Jason Vieaux: Eloquent & Eclectic

Grammy Award-winning guitarist, Jason Vieaux, makes his CMNW debut in our season finale. Considered “among the elite of today’s classical guitarists” (Gramophone), Vieaux is highly regarded for his versatility, lyricism, broad musical range, and virtuosity. A passionate advocate of new music, Vieaux was chosen to premiere the 20-time Grammy-winning guitarist/composer Pat Metheny’s genre-defying Four Paths of Light, which will be featured on this concert, along with other works by Bach, Scarlatti, Brouwer, and Ellington, spanning more than 300 years — an evening brimful of eclectic inspiration.

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Program

Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.

DOWLAND My Lady Hunsdon’s Almain

DOWLAND My Lady Hunsdon’s Almain
(1563-1626)

Though John Dowland maintained to his deathbed a public persona of gloomy and melancholic depression, his music often shows a highly active wit. Indeed, often his lute solos, though they are stereotypical dance forms for the larger part, betray quite subtle characteristics. In such instances, he may even be attempting polite social commentary on his noble and bourgeois patrons. A number of almains, pavans, gigues and the like, survive with the names of the apparent dedicatees for the music attached. Quite often, these pieces are dance forms that toy with presenting a subtle character. It may very well be the case that in the absence of painted portraits, facets of the actual human beings are reflected through history in Dowland’s music. If so, Lady Hunsdon must have been an extraordinary woman.

Lady Hunsdon apparently gave Dowland the inspiration for an almain, otherwise cryptically known as Lady Hunsdon’s Puffe. Whether the word “puffe” suggests the breath of a dancer’s exertions, the graceful exhalation of a society woman, or the heady dialogue of a “windbag,” the title in itself could be suggestive; the dance form, as well, indicates a germanic dance, known to Elizabethan audiences as being spirited, but a bit heavy and plodding. Furthermore, the almain for Lady Hunsdon is one of the only dance forms in which Dowland so completely abandons regular phrase structures. The characteristic duple patterns are always present for the dancers. The “puffe,” however, first follows a four-bar phrase with a conventionally ornamented repeat, then by one of only three bars, starting transposed down a step. (Do either of these indicate “German” dancers getting tired already?) A two-bar phrase, notable for its puffing repeated chords, is also repeated with ornament, and an extended coda follows an echo of the opening. 

— Notes published by primephonic

J. S. BACH Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, BWV 1001 (Arr. Jason Vieaux)

J. S. BACH Violin Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, BWV 1001 (Arr. Jason Vieaux) 
(1685-1750)

Adagio
Fuga – Adagio
Siciliano
Giga

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Three Sonatas and Three Partitas, BWV 1001-1006, were composed in 1720 during the period in which Bach held the position of court Kapellmeister under Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. The three Sonatas are written in the style of the Italian sonata de chiesa — the origins of which are founded in the earlier Italian liturgical practice of playing instrumental interludes during the Mass. As the sonata de chiesa was practiced and developed by composers outside the church, their later forms typically consisted of four movements arranged slow-fast-slow-fast. The Sonata No. 1 in G Minor, BWV 1001, is perhaps the darkest of Bach’s three Sonatas, beginning with a solemn introductory Adagio of an improvisatory nature, followed by the cerebral Fuga, which serves as the emotional centerpiece of the entire work. The third movement is an elegant Siciliano in the relative major key of B-Flat, and the virtuosic finale Presto is reminiscent of an Italian Giga.

