WIU Guitar Festival 2010 Review

Photos Courtesy of CK Best

If you’re asking yourself why were some of the finest classical, jazz and finger-style guitar players in the world were in Macomb IL during the weekend of April 9-11, 2010 you’re not alone. Though not normally a hotbed for international guitar showcases, for three days this past April Macomb became guitar central as the city hosted the inaugural Western Illinois University International Guitar Festival. Showcasing guitar educators, historians, builders and performers of the highest caliber and from all over the U.S., Brazil and as far north as Montreal and Toronto, the WIU Guitar Festival featured a series of three showcase concerts and sixteen educational clinics, where topics ranged from developing better practice routines and Brazilian guitar history to building the perfect guitar.

The festival kicked off with a concert at the Tri-States Public Radio Station, showcasing finger-style guitarist Matthew Schroeder, Chair of Guitar Studies at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music and classical guitar virtuoso Matt Palmer. Both of these performers played with the utmost precision, intensity and musicality. Schroeder performs as if each of his fingers has their own brain, and as for Palmer, well, you were better of just listening to his elegant, yet ferocious attack upon the strings: he was much too fast and precise to try to decipher the notes with ones eyes.

With Palmer and Schroeder’s concert, the festival started off with a very high level of expertise and excitement that carried forward into the rest of the weekend’s events. Saturday and Sunday were filled with informative clinics about alternate guitar tunings, practice routines, and Brazilian guitar, among many other topics. Clinics that dealt with playing scales effortlessly, harmonic and melodic development and improvising were geared toward improving one’s ability to perform. While others dealt with composing for guitar, guitar history, and even a presentation about guitar legend Les Paul by Jeremy Zima.

Luthier Dan Koentopp had one of the best workshops at the festival, explaining all of the minuscule details that go into making a custom acoustic, electric and classical guitar. It’s not that every maker does this kind of research, preparation, and execution when building guitars; however, Koentopp does it every single time in his quest for guitar perfection. Any guitarist that saw this presentation would trust their sound in his hands.

The concert series continued on Saturday evening, after the days clinics had concluded, with the Jazz Showcase Concert. The lineup included WIU Junior Marcos Rios and Graduate Student Evan Desaulnier, WIU Alumni Tyler Ross and Jeremy Zima, Ball State University Doctoral Student Shawn Salmon, and Max Bowen, who at eighteen years of age electrified the crowd with his dazzling technique and mature musical sensibilities. Each performer was as dazzling as the next: all of them showed up with their “A” game firmly in hand.

The highlight of the night came when iconic Canadian guitarist and composer Roddy Elias performed an unexpected duet with Brazilian guitarist Dr. Guilherme Vincens on Tom Jobim’s Bossa Nova standard “Insensatez” (How Insensitive). It was a spontaneous and perfect conclusion to the evening: it’s no wonder that Elias’ clinic was based on improvisation and being able to adapt to unexpected musical situations.

After Sunday’s clinics and workshops, the finale of the festival came in the form of the Classical Showcase Concert. Many of the heavy hitters from all musical periods were represented: from Bach to Brouwer (Hmm, are we in store for the fourth “B” in music history?), and many others. There was definitely something for everyone at this concert.

The concert opened with Christopher Davis’ interpretation of excerpts from Bach’s Suite for Lute BWV 995, taking the audience back to the Baroque. Some performers play Bach’s notes and others play Bach. Davis is definitely one who plays Bach. Tom Clippert, who teaches classical guitar, jazz guitar, and chamber music, at The Merit School of Music, Oakton Community College, Wilbur Wright College, and The Chicago School for the Arts, took the crowd on a musical journey to the native land of Leo Brouwer, as well as performing a fun suite about the composer George Crumb’s canines, featuring WIU percussion faculty Kevin Nichols.

Dr. Brad Deroche never disappoints, and this time around he brought with him a fresh stock of esoteric Spanish composers’ works to hypnotize the audience with. His tone, dynamic contour, attack, and overall ability make Deroche one of the most coveted classical guitarists in the world. To finish off the night’s festivities, Vincens made a return to the stage, this time as a solo artist, providing the crowd with another taste of life and music in Brazil. For this performance Vincens played classics from not only Jobim, but of some of the finest composers of South America. What a night of guitar greatness!

Spectators showed up in large numbers for all of the events, most of whom also stayed for all of the clinics and concerts. The attendance far exceeded projections, and carts stacked with chairs were wheeled out several times each day to accommodate the every growing crowd. From all standpoints the festival was a smashing success. This was the first festival of its kind at WIU, and it probably won’t be the last. Many of the attendees, both professional and amateur made comments about being a much better guitar player after the festival than they were before it.

This success of the festival is largely due to the genius and dedication of Dr. Matthew Warnock, Director of Guitar Studies at WIU. Warnock single handedly gathered all of the performers and educators for the festival, and his hard work and dedication have proved endless. He should be awarded for his countless hours and loss of hair pigmentation that went into making this festival such an unpredictable success. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of something invaluable to WIU and our community at large.

The festival was such a great success that many people are already talking about how incredible next year’s guitar festival will be. With Warnock at the helm, it will no doubt be even bigger and bolder than this year festivities. Nice work, Dr. Warnock, we tip our hat to you.

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