Andrew Karas Interviews Roland Chadwick on: Size of the Earth for Comparison

Andrew Karas is a Composer, Saxophonist & Scientist. He has more letters after his name than most posh people have in their names. Roland and Andrew have been close friends for many years and when we looked for a sympathetic and intelligent ear to do this interview Andrew's name shone bright. The following interview was done via email over a period of two weeks in February 2005. We hope that it sheds some new light on the creation of ‘Size of the Earth for Comparison’.

AK: To me, this album is one of the most programmatic of your recordings. Indeed, so strong is its visual evocation that it suggests a film score to a (so far) non-existent film - like an artwork or documentary that describes a supposedly well-known, yet fictitious event. However in this case, while there is no film, its subject is real. Rather than describe directly in some conventional sense, you seem to have created a projection, as though from a distance, pensive, reflective, observant, but not melancholy. Not only does the music present such, but also the album as a whole - there is a definite sense of something happening in stages or snapshots throughout the album - we are given glimpses of a greater whole and feel that there is more to it. Comments

RC: I didn’t start out with a conscious program or plan. The ‘pointing to something’ that you refer to I became aware of only later when the number of pieces had started to accumulate. I wasn’t writing these pieces with the intention that they end up as part of a set. Each of them was created at different times in my life when I was exploring different types of music making, different philosophical ideas and doubtless I was in different relationships. That process of accumulation took a little over 10 years. The surprise for me is that that process over a period that long could create a work with such a sense of unity! But then as I said, I didn’t have a conscious plan.

The filmic allusions you make are natural in so far as almost everything in life and certainly in our cultural lives is now measured against the current dominant art form. The movies have made almost all human experience a visual one. Almost all access to the emotions or other human experience in the world of the moviemaker arrives via the optic nerve and music, especially instrumental music has been marshalled by the movies to heighten the visual experience and it’s been incredibly successful in that arena. So after over 100 years of movies and movie soundtracks the first thing that people commonly say when confronted with instrumental music is “wow that would make great movie music”. This is fine but it diminishes the impact that music created for it’s own sake minus the visual crutch makes. Music given full attention with eyes closed takes you to an entirely different place in your own humanity and dare I say a less polluted place. A place of purity.

AK: When I alluded to film music, I wasn't really saying it in the same sense as "Hey, that sounds like film music!" because, I know, that phrase does usually come across as diminishing the music. I am not saying that it sounds like film music due to some conditioned response that this type of music sounds like other music we hear in cinemas, but rather, that it seems to point to a narrative/story being told in stages - not like reading a novel, but more recognisably, like experiencing a film - some of that is imagery, but most is narrative character. You say pure music can take one to a different place, well that's what I'm saying - it has taken this listener beyond just the music.

Incidentally, we as musicians say we like the purity of music and that the 'film' description tarnishes this, but I recently saw the Sydney Symphony Orchestra play an awesome piece by a New York composer, dedicated and related to the victims of the World Trade Tower episode, with visual footage (not of the happening itself) which heightened the experience in every way. So to us, the film might diminish the music, but in this instance, it didn't. Also, consider the film director who probably feels that music diminishes the film (it's always subordinate to the visual image). Both can't be right (there is no right) and there's no use in invoking the somewhat artificial classification divide between 'music' and 'film' when they're both just form of experiencing art. Postscript - there is in fact some quite awesome film music despite the stigma (with which I empathise).

RC: I think I’ve heard the piece you are talking about. I haven’t seen it performed with the video. Whilst this piece is loaded with all of the emotional charge of what has become a huge tear on our group psyche, as a piece of music on it’s own it definitely deserves the title ‘film music’. That it works well with film is no surprise.

