The 19th Bermuda Guitar Festival

March 20, BUEI: Duo Latino – Steven Crawford (guitar), Johanna Pino Gonzales (viola)

The viola is an ideal companion for the guitar because both instruments are tuned lower than the orchestra: the viola by one fifth, the guitar by an octave.

Together, they sound slightly husky and intimate, perfect for Latin American music. Both our musicians were teachers and master players. Both share a love of South American culture and music. Together, they gave us an expert tour of the styles, moods and historical developments of South American music.

Gonzales’ viola with its smooth tenor sound blended perfectly with the legato, rasguado, percussion and complex chord arpeggios of Crawford’s minimally amplified guitar.

The programme reminded us that South American music dominated jazz and dance in the early and mid parts of the last century. Besame Mucho, for example, composed by Mexican Consuelo Velazquez Torres in 1932, is the most recorded Latin song of all time.

Gonzales’ viola and Crawford’s guitar were the perfect vehicle for this intimate, erotic masterpiece. It immediately took me back to my boarding school when I fell in love with this melody and spent all my pocket money on a 45rpm instrumental version by Terence “Jet” Harris, bass guitarist.

It’s over-the-top loudness and in-your-face bass caused fascination among fellow boarders and dismay among teachers and staff. Almost as famous as Besame, Cuban Osvaldo Farres’ 1947 Quizas, quizas (Maybe, maybe) is another example of a much loved, much travelled song. Gonzales sang it in a light contralto over Crawford’s rapid, precisely executed chord work.

Crawford himself sang Seymour Simons’ 1931 jazz standard All of Me with Django Reinhard type rhythm chords over Gonzales’ Grappelli like accompaniment. It would not have sounded out of place at the 1940 headquarters of Le Hot Club de France.

Samba and Bossa Nova were well represented with Jorge Ben’s 1963 Mas Que Nada, AC Jobim’s 1960 Sambossa and Tito Puente’s 1962 Samba Oye Como Va. Gonzales’ viola took on jazz style for Zeqinha Abreu’s frenetic, fascinating choro rumba Tico Tico No Fuba, a sound painting of the mercurial movements of sparrows hopping and feeding.

The evening took on a more serious turn with two extended pieces by Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) from his 1985 book Histoire du Tango. During classical music studies in France and travels across the US, Piazzolla had absorbed classical counterpoint and jazz elements, melding them into tango structures.

His piece Café 1930 was a curious mixture. The introduction was a languid, bluesy baroque fugue which changes into what was almost a sad renaissance pavane, reminiscent of John Dowland. Under the musicians’ expert control, the viola became more languid and romantic, the guitar chords more percussive and dissonant. The piece ended with an intensely felt song-like viola melody over exquisite, complex guitar chords.

The second Piazzolla piece, Nightclub 1960, was utterly unexpected. This was a nightclub experience fraught with sadness, loneliness and despair. But then the mood changed rapidly: the viola took on a rasping sand-papery tone over the guitar which became a drum. A blazingly fast finale ended the piece.

The Duo Latino made a great opening for the 19th Bermuda Guitar Festival with expert musicianship, seemingly effortless technical brilliance, sheer enjoyment and pure fun.

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March 22: Walter Rodrigues Jr, Niall Kavanagh

Niall Kavanagh came here from England last year to teach guitar, ukulele and piano at the Bermuda School of Music. His guitar recital consisted of pieces written by Spanish, South American, Russian, American composers and also by himself: he featured two of his own compositions to bookend the performance.

The first of these, My Memories, was written a month ago when he was recovering from Covid-19. It’s a series of gentle, modal, bass-driven chords followed by trilled arpeggios embellished with descending thirds. As he played it, the trills perfectly evoked birdsong and the intonation was intensely lyrical.

A master of voicing, his bass and treble sounded clearly independent from each other and the overall effect was of multiple instruments. His rendition of Shostakovich’s Waltz No 2 from the 1938 Suite for Jazz Orchestra, a fine, multi- voiced, waltz transcription for guitar was intensely lyrical.

Kavanagh then moved on to Spanish music with Manuel de Falla’s overture to his 1913 opera, La Vita Breve. It was an exuberant carnival type opening piece with an emphatic Jota triple time marching bass under flamenco style melodies evoking crowds of revellers.

Next came one of the most original combinations I have ever heard: Edith Piaf’s signature 1946 hit La Vie en Rose, using Chet Atkins’ voicing with a precise, country-style tapewound string bass sound. It worked; Piaf’s stricken intensity was reworked into a melodic, bouncy country song. Quite revelatory.

Kavanagh’s second original composition, DADGAD, written when he was 15 years old, completed the performance. The title reflects the open string notes after retuning the guitar. Strumming all six open strings results in a massive three octave chord of D major. Using this open chord as a drone accompaniment, Kavanagh launched into a series of melodies on the top strings which initially sounded Far Eastern but which gradually morphed into a series of increasingly rollicking, frenetic Irish ceilidh dances, a wonderful finale.

Brazilian-born, Miami-based artist Walter Rodrigues Jr is a uniquely gifted song stylist and guitarist with deep roots, as he explained, in gospel and jazz. His quiet mastery was such that we were hardly aware of it, for he embodied the renaissance ideal of sprezzatura, seemingly effortless technical mastery.

He opened with Pat Metheny’s 1989 Better Days Ahead, which he had completely restyled to sound a bit like Gershwin’s Summertime but with more sophisticated jazz chord work and very precise melodic control.

Next came his take on A.C. Jobim’s 1967 Bossa Nova masterpiece Wave, in which he blended chords and melody seamlessly into an enhanced samba sound. Rodrigues’ first language is Portuguese and his restrained tenor singing was perfect for this song, almost like a male equivalent of Astrud Gilberto. For his version of The Girl from Ipanema, whose real name he told us is Helo Pinheiro (she’s now 78 years old!), he led the whole BUEI Tradewinds Auditorium into a fun series of choral “Aaaah”s on the fourth line of each verse.

His version of Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely? followed, embellished with rapid chords (one per note) and a melodic tenderness perfectly suited to the song. At the halfway point he broke into waltz tempo, which further enhanced the song’s festive side.

Harlen and Harburg’s 1939 Over the Rainbow he treated as an emotive, slow ballad with lots of rubato melody over a series of carefully crafted jazz chords.

He finished with a surprising sound picture of a steam locomotive, originally taught him by Brazilian guitarist Alberto Borges. It involved plectrum strumming across all six strings in imitation of a four-stroke steam engine at full throttle, and used what looked like a series of sliding augmented chords on the 13th fret to give a completely authentic steam whistle sound.

One could almost see an enthusiastic teenaged Walter performing this ultimate party piece.

Thank you, Steve Crawford, for bringing these two brilliant artists to perform for us. It was a superb evening.