原声吉他杂2005年1月号对LAGQ的访谈

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LAGQ的最新专辑Guitar Heroes刚获得2004年度格莱美奖的两项提名，Best Classical Crossover Album 和Best Engineered Album。下面是2005年1月号Acoustic Guitar Magazine对他们的专访，标题：Quarter-Century Quartet，谈到这张专辑的一些情况。

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Quarter-Century Quartet By Patrick Francis The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet anticipates its 25th anniversary with a tribute to its heroes Photo Credit: Anne Hamersky The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, aka the LAGQ, is the longest-standing, most active, and arguably most significant guitar ensemble of the last two decades. Critically acclaimed and a favorite of classical guitar audiences around the world, the LAGQ’s combination of individual virtuosity, impeccable ensemble playing, and a repertoire that is simultaneously eclectic, adventurous, and accessible is truly hard to resist. If there is a supergroup in the classical guitar world, the LAGQ is it.

Formed over 24 years ago, the LAGQ (John Dearman, William Kanengiser, Scott Tennant, and Andrew York) was brought together under the wing of the legendary Pepe Romero and originally modeled after the Romero Quartet in both style and repertoire. The group has evolved over time, forging its own distinctive path and repertoire, and is now a regular fixture at concert venues and guitar events around the world. But longevity is not the only reason for the LAGQ’s success. Its habit of exploring new musical territory—breaking musical boundaries and expanding its repertoire, either by commissioning new works, creating new arrangements, or composing new works—has enabled the LAGQ to escape the “classical” pigeonhole.

The LAGQ has recorded ten CDs to date, the latest two on Telarc (www.telarc.com). Its 2002 release, Latin, garnered the group a Grammy nomination, but its latest recording, Guitar Heroes, should really get guitar lovers’ attention. Conceived as an homage to the group’s guitar idols, the album presents newly composed or arranged works inspired by such towering guitar figures from the rock, fingerstyle, and jazz realms as Ralph Towner, John McLaughlin, Jimi Hendrix, Pat Metheny, Steve Howe, Django Reinhardt, Norman Blake, David Bromberg, Frank Zappa, and Chet Atkins. As for classical heroes, the Romeros logically receive their acknowledgment as do the Assad Brothers guitar duo. Also included on the disc is a personal homage by York to his father. With this recording, the LAGQ marks the eve of a quarter century of playing together while simultaneously acknowledging some of the players who inspired them along the way.

I met with the quartet one sweltering Sunday afternoon in Pasadena, California. When not on tour as a group, the four guitarists lead hectic lives as teachers and performers. Tennant had just returned from the premiere of a new work for guitar and organ by Los Angeles composer Ian Krouse, self-proclaimed nomads York and Dearman had returned from travels in Europe and Thailand respectively, and Kanengiser was due to depart for France to perform works from his latest solo album. The group must balance teaching responsibilities, solo concert appearances, and familial demands. When they do come together to play, however, the music is sublime—the result of a familiarity and ease with each other that comes from spending decades together.

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How did Guitar Heroes come about?

KANENGISER We were on this long, boring drive up the central coast in California. There was nothing to do, and we started brainstorming ideas. I think it was Scott who said, “Hey, let’s make a guitar heroes album.” That was the germ, but it took two-and-a-half years to fester, and as typically happens with our group, the actual manifestation of the idea waited until the last possible minute. This may be the riskiest project we’ve ever done. It’d be so easy to do it badly, to do it wrong, to have covers of things that don’t sound as good as the original. That’s what we wanted to avoid. The whole philosophy was to be inspired by somebody but, ideally, to take it in some new direction or reinterpret or extrapolate it in some way.

How do you prepare for an album like this?

TENNANT The Latin album and this album came together through actually choosing repertoire on the road—reading through scores and picking all the repertoire away from home. On the road, we rehearse a lot in hotel rooms, which is a little uncomfortable, but we’re on the road to work, so we might as well rehearse. We like to do practice recordings when we rehearse for albums, but we didn’t get a chance to do that this time. We heard it recorded for the first time when we went in to check the sound in the booth.

What are some of your favorite tracks on the album?

KANENGISER I did an arrangement of the Steve Howe tune “Mood for a Day.” He was my hero when I was in junior high and high school. I thought he was God. He inspired me because he did so many different styles. “Mood for a Day” was the first “nylon-string” piece I learned. I learned it off the record and played it in a talent show in junior high. I listened to it again for the first time in 20 years, and what I heard was that he was trying to write a flamenco-inspired piece. It had the Phrygian thing going and strums, so I thought, “What if we take it and go farther in that direction?” So we all used flamenco guitars and we even had some friends who were the flamenco clappers, the palmas, to give it that flamenco sort of rumba feel. If you’ve never heard the original, you might have no idea what it refers to but think it’s some sort of flamenco tune.

Andy, tell me about your original compositions on the album.