— Jason Vieaux

SCARLATTI Piano Sonata in A Major, K. 208

SCARLATTI Piano Sonata in A Major, K. 208 (Arr. Leo Brouwer)
(1685-1757)

Thoroughly commanding of baroque compositional technique while remaining uniquely innovative, the more than 500 sonatas for harpsichord left to us from Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) serve to offer sketches of what classical style would embody, albeit with fiery twists of the Iberian style where he was employed throughout the majority of his career. The son of renowned operatic composer Alessandro Scarlatti, the younger Scarlatti received his training on the Italian peninsula within the Spanish-controlled Kingdom of Naples, and eventually found himself composing and teaching in Spanish and Portuguese royal courts. Through his exposure and adoption of Spanish style and sound, Scarlatti created dissonances and manipulated modalities quite apart from his German and Italian counterparts, something one might more closely associate with a guitaristic idiom. It is in this spirit that this sonata, K. 208 is arranged for solo guitar. However, noticeably within this specific piece are periodic phrases and lyricism one might recognize as clearly leading the way towards a High Classical Viennese style, comfortable among the likes of Mozart and Haydn (who likely never knew this music existed). By occupying both Spanish and European Continental styles simultaneously, Scarlatti presents a delicate piece which exists as a monument both to what music was and would be. 

— Alex Kenrick-Kupiec

LEO BROUWER El Decameron Negro

LEO BROUWER El Decameron Negro
(1939)

The Cuban composer, classical guitarist and conductor we now know as Leo Brouwer was named Juan Leovigildo Brouwer when he was born in Havana, Cuba. Leo began playing the guitar at age 13 and made his professional debut at 17. His academic training took place in the U.S., at Juilliard and at the Hartt College of Music. Brouwer gained an international reputation in the 1960’s and 70’s as a leading guitar virtuoso, but his playing career ended prematurely in the early 80’s due to an injury to a tendon in his right hand. He redirected his focus to composition and conducting to even greater success. Today, Leo Brouwer’s music is performed by more guitarists than any other living composer. His music appears on hundreds of recordings, and he has scored over 60 films, including the highly-acclaimed award-winning 1993 film, Like Water for Chocolate.

As a composer, Brouwer is primarily self-taught. His compositions reflect classical, Afro-Cuban, jazz and avant-garde influences. The composer has referred to his current compositional style as “national Hyper-Romanticism:” a return to Afro-Cuban roots mixed with elements of tonality, traditional form, programmatic gestures, and minimalism. El Decameron Negro (1981) was the first solo guitar piece of the “national Hyper-Romantic” style. The work consists of three ballads based upon the set of short stories collected by the ethnologist Frobenius during his fundamental research on West African culture. The work is based on African legends which were arranged into a narrative about a warrior-hero who wished to be a musician. His devotion to music clashes with the rigid tribal laws of his people. Exiled and forced to abandon his beloved, he is finally recalled by the tribe, then in peril, and agrees to fight and win the last battle in exchange for the freedom to become a musician and live with his woman.

— Author Unknown

PAT METHENY Four Paths of Light (2021) – Movement 2

PAT METHENY (b.1954) Four Paths of Light (2021) – Movement 2

Guitar legend Pat Metheny is a master technician, an improviser of extraordinary, natural fluidity, and a composer with a gift for exquisite melodies. And his albums—whether performed solo or by the acclaimed Pat Metheny Group—are modern-day masterpieces.  But with Four Paths of Light, Metheny takes a different approach in that he is composing a solo guitar piece for a specific guitarist in mind… Jason Vieaux, who Metheny has admired for years. “I’d heard of Jason before I was even aware that he knew of me,” Metheny told Apple Music. “He kind of burst onto the scene as a significant new voice, and I was immediately impressed not just by his brilliant playing, but how he could play complicated things in a simple way. To me, he has the right mix of skills, but with a soul thing going on too.” Four Paths of Light is a technical tour de force, but a work, too, of thrilling rhythmic drive and intense beauty. “I wanted to offer Jason something that would take advantage of his strengths, and also challenge him,” reveals Metheny. “I think when you write music for somebody, or you bring somebody into your band who is very talented, you have an obligation not just to utilize what they can do, but to take them someplace they had maybe never been before.” The 2nd movement performed in this recital, which functions as the more reflective piece in contrast to the intensely aggressive 1st movement, or climactic 3rd movement, features a Brazilian-derived Choro rhythmic underpinning supporting an expressive melody which is developed throughout.

