Born in Florence, Italy, in 1792 or 1793,  Matteo Carcassi started his musical education at an early age on the piano. Nevertheless, he began to study the guitar soon after, and only a few years later, gave his first concerts.

At 18 years old, Carcassi went to pursue  his music career in Germany where after a short period of time, he gained a reputation as a tremendous performer.
The Italian virtuoso then settled in Paris around 1816, earning a living as a guitar and piano teacher and performing in salons. Since he fought with the French in the Napoleonic Wars, he was also in receipt of a military pension. His obituary in the Journal des Débats of 20 January 1853 said “He had made of France, which he had served as a soldier, his adopted and favorite country."
Though living in Paris for three years, it was on a concert tour in Germany in 1819, that he met Antoine Meissonier,  well known French guitarist  and publisher, with whom he built a close friendship.

8 rue de la Grange Bateliere in Paris, France, where Matteo Carcassi was living:

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From 1820 on, Carcassi, like many other Italian guitar virtuosi, was spending the majority of his time in Paris,  hub of guitar activities. In 1820 the Gardeton's Annales listed him as resident at 8 rue Grange-Batelière, which is still there, just a short walk from the center, close to the rue du Faubourg Montmartre.  At the same time he started to self-publish several of his earliest compositions. The Gardeton's Annales again, mention Carcassi's “Six Walses op. 4” of which a copy is available in the British Library.

By 1822, his friend Antoine Meissonier, also publisher of Fernando Sor, published his Trois rondo op. 2, and later on, added to his edition most of Carcassi's earliest compositions.
 
During Fall of 1824, he went back to concertize in Germany, and thereafter went to perform an extremely successful series of concerts in London where, like his compatriot Mauro Giuliani, he gained great fame as a soloist and teacher.

However, in Paris, a long time passed before his talents were truly recognized, partly because of the overwhelming consideration attributed to Italian guitarist Ferdinando Carulli, adored by his audience.

Carcassi distinguished himself from Carulli by using a different instrumental posture, and performing without fingernails,  but also by showing a d more melodic taste, and using a richer palette of effects.

P.J Bone wrote in his "The Guitar and Mandolin":
"... but the celebrated founder of his school of guitar playing (Carulli) was growing old. His fingers no longer responded as they did in their suppleness of youth, and his magic touch had disappeared. He did not appear so frequently in public, and the Parisians were ready to transfer their allegiance to another guitar virtuoso.
Carcassi was a younger man in the prime of his life, and he unfolded newer ideas and later methods in guitar playing.
He introduced a different style of music, more modern, full of melody, brilliant, abounding in artistic and pleasing effects, but of medium difficulty.
Being fully master of all the varied resources of the guitar, he was able to execute his music with marvelous skill, and Carcassi, very speedily excelled and outshone his celebrated rival"

Carcassi made concert trips about every year, from Paris, to the most important cultural towns in Europe, including London included where he played in 1828 at the famous Argyle Rooms in a duo concert with the singer Madame Stockausen.

Spending the majority of his time in Paris, he was highly demanded in the salons and homes of the well-to-do classes of Europe.
Performing successful concerts and teaching piano as well as guitar, he finally established his reputation in Paris.

He also wrote guitar accompaniments to many French songs of the period and several brilliant transcriptions of famous arias and overtures such as his William Tell Overture (opus 36). Driven by his admiration for Rossini, the Italian virtuoso composed many “potpourris,” variations and airs based on Rossini's operas.

For the next two decades, Matteo Carcassi continued touring composing and teaching. He returned to Italy in 1836 fir a short tour and quit his concert practice in 1840 to focus on giving lessons and the publication of his work.

When he died in Paris on the 16th of January 1853 around the age of 61,  Carcassi had left almost 100 works for the guitar. Numerous fantasias, themes with variations, potpourris, and sonatas for guitar, all of romantic taste, brilliant and technically demanding.

Most of the students coming to a master class will play a Villa Lobos’ prelude or etude. Sharing with them this passion for the Brazilian composer, I decided to work on an instructional DVD.

First question: What do I have to say about him? Classical is known for being conservative but not Villa Lobos!
He had a lot of “non-intellectual” way to compose – what he used to call the Natural way. For instance, to move a chord shape all the way down or up through the finger board. Just like if you take a D Major and play it at any place on the neck and find some good ideas. Wes Montgomery used to do that a lot and not just him.
He also said that he did not want to use dissonances to sound modern. The idea is to portray Villa Lobos as a mix of popular and classical composer. Like Gershwin. Here was a guy from a not rich family, playing guitar in bars and streets to make some money. He used to tell a lot of stories about his travels in the Rain Forest, cannibals chasing him and other funny things… A lot of humor and the constant search for the Brazil’s music soul.

