tell me something in those years we're still in the let's say in the early
seventies late sixties here how would you practice how would you you
would pick up the guitar in the morning how would you start your day and would
you use the metronome a lot I use the metronome a lot in fact I still suggest
to some of my students things that I learned from my dad my dad would say
slow it down until you can play it right you would also say isolate the difficult
passages and practice those separately in fact I used the metronome and he
would make me play the difficult passage seven times in a row perfect before I
could move the metronome up in speed and so I would get to the sixth one and miss
and have to go back to one again and he would say to me if you can do that you
will very likely hit it on the concert stage and play correctly so I still
remember that and of course his final comment was play a beautiful play a
beautiful if it's not beautiful isn't that music but if you're preparing a new
piece what's your strategy you would learn the piece and played for a few
months before playing it live or how would you do it that's a very
interesting question I asked Segovia about that and he said never record a
piece too soon he said take it on tour at least a year and mature with the
piece before recording it of course the recording companies wants you to do it
the other way around they want you to record it and they're promoted but I've
tried to to stay with Segovia's advice and learn the piece and tour with it and
then you gain knowledge about it and you sometimes you change your fingerings and
you you've learned and the tour with the piece and I think
play it better because of that let's talk about fingerings do you spend a lot
of time thinking about your fingerings about what how you would play a
seven-piece well fingerings are not as subjective as people think they're good
fingerings and there are bad fingerings
violinists and cellos as a general rule keep a phrase on the same string guitars
don't do that they go to the closest note a friend of mine described it this
way if you were playing a melody on the third string and a chubby chubby little
boy were singing the melody and then you went for one note on the first string
and had a skinny little girl sing one note and then go back to the chubby
little boy it wouldn't mesh they wouldn't sound right and so I hear bad
fingerings all over the place I have suggested through the years that people
study the Segovia editions primarily for the fingerings sake because she learned
so much you see how he kept that phrase on the same string John Williams does
that beautifully and that's so important if you're not if you're not used to that
you don't hear it you don't hear the difference so how you finger a piece is
subject to how you want to interpret it and I spent a great deal of time
fingering a piece and figuring that out so that I'm able to play it as beautiful
as possible so first you decide how you want that piece to sound and then you
look for the fingerings that will make that happen that's right that's right
now the inevitable question now is you know
so I spent let's say you spent years you know getting to the point where you say
I like the fingering of that piece then you forget about that piece for many
years or even recorded it if you go back to it after 20 years what happens did
you change your mind you know for the most part I don't I settle on an
interpretation and I think that's really important I in recording I decided well
before I went into the recording studio exactly how I wanted to play that piece
I would record myself ahead of time and
it'd be critical of that recording and then decide when I went into the studio
I knew how I wanted to play it and I remember my producer would say Chris
we've stopped timing you because you're three minutes and 30 seconds three
minutes 31 three minutes 33 minutes 31 we don't have to time you because your
tempos are the same so so that helped but I I would decide well before the
recording session how I wanted to play
I'm talking about record is what was your strategy would play the piece like
three four times and then take the bits that were a little troubling or how was
your technique that's that's about right mm-hmm
and he never made a change it was always like this yeah exactly you feel the
pressure of recording very definitely because I remember the head of EMI after
we had done the first two albums that you mentioned mm-hmm when I was 19 we
were invited up to the top floor of the Capitol record building and he said you
know in five years you want to sale these albums out of the top floor of the
Capitol Records building because you will like him anymore
and my dad said no we won't we won't will like the albums after that so what
do you feel when you listen to those albums today well I'm basically pleased
there's a few things that I would change now but I'm grateful and basically
please know something something that is also an inevitable question is so at 20
years old you become a very big star you start to tour the United States playing
a lot of concerts your records are out there how did that feel personally you
must have been felt great but you mentioned an emptiness how did that play
out you know I never viewed it that way in our family Marcelo is always about
excellence doing something of excellence and that required hard work and
discipline and I learned that from an early age so so what was fulfilling to
me was to do something well and I never thought about the other aspects
it was just accomplishing something and doing something well did I strive for
success was just the consequence exactly exactly in fact I tell my
students there's a in one of my method books there's a passage which says
success versus excellence suggesting the success and excellence are often
competing ideals being successful does not necessarily mean that you will be
excellent and being excellent does not necessarily mean that you will be
successful
so striving for excellence is the important thing that's the important
thing and that's fulfilling and that's available to all success not necessarily
tell us more about your recordings how you view your recordings and if you have
planned for the future maybe you're not playing on stage but would you do more
recordings for now well that's possible I could i I think of an interesting
story I had the opportunity to be asked to play on the televised Grammy Awards
and accept Segovia's Lifetime Achievement Award which I did and the
following year I had a recording with the soprano Kathleen battle called
pleasures of their company which was up for Best classical album of the year and
we were asked to perform at the Grammys and is a very hectic nerve-wracking time
backstage is just the hustle and bustle of everything and the pressure of the
live performance and we came on at a commercial break and I remember my
recording producer Dave Thomas said just play a little bit so that we can get the
televised sound he was up in the booth we were doing the Bob you know Ave Maria
and so you look out on the first row and you see Michael Jackson Dionne Warwick