— Notes credit to Apple Editor’s Notes of his new album Road to the Sun

JASON VIEAUX Home (2020)

JASON VIEAUX Home (2020)
(1973)

Home was written during April 2020, after a conversation with a close friend and colleague. We were lamenting the fact that there were not many solo guitar tremolo pieces that had more idiomatic left-hand movement, so that day I decided to write one. 

The tremolo technique on classical guitar is a musical sound-effect produced by the right hand which is meant to simulate the impression of a continuously sustained melody, akin to what a string or wind instrument would produce.  The most famous example of this technique is certainly Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tarrega, and while Recuerdos is manageable for already advanced players, my teaching experience with dozens of students over 20 years showed me that the left-hand fingerings were as much of an obstacle (if not more so) towards developing a flexible and strong tremolo. 

I had fashioned a tremolo-style concert piece out of Pat Metheny’s The Bat in 2005, and performed it in dozens of concerts over 5 or so years. The early part of the Covid pandemic allowed an opportunity to compose over 60 minutes of solo guitar pieces with the new-found time I had at home every day - hence the title.  Most of these pieces were either etudes of different difficulty levels inspired by the hundreds of students on my ArtistWorks online guitar school, or concert pieces like Home. 

— Jason Vieaux

BARRIOS Vals in G Major, Op. 8 No. 4

BARRIOS Vals in G Major, Op. 8 No. 4
(1885-1944)

The Paraguayan Agustín Barrios led a varied and colorful life. He was successful as a touring guitar virtuoso in Latin America, performing in virtually every country in the region. His success did not extend to other parts of the globe however: his trip to Europe in the 1930’s was met with some acclaim but was cut short by the Spanish Civil War, and his dream of touring the United States never came to fruition.

For many years Barrios billed himself as Nitsuga Mangoré, sometimes with the fanciful slogan “The Paganini of the guitar from the jungles of Paraguay.” “Nitsuga” is Agustín spelled backward and “Mangoré” was the name of a legendary chief from the Guaraní tribe indigenous to Barrios’ native Paraguay. Barrios claimed to be descended from this chief, and appeared in concert dressed in native Guaraní garb. Later in life he returned to traditional concert attire and eventually settled on the name Agustín Barrios Mangoré.

The music of Barrios can generally be divided into two styles: Latin American folk and popular music, and romantic salon pieces. Vals Op. 8, No. 4 represents the latter style. Although his works never truly ventured much into the compositional style of the twentieth century, they exhibit a mastery of the harmonic language of the nineteenth century, extending from Chopin to Tárrega, and they are quite moving.

— Erik Mann

DUKE ELLINGTON In a Sentimental Mood (Arr. Jason Vieaux)

ELLINGTON In a Sentimental Mood (Arr. Jason Vieaux)
(1899-1974)

Duke Ellington was one of the most important artists, performers, and composers in the development of American 20th-century music. Ellington’s huge body of work and the impact of his many musical innovations resonate today. When I played some mediocre “jazz” guitar as an occasional Cleveland-area sideman in the 90s, I had a small repertoire of tunes ready, should the leader motion for me to call one. In a Sentimental Mood was something I liked to call because it was one of the fewer tunes in the Real Book (Red Clay by Freddie Hubbard is another example, or Footprints by Wayne Shorter) where I could get bluesy in my solo — bending lots of notes. As a soloist with the Charlotte Symphony many years ago, I played Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez in a program that started with some Bernstein and ended with one of Ellington’s large concert works. They asked me to transition from Aranjuez back to the American music, so I played Sevilla by Albéniz, Danza Brasiliera by Jorge Morel, and then this arrangement I made especially for the engagement. I kept a little of the note-bending. 

— Jason Vieaux

Concert Program

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