The passion, the unlimited faith into his own talent leaded him to travel to Europe where he found a publisher (Max Eschig) and made friendship with famous artists like Stokowsky, Segovia and others…
1944: He went on tour to the U.S and composed for Hollywood! What a move! This picture is far from the desperate-romantic-intellectual composer driking to forget his sadness… Villa Lobos appears all the time with a smile, a big cigar from Bahia… more appealing to me!

As a teacher I try to present several options to the students for the fingerings and the interpretation with one motto:
Be Yourself!

The highest thing to me is when people can recognize your tone. Santana, Pat Metheny, Lee Ritenour, Paco de Lucia… just a few notes on the radio and you know who’s playing.

I do not care for the supposed tradition. Can you imagine just following a model, specialy as an artist you want to be personal! Specially when models kill the expression to just play by the letter.
Everybody will play the same: Why bother to listen to a bunch of guy when you can listen to just one?

For the DVD I was looking for a lot of different type of fingerings, worked on them and decided to have a series of excercises that you can access from the menu.And, the top notch feature: a close up of both of my hands on the screen as I saw in a Chet Atkins video.The style can be important also – if you choose that option – also but the spirit comes first.

Villa Lobos assiduously took part in various “Choros“, a type of popular music performed in the café or open air and for which it’s necessary to have a good ear and improvisation ability. The Choro musicians play during the carnival, in the street for fun and it reminded me to be in Rio and listen to choro bands on Sunday morning… or being in Laranjeiras on the beach at night, people jamming, chatting and having coco milk.
The Choros is also a rhythm. It’s like a samba figure but slower and we have different parts, generally a verse alternate with a bridge.After that, you are free to forget about it and do your own. But I like to go back to the Brazil I have inside.Look at what I like about him. Music has to be enjoyable, a sensual experience, something you share with heart, soul.

The Brazilian life is the mold for the 5 preludes:

- The sertanejo (people living in North East). I love to imagine them riding their horses (you have a lot of ranches there… an extension of Texas maybe) Yep! Texas is big. You drive… drive, drive and still are in Texas… drive to Paris… you’re still in Texas!

-The outlaws (sounds like Villa Lobos shared that taste for the lawbreakers with Jorge Amado). They are like picaresque… in the book at least. But some of them practice the capoera, live on the beach and use it as a house and a bed for love… nice, uh?

-Indian song (Lobos said he composed this one after he arrived into an Indian village where each one have been killed. The fast arpeggio represents the Indians running away in front of the death.

-Yemanja, the goddess of the sea also a tribute to Bach. When I play this one I love just to remember when, at the beach, I used to keep my head under water and listen to the waves dying on the shores.

-The young lovers in Rio. Evocation of the social life. The ball, the romantic conversations…You don’t want to remove the expression from that and kill it!

This fellow knew how to write music, though I like to point at some details like the time signature in prelude 5 (every body plays that like a waltz instead of a 6/4). The rhythm in prelude 3 or the andantino tempo in the first one… Those leads are important for me to phrase the right way. And if I feel I have like an understanding, the music becomes mine. I love to dream when I play and want to share it.

There is cool website about Villa Lobos, it’s the Museum in Rio de Janeiro.here it is: http://www.museuvillalobos.org.br/

Two years ago I started to work on the script and watch a bunch of DVD’s and Videos. One of my favorite ones is Chet Atkins teaching some of his hits: Little Waltz, Young Things… He’s way too fast in the teaching part – yeah, even for me – but the screen is splitted diagonally and you get a close-up of his hands. That’s genious. Therefore it was one of my things.

When I moved to Austin and met Gary Powell I came up with this project and he was interested. Then, I worked some more on the script because I wanted to have it perfect. Gary is an artist, a true one with a lot of taste. We had a lot of conversation and visionned together some of my favorite DVD’s.

Finally, even if Gary was hyper busy with 2 CD’s productions, we schedule the session and I drove to Austin with one of my instrumental students, Brock Griffith. For one complete day he worked with Gary and David on the light set up. They end up with a cozy-inside tropical house looking that just amazed me.

The Thurday morning, at 10:00, we get into the studio and Brock arrange a prompteur for me…And then, we started to shoot the DVD. I was really ready, at 5:00pm it was done and ready for the editing phase. We took a breack and get a diner.
8:00pm we get back to recorded the preludes to complete the CD I started to record in Brazil few months ago with Bossa singer Denise Pinaud. At 11:00pm both projects were completed.