While I do continue to argue for the pure pre-lingual experience that music can provide I am guilty of writing explanatory titles but I have to admit that even these titles are ultimately meaningless. The titles are a kind of crutch. I really have no idea ‘what’ these pieces are ‘about’. If I did I’d probably make my life easier and write and direct films! Most modern neuro-scientists agree that most if not all of our reality is manifest in language but that that reality is formed pre-lingually and it’s my guess that music is a closer ally to these pre-lingual states of mind. That descriptive language or imagery gets added on afterwards is no surprise given our ‘conscious’ orientation to that kind of description.

Having said all of that, I am glad that this has taken you to a place beyond the music. Fantastic stuff!

AK: From where did the title of the album come?

RC: NASA provided the title of the CD. I found the original photograph for the cover on the Goddard Library website and it was pretty much as you see it now. The caption next to the little blue dot was ‘approximate size of the earth for comparison’. I was incredibly excited by this image but I still wasn’t sure of the title. I showed it to my record company with a few alternate ideas and it was Simon Scardanelli of Resonator Records that suggested we stick with the caption as the title.

I like very much the poetry of the title but more than that; I like the philosophical connotations it has for me. The dimensions of the physical idea present in this image are staggering especially when you follow the curve of the Sun away from the edge of the page and realise that the disc implied is bigger than the room you’re actually sitting in! And it staggers me how the realities that each of us have concocted for ourselves inside of this bigger, mostly unseen cosmic reality seem so laughingly important and at the same time how seriously important they really are. And if it’s true that these realities are important then we better grow up quick smart and start inventing some realities worthy of the size of the cosmos we live in.

AK: Is there a theme throughout the album?

RC: In the programmatic sense it didn’t begin that way but with the addition of the album title, cover art, the poem by Shelley and the program order a musical journey did immerge. You can listen to the music without the extra-musical references (which is what I do mostly) or whilst listening you can mediate on either the title of a piece, the album title or the picture, whatever comes up for you or any combination of these things. For those who wish to meditate, I’ve merely provided the musical space in which that meditation might occur. I’m always surprised by the different things others see in my work and I’m quite often moved by the experiences my work has generated for them.

Initially what tied the album together for me were the compositional processes. The Thinking A-Loud series came first (around the early 90’s) and in these pieces I was recalling something that had happened to me when I was very young, before I got my first guitar. I was in a room with an old upright piano and I took the front covers off and started hitting it to make notes and percussion sounds and really got into the relationship of the different sounds I could get out of that box of wood and strings. I lost myself in those sounds and relationships and felt like I'd done something pure. It’s that purity, the undiluted execution of the musical idea and the bypassing of the conscious mind that has haunted and attracted me ever since. After that I got a guitar and became the guy who plays classical guitar trying to get it 'right'. Whilst I learnt a lot from that experience and I still love to play 'classical guitar' there is nothing as 'on-edge' as just making it up on the spot, no plan, no instruction manual.

The other influences of this album lie in the kinds of improvisation I've been working on over the last few years especially since my arrival in the UK. A lot of this album was either written or recorded while I was being exposed to the kind of world music mix that you can only find in London because of the ethnic diversity here. A few years back I'd been working with the Indian Saurang player, Surinder Sandhu on his Saurang Orchestra Project and inside that musical space I worked on a particular kind of improvisation. I developed that further when I was working Iraqi Oud player, Ehsan Emam. That was a free improvisation project. We'd pick a key and go for it. In both cases I wasn't too interested in the particular scales being used, (although they did come in handy from time to time). I was more interested in the space musicians like these musicians entered into during the act of improvisation. The results of this show up particularly in Anytime Now with Amrit Sond and Ozymandias. These are totally improvised one take, no plan, let's see what happens, product of the moment type things.

The Thinking A-loud series have similar origins except that there are no tonal, rhythmic or harmonic references. I was improvising blind in a way. I was merely responding to the sounds around me created by improvising into the sounds that where available. Almost a kind of muscular response.

The last stage in this journey is the written solo. The solos in Elephant Strings, Demelza and Inform Your Face sound as if they could have been improvised but are in fact written quite meticulously. These compositions still have a unifying tune but the idea of the rhapsodic solo goes to an extreme in the Silent Memory of God where there is no tune as such except that it's all the tune!

