Sunday, 20th Nov. Opening night of a guitar festival in Tartu. New chamber music program with guitar, flute and viola (Schubert’s Arpeggione, Takemitsu’s Toward the Sea and Debussy’s Sonata for harp, flute and viola). 400 km to drive, home for night.

Monday, 21th Nov. Teachers’ courses in Jõhvi, total of 6 hours group lessons. Night in Jõhvi. 200 km to drive.

Tuesday, 22th Nov. Teachers’ courses in Jõhvi, total of 4 hours group lessons. Then back to Tallinn and 4 more hours of group lessons. 200 km to drive, night at home.

Wednesday, 23th Nov. Lecture at the guitar festival in Tartu. 200 km to drive, night in Tartu.

Thursday, 24th Nov. Teachers’ courses in Tartu, total of 6 hours group lessons. Then 2 recitals to listen. Night in Tartu. No driving.

Friday, 25th Nov. Teachers’ courses in Tartu, total of 4 hours group lessons. Then my own concert with guitar quartet. Full Vivaldi program. 200 km to drive and night at home.

Saturday, 26th Nov. Teachers’ courses in Tallinn, total of 4 hours group lessons. Then a 2 hour rehearsal with the quartet. Night at home.

Sunday, 27th Nov. Teachers’ courses in Tallinn, total of 6 hours group lessons. Night at home.

Monday, 28th Nov. Up at 6 and straight to the tour buss. 3 flamenco shows in 3 different places. Then an evening concert with guitar quartet (Mediterranean program) in Narva. Back to Tallinn at 0:00, total 650 km driving.

And so it goes.. This week there are two more different programs coming up: one with the guitar duo and another flamenco show. So 5 different programs in 10 days plus tons of teaching and driving. And not to forget – this Monday was the deadline to get my new guitar magazine to the printing house and start a marketing campaign. I’m alive so far.

Father: lute, Mother: guitar

Went to Milan last weekend for seeing a ballet in La Scala. We had some spare time the day after and I thought I would visit a place that would somehow be connected to the Italian classical guitar or lute tradition.

I thought that although Francesco da Milano was not born in Milano but Monza, he might had had some connections in Milan as well. He was working in Rome and possibly in Paris. So “da Milano” but no connections with the city? Not so. FindaGrave.com helped me out – Francesco was buried to Milan. Where? was my next question. And now comes the interesting part:

FindAGrave says: ‘… he was buried at the Church of Santa Maria della Scala, which was demolished in 1776 to make way for the La Scala opera house’ So turned out that I visited his grave indeed, I even enjoyed a 3 hour ballet by Glazunov there!

Btw. On the picture above you see a strange guitar with three open basses. That was at the Leonardo da Vinci museum and guess who built this beast? Hermann Hauser himself!

Then I got an invitation to take part in a marathon race. It is hard to say no if the marathon passes your own windows. So I did some more practise and finally yestarday I completed my first marathon – SEB Tallinn Marathon 2011. Time was 3:33 and it gave me overall rank No 305 (1500 participants).

So now it is hard to walk and I can get back to my guitar

Kristo Käo and Viljar Kuusk in the workshop June 2011

Just came back from the academy and brought my brand new guitar. My luthier Viljar Kuusk completed it last week but still kept it for polishing. Now I said it’s enough because I have to play tomorrow and the day after. He can continue polishing some other time

The guitar is special in many ways but I am happy that once again I have the small body and spruce top. Compared to my previous cedar top (also by Viljar) the new instrument doesn’t sound small at all. The main new feature is the detachable neck. I will get a special suitcase done and the measures will fit exactly to the common 55x45x20 hand luggage compartment. That is what I need! The funny headstock also saves a couple of centimetres.

I will take the neck off some other day to make pictures and to find out how it works but now I need a few hours to get used to the sound and action before my concert tomorrow.

The conductor rearranged the partiture a bit. He added some timpanis and of course, we had the ad libitum cornos. I wrote my own cadenza and I think the overall impression of the piece was quite fresh.

I found several editions of this concerto, even a 2nd mvt by some diletant that did not sound like Carulli at all but has somehow made its way to the printing house. Differences in text were so big that finally I did my own version. The melody part was pretty constant in all the versions but the other voices and basses… Well, some guys had just forgot them and the others had composed some really uncomfortable voicings. My old teacher’s manuscript seemed to be one of the most realistic settings which I started to work on.

Kristo playing the Carulli concerto in A

The same goes for the cadenza. A cadenza should be written or improvised by the player anyway. What I use to do in this case is to through all the themes and do a little development. For example here I put the main them into C-major and the second theme to F-major. I don’t know how orthodox that is but it sounded good. If someone is interested I can send. Still waiting for the video to be ready. Let’s hope that it will be something to be proud of Who knows, from inside the orchestra everything always sounds so wrong..

I would be glad to hear any experiences with that piece of music!

classical guitars at frankfurt fair 2011

Today is the last day of the Frankfurt fair but I just got home and can share some news already. This year my schedule was so tightly packed with meetings that I did not get out of the halls 4.0 and 3.0 and 3.1 at all. The latter is what should interest classical guitarists. Hall 3.1 is usually dedicated to ‘quiet’ and ‘classical’ instruments. Classical guitar is among them and besides instruments you always find tonewood suppliers and music publishers from there.

So what did the classical guitar makers show this year? First of all, you should know that mostly factories and mass producers come with their own exposition and booth. But you can still meet the ‘good’ luthiers there, as they often pay a visit to see what’s up. I had a meeting with Mr. Armin Hanika, the man behind one of the Germany’s most respected classical guitar brand Hanika Guitars. We were talking about his production and my work as a guitarist and teacher. I think his approach to making the guitars is very healthy and I’m sure we will have a fruitful cooperation in future. I will order a bunch of his guitars and will try them out.

The Spanish brands were out as always and of course many Chinese makers. Everybody tend to ignore the fact that most of the classical guitars up to a 500 EUR retail price come from China. Sometimes we even don’t know that because one of the trends is that the Chinese made instruments get reworked in Europe and sold as local brands.

As I am often playing with dancers and need to amplify my guitar, I have always been interested in new developments in this field. And I found something this year: Hanika guitars have joined AER to create a new bridge pick up and preamp combination. They say that although picking up the vibration of the string does not give the correct impression of the sound, there is no better way to pick up the sound from inside the guitar than this and process the sound later. What is different is the placement of piezo elements – there are separate controls for each string and from the preamp you can control the characteristics of every single string. Actually, this is something that I have always done – my technician has built also separated string piezos. But I cannot control them separately. Well, here is the preamp:

The new preamp

Among other pictures you see a man playing a Hanika guitar through this system. Sounded just great!

Also, Magma strings were out. I should talk about those another time for this is an interesting topic and I have tested those bass tuning Magma Transpositors with a few guitars.

Classical guitar on Google 032011

You can see that less than one third of the people who search for ‘acoustic guitar’ on Google are searching for the ‘classical guitar’. This proportion has been the same for last 2 years. The overall numbers change but proportion is the same. Generally we can say that classical guitarists bite only a small piece of the big guitar cake. I can also see it every day at my guitar shop. But none of the real guitars can compete with Guitar Hero