STEPHEN SACCO
Special to the Leader
Leo Brouwer, Grammy Award winner specializing in classical guitar and composition, hasn’t been to America in 30 years. Fredonia was his first visit.
He arrived in Fredonia on Feb. 13 and resided until Feb. 14 for events hosted by Ethos New Music Society and Fredonia Guitar Society. Not only was his fame an impact on the SUNY Fredonia School of Music, but more importantly his wisdom was passed onto our ambitious students.
On the 13th, Brouwer hosted a master class for guitarists and composers from the School of Music. The class was followed by an evening tribute concert which gave SUNY Fredonia’s very own guitarists an opportunity to showcase Brouwer’s work.
Allison DiMauro, a junior music education major with a concentration in classical guitar, performed one of Brouwer’s many pieces in concert. DiMauro started playing classical guitar at 12 years old.
She vividly described a lesson that an instructor was giving her one day. Let it be noted that prior to this lesson, Dimauro would usually hear the distractions of atmospheric sound.
“My teacher said I have a new piece for you to play; it was towards the end of the lesson. His wife was mowing the lawn by the train station. I hear the dog barking and [the] door creak,” she said.
At the end of her lesson, DiMauro experienced something rare.
“Through all of [the distractions] I really hear the beauty of Brouwer’s piece, and I don’t hear any of that other crazy chaos that I would have normally heard during the end of my lessons. It really took my breath away that a piece can have such an impact on someone,” DiMauro said.
Her family was very excited to hear that she would be playing a piece by Brouwer.
Brouwer was not only a classical guitarist and composer, but a man of wisdom, to say the least.
The following day, he held a public lecture titled “Leo Brouwer: A Musical Life in Cuba” in the Reed Library Garden. This lecture gave the public a broad overview of his creative process and history. The first thing that he drew was a music staff with notes, and under was Fibonacci’s golden rule.
Brouwer touched upon the experience of playing music from composers.
“You are not going to imitate, you are comparing. At a certain moment, comparison comes to you,” he said.
He points out that when learning and mastering the classical guitar, one will gain a style of playing over time. This denotes the notion that a guitarist needs to master the guitar in a way that, say a computer would read code.
If Brouwer was given the opportunity to put his music in a picture, it would be representative of contemporary artist Francis Bacon.
“ . . . I think my music is related to Bacon in the way that I mask the standard or manner to present sound . . .” he said.
Bacon is somehow related mysteriously to Sir Francis Bacon, a 16th to 17th century English philosopher who is theorized to be Shakespeare. With that being said, Brouwer noted during the lecture that he was deeply involved with reading books and philosophy throughout his life.
Getting through the facade and into the creative energy, Brouwer said, “Inspiration is motivation; you are the motive to compose; you are the animals. So this is motivation.”
Without art and artists in general, how would one produce art itself? Brouwer reassures the idea that artists are wild beasts that can’t be contained from the passion they hold.