AK: How have you decided the structure of the album?

When I was working on the running order for this album I was trying to solve a few problems that the modern album has. First is the contradiction between the amount of music the CD format allows (which in turn the consumer has come to expect) and the popularly imagined 3’ 40” attention span the average consumer has. I buy lots of CDs and there are very few that sustain my attention for the full 55”. There are exceptions and I was interested in discovering what those exceptions had that the others didn’t and broadly these CD’s fit into one of two camps. Either the music is long and possesses a certain gravity, like a Beethoven Symphony or one of the Yes albums or, if they are a series of shorter pieces the pieces/songs are eclectic as in say, the Beatles from Sergeant Peppers on or a Queen album from A Night at the Opera on. In the later case, which is where Size of the Earth fits, those albums achieve a kind of unity because they contain sung songs. Size of the Earth doesn’t have that unifying hook although it is very eclectic.

The second problem was that of overall unity. The general advice given by commercial producers is to put your ‘killer’ tracks at the beginning of the album. I have discarded this advise in favour of a concert program approach and this was assisted by splitting the Thinking A-Loud series. Because of the eclecticism of the pieces the listener’s ear is hooked by the new texture and mood and style of each piece and the wind quintets kind of work as bookends keeping the arc of the album unified.

AK: Any Time Now was done in a single take. How do you approach recording on a single take (mindset, technically etc.)?

RC: It’s slightly different for each piece. For the Thinking A-Loud series, Ozymandias and Size of the Earth for Comparison (the title track) I think I started with the question “what if” as in what if I just sat down and played for as long the playing needed. What would come out of my unconscious mind that I wouldn’t ordinarily be able to access or put the other way round; what is my conscious mind missing out on? The next thing that happens is I create the space for this question to get worked out. Set up the studio ready to capture whatever happens, set up the instruments (guitar/wind quintet – whatever). Then just hit the record button and play into whatever is around me and that can be a drone as in Ozymandias or the metronome in Thinking A-Loud or the silence that was needed for Size of the Earth for Comparison. That’s it technically but then the mind set. That’s harder. I suppose you just enter a state of trust, maybe even grace with just a dash if enthusiasm for the project. There’s no pressure. It either gets exciting or it doesn’t and you get what you get.

AK: Do/did you resolve to use a single take before recording?

RC: Yes. These pieces weren’t a planned event. I seemed to just drift into them at various stages. Anytime Now was a complete accident. Amrit and I were rehearsing for a concert and he started banging away and I said ‘hey that sounds great, let’s get some of that on tape’ and so I set up the guitars as DI’s and we went for it. I had thought before the tape was rolling that I was getting something that we could work on later. After that we went back to what we were supposed to be doing and it was only after a couple of weeks when I went back to the tape to listen that I realised that there was already something there worth keeping.

AK: What inspired the 5/4 melody in Demelza?

RC: The Demelza theme grew organically from the percussion loop, as did the bass part. I’d been working with Surinder Sandhu (Saurang Orchestra) and Mike Lindup (Level 42) on percussion loops at various times and I’d learnt a lot from them so I started constructing some of my own. Inform Your Face is another one of them. With Demelza I worked out the percussion loop a bit at a time and the 2 bass drums at the end of each bar seem to speak C down to F so I found myself in F minor (which is a strange key for me). Then I sang the tune over the top, which suggested the minor blues harmony. I really didn’t write in the ‘sit down and work this out’ sense of the word. It just happened spontaneously. I didn’t have to change a thing. It was just there perfectly formed.

AK: The Thinking A-Louds seem to punctuate the album. Their departure from the lush character of the rest of the album really brings them to the front of the soundstage as rhetorical thoughts, implied by their title. Why have they been included? How do they fit into the structure of the album and its theme?