YORK I wrote two pieces. My father was my first guitar teacher, so I wanted to write a piece to honor him, a piece called “Pop.” It started out as a folk song, because he’s a folk player, but it morphed into this Russian-flavored thing. I don’t know why. It’s a fairly simple piece with a strong melody. The other piece, “B & B,” combines two of my heroes in the bluegrass style—David Bromberg and Norman Blake. “B & B” stands for Blake and Bromberg. I wanted to write an actual bluegrass tune, so in the middle of the piece it goes into a traditional-sounding bluegrass song—one that you could actually extract and play in a bluegrass setting and really wail on. That was the heart of the tune.

KANENGISER That was a challenging piece for us because he requires us to play with a flatpick.

YORK [Laughs.] Yeah, almost everybody is playing with flatpicks the whole time.

KANENGISER We performed it live for the first time in Tokyo, and I thought it went well. But then I looked down after I finished playing and noticed I had trashed my guitar. I had gotten a little enthusiastic. I’m not very controlled yet with a pick, and I had put a couple of scratches in the top.

YORK We’re going to screw on pickguards from now on.

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What about Bryan Johanson’s Hendrix tribute, “Pluck, Strum, and Hammer”?

DEARMAN On a project like this, Hendrix is going to be one of the first names that pop into people’s minds. You know: Great Guitar Figures in History. So, there’s quite a bit of expectation of what a piece like that might sound like, and Bryan defied all expectations. I remember talking with Bill shortly after I had gotten the part, and I said, “What does this have to do with Hendrix?”

You can hear some “Purple Haze” in there.

TENNANT The “Purple Haze” chord is in there; it’s in my part all the time—in different rhythms, of course. But the thing that John was saying is that if you listen for Hendrix, you’re really not going to hear Hendrix per se. You have to let it wash over you. There’s this Baroque element in it, too. I was wondering, “What the heck? This is more Baroque than Hendrix!” When we asked him about it, he said, “I thought it’d be cool, since Hendrix lived in London on the same block as Handel’s house, to put some circle of fifths in there.” To Bryan, it absolutely made sense.

How did your arrangement of the Chet Atkins pieces come about?

KANENGISER All of us have been hugely inspired by Chet, maybe John more than anybody. I picked up a recording of Chet’s tune “Blue Echo,” and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I heard him doing this echo that iterated four times, each time getting a little quieter, and I thought, “Why can’t the quartet, with four guitars, imitate that?” The effect is pretty nice. Instead of just doing the regular B section of that tune, there’s this other great Chet piece, “Country Gentleman,” his sort of anthem. The B section of “Country Gentleman” sounds almost Hawaiian, and I thought, “I’ll just go to the B section of that.” It made a nice transition. I wanted to make it even more Hawaiian sounding, so Andy and I ended up playing parallel voicings with slides. It’s fun to play slide on a nylon-string guitar.

DEARMAN The Chet piece was the first piece we recorded, and we thought that . . . Why’d we choose that?

KANENGISER Because we thought it was easiest.

DEARMAN Yeah. We had played it already, so we thought, “We’ll do something we know.” We played it through the first time, and Bob Woods, our producer, said, “OK, you guys. This piece is all about fun. So, let’s have some fun.” So we played it again. Then he comes in and goes, “Well, no. I mean, really, it’s gotta be fun!” So we’re all trying really hard: “OK, I gotta have fun now.” He was trying to coax us into a mood, which is an almost impos-sible thing to do. Sometimes he resorts to intimidation. That’s usually the most successful.

KANENGISER Yeah. “Are we having fun yet?”

TENNANT He really gets in there. He’s made some comments like, “You guys sound too much like classical musicians” or “worried too much about the notes” or “gotta untighten the sphincter.” [Laughs.] It’s good, because when you’re recording, you’re worrying about every little breath or rustle of your shirt. Everything makes noise, and you’re worried about it. In the end, the takes that make the cut are when you just go for it, where there are all kinds of extra noises.

You also included a tribute to the Romeros.

TENNANT The Romeros were an obvious choice, because they’re the reason we’re all here—out here in California and together. Of course, Celedonio wrote a lot of music, and Pepe had done a lot of arrangements. We’d played a lot of that stuff in the past, and we needed something that wasn’t so new that we’d have to spend a lot of time on it. So we picked the Pepe Romero arrangement “El Baile de Luis Alonso.” It’s one of their signature pieces, and we got the thumbs up from the Romero family to do it. They were really pleased.

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You have rock, fingerstyle, jazz, country, a little classical. Who didn’t make the Guitar Heroes cut?

TENNANT I was going to do a tribute to one of my teachers, Juan Serrano, but we’d already had something that was sort of flamenco on the album, so that got put by the wayside. We had other classical peo-ple, too—David Russell, Paul O’Dette, Francisco Tárrega—but we couldn’t figure out what to do.