Then, we spend a huge amount of time conversing with Gary about the fact I should record a CD with songs. Which I never did. The Saturday, Amy and Gary had setup a concert in their fantastic house and Gary asked me to sing for the whole second set. So did I.

The reaction of the audience was so good that, right after the show, we stayed together brainstorming about the song project… that will be another story!

See you around, Philippe

Philippe Bertaud on the Music of Villa Lobos. Production Miramuse, Distribution Carl Fisher.
You already can watch some of the lesson and live performance on my website.

Alhambra is a well known palace in Spain and, for the guitarists, it’s also what inspired Tarrega to compose one of the most beautiful tremolo piece.
But did you know it’s also a Spanish Guitar Brand? It is actually one of the most famous in Europe. Can you dream of any better than a Spanish guitar? All countries have a different conception of guitar sound but when it comes to Spain the personality is the first thing that will strike you along with the projection of the sound, the warmth and the tradition. Tradition is the key word: Those guys have made guitars for centuries; therefore, nobody can catch up with them!

A Little Bit of a Story
When you hold an Alhambra Guitar in your arms, you hold all of that. When my Friend and associate John Francis first promoted the Alhambra guitars to me I thought they were just another student model. Imagine my surprise when one of my students showed up with an 8-P model electric-acoustic that he had purchased from John’s online shop. The first thing that struck me was the beauty of the instrument. Perfect craftsmanship and beautiful woods make this instrument one of the most impressive I have seen.

Alhambra 8-P

The Alhambra 8-P is an all-solid entry concert-level quality classical guitar with a wonderful richness of tone. But richness is not the only thing: the sound projection is so amazing that I had the urge to compare with the guitar I played at that time, hand made and priced at $10,000. That was an experience! This Alhambra was just louder than my $10,000 guitar… OK, let’s try again… unbelievable! The action was also just perfect: high enough to make the guitar sing but extremely comfortable. Basses and trebles were balanced which allows having a full control of the voices and to emphasize whatever voice you want without any struggle. Therefore you become the conductor and have a complete orchestra under your fingers. It is hard to imagine all the possibilities this instrument offers and the limits are just my imagination. I just could not believe it and had a hard time giving the guitar back to my student.
Alhambra model 8P guitars and above are built by a smaller, more experienced team at the Alhambra facility. They feature a lighter, nitrocellulose lacquer finish and a bridge-like cross bracing. All of these factors work together to give this guitar a very beautiful, loud, and refined sound. Its cedar top gives it a nice warm tone quality with excellent volume and clarity.

I called Alhambra and wanted to try the high-end concert models. The good news was: they were to be at the Summer NAMM Show where I went, anxious and excited.

Here they are!
Imagine a huge booth with dozens of amazing guitars exposed! All the guitars I have seen on their website, where I spent hours and hours, were there. My attraction led me to the Luthier Rio Model. I had looked at this guitar for hours on the internet and would finally play one!

Luthier Rio Spruce

The Alhambra Luthier Rio is a beautifully crafted by two of the master luthiers at Alhambra, Javier Mengual and José Margarit. Just touching it was a sensual experience, the beautiful finish; I should say the perfect finish, the incredible quality of Solid German Spruce top with very tight and regular nodules all across it. The back and sides are made of Brazilian Rosewood. Let’s take a closer look at the sides. The book matching is perfect the grain appears to create one continuous line, and showcases a dramatic effect. How many hours did they spend matching it and have a perfect continuous pattern? The purfling itself is a piece of art.
This guitar has an amazingly rich and refined tone. Also, just by moving my finger a millimeter I get a different sound, just a millimeter! Can you imagine when you move your right hand from bridge to neck the incredible range of sound you have? It is a gazillion colors palette. It has a revolutionary floating bracing pattern that givesit a really phenomenal tone and projection. This guitar has an amazingly rich and refined tone, also, just by moving my finger a millimeter I get a different sound, just a millimeter! Can you imagine when you move your right hand from bridge to neck the incredible range of sound you have? It like a gazillion colors palette. It has a revolutionary floating bracing pattern that gives it a really phenomenal tone and projection.

Its fullness, tone quality, craftsmanship, volume, projection, and playability are superb. This guitar is a wonderful example of the fine work of the luthiers at Alhambra. This is by far the best guitar that I have played. I am in the process of re-working my whole repertoire and explore the endless possibilities of tone for new interpretations. And, trust me, I possessed some of the most expansive guitars but this one is the one I was looking for.
She’s my new love and forever!

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