RC: Yes, the Thinking A-Louds act like bookmarks or even signposts. It was a risk placing them on this album. I’ve always loved them and thought that they are in their own way a really pure form of musical expression in so far as they (as much as is possible) bypass my conscious mind. Listened to as a set they are quite difficult. There are no tonal, harmonic or for the most part melodic references to latch onto but strangely in the context of the other pieces they lose a certain amount of their weirdness. Guys find them very strange but the woman I’ve played the album to loved them. It’s not uncommon for them to ‘see’ fairies playing and stuff like that. It’s not what I intended but it’s as valid as any other view of them.

AK: The title to Inform Your Face sounds like something Will Smith would say - what are you really saying and to/of whom were you speaking/thinking when you thought of this?

RC: Actually, I didn’t say this. Mike Lindup and I were working with a young singer from the states who was quite talented but a little morose and as a result sometimes a little difficult to work with. We’d just finished recording a song, which Mike and I thought sounded great but she looked pensive. Mike is a very, very patient man but I think he expected a little more enthusiasm on this occasion so when he asked if she was happy with it and she ‘yes’ he said, “well inform your face”. I just fell about laughing! I happened to be writing this piece at the time so it stuck as the title.

AK: The Silent Memory of God is my favourite track. Tell us more about it.

RC: I had intended this piece as a solo classical guitar Bach like Prelude for the album ONE. I wasn’t happy with it as a solo but I was reluctant to leave it completely behind so I took the original recording from the church and started mucking around with different tunes. I had it mind to do a Gounod (as in his tune to Bach’s Prelude in C) but the melody just kept evolving in a kind of rhapsodic way. It’s a kind of meditative piece and also a piece that is good for meditation. I like to sit with it and contemplate what is the silent memory of god? The title by the way comes from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, the marriage poem.

AK: Which microphones were used on this track? Do you have a favourite microphone placement for recording solo guitar and was that used for this track?

RC: The classical guitar was recorded with a stereo pair of U87s (?) at a distance of about 6 feet in a church in Pagham. That part of the recording was engineered by John Taylor who is the master of location recordings. As to the rest, I have no expertise at all regarding microphones and those techy things. I use an AKG Solid Valve mic in my studio and I pretty much just point the thing at the guitar or whatever it is I’m recording. If I’m recording the Taylor (as I did with the Silent Memory of God) I may use a little of the on board mic as well. I do muck around with placement but I let my ear be my guide and I take the sound that gives me the best functional sound at that time. The rest of it, compression, delay, all that stuff is worked out by Julian Mendelsohn. He’s the most experienced studio man I know and he just intuitively twiddles this knob and that and we get a sound that works.

I’d like to be more into what compressors and delays and limiters do but then I’d like to more into guitars as well. I don’t know very much about guitars at all – I just play them. A long time ago I found that I had to focus (in the sense of Life Focus) on a very few select things and those things are pretty much composition, guitar playing and my marriage. To become really expert in computer technology, sound engineering and say, mountain climbing would take too much time. Even just the week in week out process of doing gigs takes me away from wife a little too much at times!

AK: Come the Winter All Fragrance is Lost displays elements of Chinese music. How did you come up with the melody?

RC: The Chinese-ness of this piece is a trick of the light. Play it on a guitar or violin and it loses that straight away. It’s the context, and in this case the context created by the instrumentation gives it that oriental feel. As to how I came up with the melody, it was a kind inspiration under pressure thing. I was writing and recording the music for Sydney production of the play ' Sometimes I Wish I Was Jana Wendt' and I needed some kind of interlude. It was at 3 in the morning and this idea came and it kept me up till 7 am.

AK: To what does this poetic title refer? How was this music modified it for this album?

RC: The title was one of things that happen between Jenny and me. The summer of 2003 had been really hot in the UK and it had reminded me a lot of Sydney but when the autumn started to close in and it got colder there was a kind of fear of the oncoming winter and a nostalgia for the warmth and colour that was retreating and in that mood I said to Jenny – “come the winter all fragrance is lost” and she said “where’s that quote from?” and we where both impressed that it was an original thought so I had to use it as a title somewhere!

