an excellent start. Jean Valliere at the Conservatoire (de Montreal) was also a very important influence, he was the teacher who I studied with for the longest time. And Oscar Gighlia in Switzerland, I only spent a year with him, but his teaching always impressed me very much. I should also mention Peter McCutcheon who was my director for the doctorate degree in Université de Montréal.

P: You studied in Switzerland with Oscar Gighlia and Stefan Schmidt correct?

J: My original plan was to study with Schmidt. I’d heard him give a concert of all the solo lute suites by Bach and I sort of followed him to Basel. But, although he was very encouraging, he didn’t have a lot of time to teach me because he had a full studio and he was the director of the school, so I ended up taking lessons mostly with Gighlia.

P: Oh dang what a let down.

J: I know (laughs)

P: What were their teaching approaches like?

J: I can’t say a lot about Schmidt because I only had a few lessons. But one of the things that struck me most about Gighlia was his liberating way of conceiving sound. As guitarists when we start playing it’s usually with an “ugly” sound and then our teacher will gradually push us towards a big warm sound, afterwards we always try for a very warm sound when we play. A lot of guitarists only every make a very round sound. Gighlia didn’t mind a thin sound if the music required it, this was part of his approach to orchestration on the guitar and a thin sound could be used when needed. This was very encouraging and liberating for me. Also Gighlia’s musical conception; he would push his students to make more separation between different ideas so it would become more like speech. When we speak we pause, there’s articulation and intonation (it’s not all on the same level). Gighlia wanted us to do the same in music to make it more understandable for the audience, more communicable.

P: When you learn a new piece how do you approach learning and interpreting it?

J: For me many processes happen at the same time. When I start learning a piece I just want to hear how it sounds, so the first few playings are chaotic. Then after a few rounds I start to get the general idea of the piece. This general idea, this grasp of the basic character of the piece, is the foundation for my interpretation. My fingering and the whole technical side comes out of, and after, the interpretation. Then the goal is to make the piece as idiomatic to the instrument as possible.

P: What about the school of thought that suggests interpreting and analyzing the piece with only the score at first and then learning the technical aspects?

J: I had a pianist friend in conservatoire who learned Ravel’s g maj. Concert in a week entirely in his head with the score and then played it in his concert exam and it worked but I suspect he’s an extra-terrestrial. My approach is more playful, I take my guitar and play with the responses it gives me. I can imagine the piece by just reading but sometimes I need the fun of playing. So just spending a week with a pencil and paper I would probably be very sad. I can see the benefit of this approach but personally I like to interpret on the guitar, it’s kind of a dialogue between the guitar and the piece. Maybe I’m limited but that’s how I find answers.

P: How do you usually structure you practice sessions?

J: Ah, well, there’s technique then reperpertoire. I always start as if I was a complete beginner: right hand only alternation exercises, right now I’m especially focused on including and training the pinkie. I do this on every string trying to get the best sound possible, then I build to more complex exercises. When I have enough I switch to playing difficult excerpts from piece, which I turn into exercises. Then I work on my repertoire. This way I only practice my repertoire when I’m really warmed up.

P: Do you try to practice without a break or do you practice in sessions?

J: Right now I’m quite busy so its not always consistent. I usually practice before I go to work, then I’ll practice between students, and then in the evening if I have the energy. I practice when I can. I used to do one hour, then break, hour, then break, etc., to avoid injury. Before a competition or a recording I would always do a run through of my entire program every day, sometimes even more than my entire program, to build endurance. But now I’m a bit more busy than I was then.

P: What repertoire are you currently working on?

J: I’m working on the quintets for the upcoming concert, one by Tedesco and one by Koshkin. With limited to time practice I’m mostly working on technique and these two pieces. I was also working on the piece Mandala by my friened Maxime Mckinley which I recently played in concert. I also have to play a bit of my strudent’s music to be able to teach it effectively. Now that a lot of my students are more advanced I can’t just sight read, so try to read through each piece a few times before their lesson.

P: Do you have any up-coming performances in the next few months?

J: Other than the quintets? Yes, I’m playing in a trio, which was formed last year. It’s a modern music concert at the Salle Bourgie, at the Musée des Beauxarts here in Montreal (http://www.sallebourgie.ca/?page_id=904&lang=en). Other than that, not really. I didn’t really push concerts this year.

P: I have a random question for you that I’ve always wanted to ask, do you ever read the comments on your Youtube videos?

J: Yes I do sometimes, when I feel depressed I read the good ones, and I pretend everyone else doesn’t know what they are talking about (laughs). No that’s bad, I try not to. I like to follow the amount of views on Zapateado though.

P: I have a question for you from Bradford Werner, he asked: “I have many teen students (age 13-18) at around the grade 6-9 level, what do you feel is required for students to jump to the next level of concert repertoire? Do you consider it a technique requirement, a knowledge of musical style, chamber music, enthusiasm? What encouraged your jump in level on classical guitar when you were younger?”

J: I’m not sure there is really a jump. There is a possibility to follow a series of pieces that increase in difficulty, this will happen naturally if the student wants to learn certain pieces. This is better than just jumping grades as in RCM, but as far as making guitar a choice of career and jumping to the next level that way… it must be something that comes from inside them.

P: I have had students who are not used to listening to classical music and find it boring. How do you interest students like that?

J: Almost all of my younger students don’t come from a family who listens to classical music. So I force these students to listen to classical music. I give them a list of guitarists to watch on YouTube, I ask them to come back next week with a list of what they listened to: the performer, the piece, the composer, and I ask them to write comments on each piece. This forces them to listen critically and this is often their first real contact with classical music. They’re used to listening to music while in the car or watching TV; they’re used to listening to music passively, but you can’t listen to classical music passively or it will be boring, it has to be active.

I also always play my pieces for them and try to explain what I’m playing to them. I have played the piece Mandala, by my friend Maxime McKinley, many times to my students. I explain it the same way I do before playing it in concert. It’s very easy to hear how it is constructed. Students are often impressed by the piece because they didn’t realize music could have that kind of significance.

P: To finish, what advice do you have for classical guitar students?

J: Other than listen to your teacher…Well I think you must always be curious, open your mind to other music. Don’t let yourself be trapped into a mindless routine, always practice with an intention.

Guest post by Peter Powell

More resources:

Artist Website: www.jeromeducharme.ca

Recording: Jerome Ducharme – Guitar Recital (Rodrigo, Falla, Ginastera, Manen, Hetu, Dunne): CD or MP3