speaking of guitars, the term action refers to the closeness of the strings to the fretboard. The lower the action, the easier it is for the left hand to move up and down the fingerboard. Classical guitarists use guitars with higher action, which makes them considerably harder to play. However, more volume is projected by classical instruments, so they can be played acoustically without any amplification, and this results in a more beautiful and natural tone.
In deciding to work with nuevo flamenco guitarists on projects inspired by Latin music, it seemed that I had stumbled upon a perfect solution to my woes as a strictly classical performer, and I greatly looked forward to the exciting new challenge.
My arranger, Richard Fortin, agreed to produce the Latin-flavoured album I proposed. Fortunately he was also a fan of nuevo flamenco so we agreed to abandon our planned recording of classical transcriptions and originals that I had been writing and arranging for the past year. My right-hand fingers were simply not up to it. How sad that my beautiful transcriptions of Debussy’s “Claire de Lune,” Massenet’s “Élégie” and “Meditation,” and Schubert’s “Barcarolle,” all of which I had obsessed over for months to adapt for classical guitar, remain in their folder to this day.
In a writing frenzy, Richard and I took out our manuscript papers in Toronto and Los Angeles and began faxing each other our rough sketches and scores for mutual approval. The internet was, at that time, still in its infancy, so there were no digital files to be exchanged. Richard and I were back in the Stone Age in terms of technology, and we were happy that we could at least fax our scribbles back and forth. We wrote out every piece by hand and mailed each other demos recorded on our cassette machines. It would have amazed us then to learn how the recording business was on the brink of transformation, and that once the digital age fully blossomed we would soon all be sharing music tracks with a few clicks of a mouse.
I invited several well-known guitar players to contribute to the project and soon had on tape stellar performances by many of the world’s best Latin jazz players including, of course, my new friends Strunz and Farah. As executive producer, I undertook the dozens of phone calls to each of these performers in order to coordinate the repertoire, the recording studios, the scheduling, and the payment of all expenses.
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My Camino Latino CD was engineered and mixed by a relatively unknown sound engineer called Peter Bond. Little did I know that many moons later he and I would reunite for several future musical collaborations and a profound journey of friendship that continues even today. I have Richard Fortin to thank for patiently leading me around Toronto to visit various studios, and for his eventual conclusion that Zolis Audio Productions, where Peter was working, should be our choice.
“Parranda” was a catchy solo piece I had recorded on Encore in 1988, but now it was going to be accompanied by a full band, including light percussion. What fun to hear it expand into a new rhythmic version of its former self. “Bajo el Sol” (“Beneath the Sun”) was a piece I composed while on a Hawaiian holiday with Jack in July of 2000. I still have the scraps of stationery from our hotels on which I scribbled rough drafts of melodies that would later evolve into my Camino Latino repertoire.
My Peruvian-style piece, “Las Alturas,” was evocative of the high Andes, and I knew would be great fun to perform live using pizzicatos and double string trills that I was still able to execute.
“Ambos Mundos,” my tribute to Strunz and Farah, blended Latin and Persian-style rhythms and melodies, paying homage to Jorge Strunz’s Costa Rican background and Ardeshir Farah’s Iranian heritage. For the intro we used wind chimes and the old Kenora guitar that I had taken along when I had canoed the Missinaibi River in 1989 to perform in the historic Anglican church in Moose Factory. Using pizzicato to play its well-worn strings produced the touch of Middle Eastern flavour that I wanted for this piece. I used my fast-fingered left-hand runs up the fingerboard and was delighted that our different styles of fingernail and pick playing made for an exotic blend. To this day “Ambos Mundos,” remains one of my all-time favourite compositions. My right hand was not up to tackling complex classical compositions, but it was perfectly adequate for this style of playing.
Fortin composed several catchy numbers including “Frontera,” “Night in Yucatan,” “Torbellino,” and “Carretera Libre.” I hired Rick Lazar to add percussion and Ron Korb to play various flutes that he selected from his huge collection of international instruments. Back in L.A., I asked a Latin jazz guitar whiz kid from the San Fernando Valley, Luis Villegas, to perform with me on “Carretera Libre.” It turned out so well that I chose it as the opening cut on the album. Luis recorded his parts at his own studio, and I sat with him acting as producer and drawing out the best possible performance from his nimble fingers. It was then up to Peter and Richard to choose the most expressive parts and put all the tracks together like a complex audio puzzle.
Convincing Al Di Meola, a huge star in the jazz world, to perform on a fast-paced piece that Richard had written was a real coup. I named the piece “Torbellino” (“Whirlwind”), and Richard and Peter had to work extra-long hours into the night to edit the rather scrambled and messy guitar parts Al had recorded in his home in New Jersey. However, when all was finally pieced together along with my own playing, we were relieved to hear that it worked musically and, in fact, sounded quite amazing. I decided this piece was definitely worth the high fee he had charged me.
Steve Morse, the virtuoso rocker from Deep Purple, sent us his parts for use in Richard’s “Rumbo al Sur.” These tracks bordered on perfection! He even gave us choices of two different solos, each of which were well-thought-out compositions unto themselves. We decided to use both — what a monster player that man is!
When he came to perform in Los Angeles with his band, Deep Purple, Steve set aside a ticket for me, and I found myself in a mosh pit near the front of the stage. I suffered the head-splitting experience until I feared for my ears and retreated to the sidelines, but I met up with Steve backstage for drinks after the show. We hung out together for an hour on the tour bus with his band and posed for photos that Guitar Player magazine had requested. Even if our styles of playing are very different, we performers always love to exchange guitar tips. At that time Steve and I were both pretty much at the tops of our games; although I kept my focal dystonia struggles to myself.
Johannes Linstead, an Ontario-based nuevo flamenco–style player also jumped on board with my project, writing a fast-paced duet called “Zarzamora” that we could record together.
Next I drew on my rudimentary knowledge of Brazilian samba rhythms to compose “Samba para Dos” and enjoyed listening while another rising star on the guitar scene, Jesse Cook, laid down his tracks in his home studio. As we had both studied with Eli Kassner and belonged to the Toronto Guitar Society, there was a comforting shared history between us.
Oscar Lopez, a charming Chilean guitarist, agreed to write and record a new piece for me he called “Enlaces,” but unfortunately his piece and another infectious rhythmic number that I had arranged and recorded (called “Popcorn”) did not make the final cut. We felt that Oscar’s recording, done in Calgary, didn’t quite match the high standards of the other pieces, despite Richard and Peter’s valiant attempts to edit it, and we decided that “Popcorn” was stylistically unsuitable for this Latin-inspired album. The master recording of “Popcorn” would have to wait a few years before its day in the sun, when it would come out in the form of a remix by Peter Bond.
I asked an ambitious young Canadian guitarist of Greek heritage, Pavlo, to write me an original Greek-flavoured piece, and he obliged with “Café Kastoria,” which featured the appealing sound of the bouzouki. For this number I hired Kristine Bogyo to play on her million-dollar cello, but for some inexplicable reason her tuning was slightly off, so Peter had to blend it with sampled cello sounds to make it work with the other tracks.
Finally,