The original version had this tune followed by a kind of chorus and there was a breakdown later on but when I started doing this orchestration the chorus and breakdown sounded a bit naff so I dropped those and started again. The layering seemed the most effective use of the material and new context created by the melody percussion.

AK: Size of the Earth for Comparison is my other favourite. Why choose this one as the title track?

RC: On certain sound systems there are some really low bass frequencies that come through and the tune is in a generally high register so there’s a height and depth to the soundscape created. The title isn’t about every day things. The music isn’t about everyday things. To refer back to your filmic allusions, most of the music up to Think A-Loud #2 concerns itself with the every day and from Silent Memory of God onwards it gets a little more philosophical, more concerned with the bigger picture and of course Size of the Earth for Comparison deals with the biggest picture of all. So you’re left with the questions: “how do your every day concerns measure up? Are your every day concerns in fact big enough?”

That or it’s just an interesting piece of music. Either view is valid.

AK: What's happening as we progress through this piece? Can you describe the structure? What are the occasional 'bursts' of interjection? What do the staccato high pitch notes represent? What can you tell us about the legato mid range melody?

RC: I know that this seems lame but I have no answers to these questions. I really was just following my nose. The whole piece was written intuitively. I know that that’s kind of hard to be with but I wasn’t thinking in the generally excepted version of that term. It really was a kind improvisation but just slowed right down which I suppose is true of all composition really. The idea that composers have really any idea of what they are doing is, as far as I can see a complete fallacy. Yes, there is the technical side but that can’t account for the raw material that the composer is presented with to apply that technique. Some of what I consider my best pieces weren’t ‘worked’ out they just ‘came’ out. Most of the compositions that I’ve heard where the composer said he ‘knew’ what he was doing have a certain contrived feel about them as if they are a product of conscious technique rather than any inspiration. And this gets us into some really hard territory because most of the music these days is a product of technique. The modern record industry is full of it, the advertising industry is worse. I know guys who work in these areas and seriously, they can write and record two or three songs/pieces a day but it’s all purpose built and functional music. I do very few commissions for exactly that reason. I just can’t write to order. I can’t work to a timeline. My mind works these things out at it’s own pace and unfortunately mines not that quick most of the time.

I did do a commission for the Sydney Guitar Trio a couple of years ago and I agreed because they’re mates of mine and I came up with a couple of pieces for them. The first piece was a gem and I spent a bit of time on it. I knew it needed a second piece to complete it but the material didn’t present itself to me quickly. It would have done if I’d given it time but I had none so what I came up with was at best OK but really I know that it was contrived rubbish. There, I’ve confessed!

AK: Where does this album fit in with the rest of your life at the moment?

RC: So far every album I’ve made is completely different from the last. The Revealing was a classical crossover CD, One is a solo classical guitar CD, Size of the Earth is probably a world/jazz album and the next CD is from my band Native Tung which is a blues-rock album. So what can you say about a composer that writes in so many different styles. This question has troubled me a lot. The stereotypical composer is traditionally said to write in his/her own unique ‘style’. When you pick up a new piece by Beethoven you know generally what to expect. It’s going to be kind of Beethovenish. But there is a problem with this because Jazz is a ‘style’ of music and so is Blues, Rock and Hawaiian Ukulele music and I think that this problem in the language which describes artists creates confusion with an audiences perception of composers like me. Beethoven was writing at time when there was one very dominant particular ‘style’ of music in Europe and that was a very euro-centric style. As time went on other composers added to that style but brought different ingredients like nationality and harmony and societal influences but the over arching ideal was to write in that typically euro-centric style. So the question arises what was it that differentiates Beethoven’s music from say, Mozart? It is and it isn’t harmony, melody and the other stuff that makes a 19th century sonata. I think it’s something more like personality or said another way; Beethoven had his own unique ‘voice’. Beethoven has a certain way of saying things within the style of the time that makes him recognisable. Since then of course the style (in the sense that I mentioned earlier) barrier has broken down. I live at a time when it’s entirely possible to be a fan of the Beatles and Stones and be influenced by Beethoven and his mates but then there’s also Flamenco and jazz and blues and then there’s huge issue of world music. I think if Beethoven was to write Jazz there’d still be enough ‘Beethoven’ in there for you to recognise him.