YORK I wanted to do a Joe Pass–inspired piece, but the idea of doing a chord-melody thing like Joe was known for and spreading it among four guitars was tricky.

Let’s get away from the new CD for a minute. What were some of the pivotal moments for the LAGQ as a group?

DEARMAN One stands out: when we decided to change personnel. Bringing Andy into the group [in 1990] solidified an evolution we’d gone through. We’d begun to develop new repertoire and bring contemporary elements into what we were doing, but we were just probing, we didn’t have any specific direction. When Andy came in, of course, he started writing music and having a big influence on what we were doing.

KANENGISER Before Andy joined the group, we had commissioned him to arrange some American pieces for us. He arranged a really cool set: a Scott Joplin tune, “Shenandoah,” “Arkansas Traveler,” and “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” by Count Basie. It was the first time we had dipped our toe in nonclassical, into Americana and jazz. That was the thing that got us this affiliation with Andy as a creative impulse in the group.

How have you managed to keep the group together for 24 years?

TENNANT Well, we’re basically all friends. There are a few other groups who have been together forever: the Canadian Brass, the Juilliard Quartet . . .

KANENGISER The Rolling Stones.

TENNANT [Laughs.] The Rolling Stones. But we’re friends first, not business partners. The business teams tend to dissolve quicker. We traveled in John’s Volvo for years. Now we just give each other space. It’s important, because if we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t still be together. We’re gone a lot, as much as six months out of the year sometimes—not straight, but in segments. I need to plug in and charge my battery. So when we’re home, it’s important to do our home stuff.

What kind of “home stuff” do you mean? What do you like to do?

YORK I like to travel. I’ve given into the idea of being nomadic, so when I’m home, I immediately go away again. I spend a lot of time in Europe. I love Spain. For fun, I do a bit of computer programming on the side. For me, that’s a way to relax and do something interesting.

DEARMAN I’ve been tinkering around my house—remodeling, various projects around there. I’ve got some plants I like to take care of. I’m into staghorn ferns. I like traveling a lot. When you’re touring, you don’t get to be a tourist, so you have to make a conscious effort to add time onto the tour if you want to take advantage of it. We’ve been to Japan a half dozen times now, and I've never really done anything in Asia, so this time I tacked on a trip to Thailand.

TENNANT I actually don’t like to travel. I like anything that keeps me at home, and what keeps me at home these days are various forms of kung fu. I also collect swords, and I’ve really gotten into bamboo lately. I’ve got a lot of it in my backyard.

KANENGISER For me, it’s cooking. I’m really into cooking, and now my 11-year-old daughter is getting into it. She’s my official sous chef. I’m teaching her knife technique. She hasn’t cut herself yet, so we’re doing OK.

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You’ve been touring for so long, you must have some good stories to tell.

YORK We played in Germany a few years ago. It was winter, and we played in a church that had no heat. It was so cold we could see our breath. During the intermission, we actually put on coats. We could barely play. It was probably 30-something degrees in the church, and we were making jokes to the audience about it: “Gosh we’re so freezing, I don’t know how you stand it!” They were kind of confused by this. We later found out that they had electric heat under all the pews—they had really hot buns, the whole audience.

DEARMAN In terms of strange gigs, we did a small tour in the Canary Islands. They flew us out to this island at night and then drove us out to where the concert hall was. It was dark. There were no lights anywhere, and it was kind of this moonscape—rocky and volcanic. We’re on this lonely road, and we see some headlights off in the distance and nothing else, and we finally get to this place and there’s this little Quonset hut by the side of the road. We get out and walk through this little house and then we go underground. And there’s this city underground, in this huge lava bubble—restaurants and waterfalls and flora and fauna. This island is one massive chunk of lava, and what often happens with these lava fields is that there are these gigantic bubbles. The concert hall was in its own separate bubble! It was completely natural. They didn’t do anything to it except put in a stage and some lights and seats. So we played in a gigantic lava bubble, underground.

I hear you’re planning a hiatus of sorts.

KANENGISER Yes, we’re actually planning on celebrating our 25th year together by taking a year off. It was something we debated for a while. It’s healthy to give ourselves time to do other things we want to do and come back to the group with renewed vigor. It’s a bit of a gamble, but when you do something for that long, it’s not unexpected.

What are you planning before then?

KANENGISER Our plan is to get a couple of projects in the can before we take a break. First, we’re thinking of doing a live concert DVD for Mel Bay at our St. Louis concert in March, and we’d like to do another recording for Telarc as well.

Looking back, how have things changed for the group over the years?

KANENGISER It has been a slow evolution from where we were in the beginning to doing all the world music we did for Sony and then this Guitar Heroes project. I think all four of us have become more open to different styles, more open to experimenting with things. It remains to be seen exactly what direction we’re going to go. It’s nice when we have a balance, where we keep some element of our training, classical music, but then stretch as far as we can and see where we can go with it.

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