Barbra Streisand Paul Simon Stevie Wonder all these famous people there's
they're sitting right there and if that wasn't enough there was a there was a
guy that was standing about 10 feet to my ride a state manager he had a headset
and he leaned over at me and he said mr. Parkinson we have 20 seconds till air
and I said okay and then he said this well in 20 seconds you'll be performing
for over 200 million people live and I thought if you wanted to jinx somebody
that's what you would say and I looked over at Kathy and she heard it too and I
said Kathy the only important thing is to play and sing for the Lord right and
she said you're right and we got her focused back highlights of my career
have definitely been performing at the Grammys performing at the White House
for President Reagan on the South Lawn of the White House also I performed at
Carnegie Hall's hundredth celebration the Roderigo concerto and that was a
highlight as well now you said it is possible that you're still going to do
some new recordings what are you thinking
well I'm focused now on honestly on my wonderful wife Teresa and my son Luke
who's now 13 years old and on teaching and mentoring my guitar suites at
Pepperdine that's my that's my primary focus with the guitar and hopefully
passing along to my students things that I've learned from Segovia and from from
a 50-year career of performing and also things that I've learned from
composers themselves when I was about to record the Rodrigo concertos I had
played and met Rodrigo years earlier in the 70s when I was asked to tour Japan
and Rodrigo and his wife were there we went to all these different cities in
Japan and I performed both of his guitar concertos and had questions for him
about the pieces and the interpretation of the pieces and he we played the piano
and I learned so much from that and then when I was going to record the pieces
with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra he came over from Madrid to London with his
daughter Cecilia as part of his 90th birthday celebration and I got a chance
to ask him every single question about both concertos and I remember the
fantasy is specifically making X's on my score asking this asking this asking
this Segovia had made all these changes in the panacea and and so his daughter
was translating Cecilia and she said fine fine fine fine fine all these
different changes until we got to one place toward the end of the fantasy a
concerto and she said she'll and down to me and she said my father says he likes
the way he wrote it best I said fine up keep it the way there wasn't Ricardo's
that was in the canarios and what guitarists don't know is there's a
misprint in the music the chord before the final run in the cadenza is it D
sharp against a D natural but it's not printed that way in the music so I asked
red says which one should I do and he said
oh do the dissonant one he says that is more Rodrigo so I did the dissonant
chord right before the before the run and it was also great because I asked
him it was at Abbey Road Studios and I asked him I said maestro can you play
the second movement but the beautiful Arnon was on the piano so I can get the
exact tempo and the feel of the piece and he said certainly and Cecilia
escorted him to the piano and here's a 90 year old man blind from the age of
three playing this beautiful piece on the piano it was a moment I have never
forgotten there was not a dry eye in the place he played most of the second
movement on the piano we got that recorded and then I was able to go into
the studio and try to emulate that same tempo in that same
you know something that happens fairly often is that a teacher has a student
that it's incredibly talented but the guy doesn't work hard enough to get you
know to where he should get so what would you say to the teachers that are
watching you now and they're having you know this excellent student in front of
them but the guy just doesn't want to do the work I love this saying hard work
beats talent when talent doesn't work as hard
tell us important but working hard is more important what can you do to
motivate someone that has a talent but does not understand that he needs to
work hard well all you can do really is encourage them to work hard and and
hopefully inspire them to work hard I'm so grateful where I teach I'm able to
instill those principles to my students at Pepperdine University and and
hopefully be a role model in some sense to them
as the four let's talk about your prescriptions because I noticed that
especially from the early videos that you know your fingers are quite
difficult to play you're never really negotiated you never really try to make
them simple you always were looking for the musical result tell us about the
prescriptions well that's exactly right you just said I never went for something
that was easy he was more important to me to play
something beautiful and if it required I hadn't fortunate to have fairly large
hands so I can make long stretches and and in order to keep the phrase in the
same string I was able to do that and and like I said it was more important to
me to play something musically correct than it was to do something easy and
like some of those in the time that were like incredibly difficult like planet
number six by Bach mrs. joy what was in your head to do that I mean that they're
even they're painful even to watch bars everywhere there's pain in your hand
several of them stands out on the Bach album sheep may safely graze was a very
difficult piece especially for the left hand it had what what we ended up
calling cross fret bars where the index finger crossed two frets in order to
play it and I remember recording that piece and at the end of the recording
session my left hand eight especially over my index finger the knuckle here
and I didn't play the guitar for about ten days after that and it healed but it
really did test my fingering and and my my index finger a lot in Prelude number
six was was one of those pieces I think I only played it once or twice in
concert so difficult really difficult joy and
the joy as well they see joy man's desiring by the way my favorite piece of
music I've been asked through the years what's what's my favorite piece of music
and it would have to be JC joy of man's desiring by Bach that was interesting
because when I was doing that Bach album I was going to transcribe that piece
myself and a friend of mine said oh I know a guy that's already transcribed it
his name is Rick Foster and he said I'm gonna call him up and have him drive to
your house and play it for you so Rick showed up on a motorcycle
it takes his guitar off the back of his motorcycle and comes in to my house and
plays it nearly perfectly so I thought well I don't need to transcribe this
piece it's already been done very well but it's a great great piece and my
probably my favorite piece and several other descriptions as well the Ravel and
some of the other pieces especially Empress of the pagodas that was a very
difficult piece play Widow transcribed by Jerry Hyman but a difficult piece but
beautiful
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