In 2003 Roland was interviewed by Tim Panting, Reviews Editor of Classical Guitar Magazine about the Modern Guitar Trio. This interview was published in the November 2004 issue of Classical Guitar Magazine

Let's start with an easy one.

What is the average annual rainfall of Papua New Guinea?

Papua New Guinea has a hot and humid climate, with lowland average annual temperatures of between 70-90°F (21.1-32.2°C), and annual rainfall of as much as 230 inches (5840 mm). True - I looked it up!

Tell me about how the Trio got started.

In 1999/2000 I was putting together the resources I needed for the recording of "The Revealing" and I needed a couple of guitarists for the recording of my guitar trio, "Letter From LA". Through a mutual friend I met Roland Gallery and as he (strangely) lives just 2 blocks away from me in Ealing, is the same age and was born in the same month and has the same first name with the same spelling - well, he had to be the man! He recommended that I try out Vincent Lindsey-Clark who turned out to be a bit good and for the recording engineer they recommended John Taylor. I was made up. Being new to the London music scene at that time I no idea of how much experience these two had but the recording went very well and was done on I think on only two or three rehearsals. It was only later that I heard some recordings of the Segovia Guitar Trio and then I realised who I was dealing with. Once the CD was released came the problem of promoting it and as the English Chamber Orchestra weren't always available it seemed a good idea to get Roland and Vincent to go out for the odd concert here and there. Eventually we needed more material and I arranged the Three Kisses for Jenny from The Revealing and Vincent mentioned that he'd written a piece called Cymetry and Roland G produced 2 jazz fusion pieces that he'd penned. Meanwhile I came up with a Song and Dance and for an encore piece I arranged a set of variations I'd written on Yankee Doodle. By this point we were being asked to do full concerts and so with the addition of a solo each we had a full program. It was only later that we realised that we had formed an actual trio and that something special was happening regarding the program we were currently playing and the future direction that a trio of guitarist/composers might take. You see, there a quite a few guitar ensembles that have a resident composer but to have all three of us being composers struck us as being something quite unusual.

Who decides on the repertoire? Is it a fairly democratic unit?

Well so far we only play music that has been written by one or other of the members of the trio and that's the thing that struck us as being fairly unique about the trio from the get go. There are quite a few guitar ensembles that have a resident composer - Richard Charlton in the Sydney Guitar Trio for example, but we couldn't think of a group of classical musicians where all of the players are practising composers. Now I'm sure that there will be many letters to the editor disputing that idea but the point is that based on the information we had at the time the idea of a trio of Classical Guitarist/Composers seemed quite unique and in it's own way special.

Democratic? More co-operative really. None of us present pieces to the group that we're not reasonably confident with and when we work on the pieces together there's a sense of co-operation and genuine support present that is really quite remarkable and rare. There is a genuine respect for each others work and it's not uncommon to hear one of us say "I wish I'd written that" about one of the others pieces.

You all play standard instruments. What are your views on high and low register instruments to extend the range of the trio, or are you happy with the set up as it is?

We did use the Tenor and Bass Classical guitars together with two standard guitars in the Jazz Suite that Vincent Lindsey-Clark wrote and we performed with Sandy Macdonald at Bolivar Hall last year but that's been it so far. At the time I did enjoy the sound of the extended upper and particularly the lower register but so far I haven't found it necessary to use those instruments in my own works. I know that Roland G and Vincent use the Tenor and Bass Guitars in their other projects but so far we have found the standard instrument a large enough pallet of colour to paint from for this trio.

The fact is I prefer three standard guitars as a kind of predetermined format to write for rather like the string quartet or the piano trio. And the great thing about these standard formats is that they can be played with relative ease anywhere in the world by anyone with a couple of mates with standard guitars. It's a challenge to write for the guitar trio given the restrictions of range but then it's also a new freedom from the confinements of solo guitar writing to have two extra sets of hands to look after bass lines or harmony lines or even the odd percussive effect. And I love how much easier it is to play this music and that's a word that been missing from the vocabulary of classical guitarists - easy!

You have a lot of original material between the three of you. What are your views on including some more recognisable items of repertoire?

Well I honestly don't see the point of a group of guitarist/composers including recognisable items of repertoire (if you mean compositions by other composers) unless it's to give the audience something they know and I think that's a false premise on which to base a groups programming decisions. I haven't found that audiences need to be fed a diet of the tried and true. In my experience they want something beautiful, passionate, expressive and a little exciting on the side and that's where I write from. Audiences aren't frightened of new music! They're hungry for new music! but that hunger wont be and wasn't satisfied by music written from a place of self indulgence and self referential intellectualism. They don't want to be astonished or interested they want to be moved, touched and inspired and so do I. Programming recognisable items of repertoire is definitely not the answer to regaining the interest and trust of audiences.

Imagine music is like sex. You have an encounter and you are left with the thought, "well that was interesting" - are you going to go there again. Probably not. You have an encounter with someone you've 'known' for the last 20 years are you going to be amazed and awe inspired ... no! Comfortable maybe but not magical. Or you get to meet and get to know a new person and romance blossoms and one thing leads to another - now that's moving, that's exciting. Sure, there are combinations and possibilities I've left out of that analogy but the point is that you can't fake it. The music you hear either is real and a real expression of what it is to be human and the humans listening to it are moved, touched and inspired or they're not and if they're not they wont go back to it. The job of the professional musician is to build an audience base that is moved, touched and inspired by what the performer sees as a musical vehicle that contains that true expression. And for me that's the Modern Guitar Trio. We're not a covers band.

Oooer missus! I liked that last analogy, rather a breath of fresh air. I think it's great that your audiences are treated to new material and that you feel you don't have to 'educate' them in anyway, or at least that's how it appears, and that the 'emotional' impact of music is very much at the forefront of the Trio's ideals.

You are all musicians active in many fields, how often do you get together, say weekly, and what are your plans for the coming months?

Where does the idea that musicians have to educate their audiences come from?! I think it's incredibly arrogant of musicians and composers who think they are in a position to 'educate' their audience. That is not we're paid to do to and that is definitely not what the audience is asking from us and if you attempt to do that as your primary focus they'll see through you and never return to your concerts. My guess is that if a musician feels that he/she has to educate their audience they might be a tad insecure about whether or not they or the music they are playing really has anything to say of any significance to other human beings. If music is about what it is to be human and the expression of the human condition then the idea that you have to educate other humans in that condition and expression is ridiculous given of course that they, the audience are already an integral part of that condition and expression. That of course doesn't discount the idea that audiences cannot acquire a taste for certain styles of music but you can't 'teach' anyone to be moved, touched and inspired by a certain type of music. The either eventually get it or they don't. Their choice.

I'm not sure about the emotional thing. That's too big and complex. But we're certainly concerned about transcendence in so far as one can speak of a concert moving the audience from the level of their daily cares and concerns to a place where they can be said to experience clarity and freedom and hopefully the music you present can be the vehicle which takes them to that place.

I wish we could afford to rehearse weekly but no ... we rehearse when we have concerts coming up ... which is soon! We're doing quite a few of the regional Arts Centres in the later part of 2003. In London we're doing that National Theatre on the South Bank and various Guitar Societies and we're set to play at Tim Pells' Guitar Festival at the Colchester Institute. And next year more concerts and hopefully a recording of the new pieces the three of us have come up with.

Well, it seems to me that The Modern Guitar Trio have a truly fresh, 'modern' approach to music making and we hope to hear more from you in the near future and wish you all the success for your coming ventures.