Michael Bester

A friend in a Slack group posed this question yesterday:

Just got around to watching Whiplash because my son wanted to watch it. Curious who else here watched it, and what your thoughts were on it? (Especially the musicians who went to music school)

I’ve watched Whiplash, and holy cats that movie is intense. It makes for great drama, but it’s not at all reflective of my experience in music school.

In school, I did have a few professors who scared the crap out of me. As a student studying jazz—something that I had very little knowledge of or exposure to before going to school—I was frightened by these professors because they were masters of the craft, able to play with a fluency that seemed unattainable to me at the time. (Decades later, I still haven’t reached their level of traditional jazz fluency, but I’m fine with that now). While I found them intimidating at first, none came even remotely close to the abusive behavior of JK Simmons’ character, Fletcher. They didn’t break students down to build them up, boot camp style. Sure they were demanding, but they were also supportive and encouraging. They wanted to share the music they loved, and they wanted kids to love it too. And they definitely wanted us to reach our potential without breaking our spirits.

Among my peers, I don’t think anybody was as intensely single minded on becoming the best musician in a generation, whatever the hell that means, as Miles Teller’s character, Andrew, was. We all wanted to get good and we worked at it. We spent plenty of time in hot, smelly practice rooms, honing our skills, both by ourselves and together. We inspired each other, pushing us all to get better. But we also liked to hang out, drink, get high, and fuck. You know, like young people do.

Whiplash isn’t really about music school. That’s just the setup. It’s about the relentless drive of two individuals, fueled by their unrestrained ambition and ego. What it completely misses as a “jazz school” movie is the fact that playing music, especially jazz, is very much a communal practice. It’s less about how amazing one person can be, and much more about what can we make together.

I may be rusty on my chord substitutions and bebop vocabulary, but there are two things that stand out as valuable in my music school experience. First, I was being consistently inspired by other students, more than I was by the teachers, as good as they were. Coming out of high school, I thought I was simply amazing. Seeing how damn talented my peers were threw a bucket of ice water on that misguided idea. I learned a lot of humility, quickly, and how to really appreciate and celebrate the achievements of others.

The other thing I learned is how to be a much better listener. It sounds simple, but it’s fundamental for any musician (and indeed, for anybody who wants to strengthen and deepen their relationships). As a musician, it’s easy to have blinders on when you’re burying your nose in a score to just play your part, or if you get enamored with how incredible you think you are. But when you’re playing music with others, being generous with your listening makes the music so much better. Not only for your bandmates, but for your audience too.

In their pursuit of greatness, Fletcher and Andrew needed each other. Though because that pursuit is at the expense of just about everything else in their lives, they really only have each other. The rest of us do need truly driven people to be great, to push the boundaries of what we think is possible and inspire us. But for most of us, I think we’re OK with letting others take that path.

Years ago, Derek Sivers wrote a wonderful post called Friends From Memory. It’s a project which encourages gratitude, and in it, he lists out the names of people who have had a positive influence on his life from memory. I think it’s a lovely idea and I’ve been wanting to do my own version of this list for a while now.

In roughly chronological order, these are people who’ve come into my life who have been left a positive mark on me, nudging me towards who I am today. Some I’ve only spent a few hours with, others I’ve known for years. There are friends, teachers, mentors, colleagues, and aquantainces here. Some may not remember me, but obviously, I remember them.

• David Luks
• Jeremy Hoffer
• Anthony Motta
• Paul San Gemino
• Mario Mihauchich
• Eric DiCarlo
• Roy Billiott
• Camille Motta
• Richard Kaval
• Jamie Riccardi
• Lou Albano
• Francis Leale
• Jim Hughes
• Nick Megdanis
• Luciano Meschino
• Victor Powell (R.I.P.)
• Catherine Livanis (R.I.P)
• Terry Livanis
• Arthur Cunningham (R.I.P.)
• Jessica Foster
• Renee Foster
• Carmen Rivera
• Jim Wagner
• Tommy Black
• Richard Black
• Travis Clemins
• Brian Carver
• George Loutfi
• Eugene Tang
• Brian Forbes
• Yarone Levy
• Quincas Moreira
• Andrew Manista
• Seth Horan
• Julianne Carmody
• Carmen Nemeth
• Jano Rix
• Jon Arkin
• Eric Gardner
• Kynch O’Kaine
• Peter Parente
• Matthew Hewlitt
• Matt Glassmeyer
• Randall Dolohon
• Neville Peter
• Ron Miller
• Bob Gower
• Lori Bingle
• Ian Herzog
• Ryuji Yamaguchi
• Jonathan Kriesberg
• Jes Bernhardt
• Bud Maltin
• Dean Imperial
• Isabel Arce
• John Ballesteros
• Michael (Miles) Miller
• Kate Gauthier
• Steve Bill
• Baird Styles
• Roberto Crepaldi
• Alex Coletta
• Subbarao Seethamsetty
• Gerald Scully
• Tim Sevener
• Sandor Risko
• Mark Anderson
• Charlotte DeLon
• Quartez Taylor
• Donna Brockett
• Eric Snowden
• Karen Stavisky
• Darwin Rodriguez
• Sanjay Sen
• Champ Bennett
• Michelle Kempner
• Yvette Pasqua
• Rob Sung
• David MacFarlane
• Chris Bray
• Omar Elsayed
• Chris Casciano
• Carlos Porto
• Joseph Jorgensen
• Christopher Reardon
• Bruce Hyslop
• Eoin Russell
• Marc Amos
• Kirby Turner
• Chris Traganos
• Mark Sarcione
• Lily Sarcione
• Juhan Sonin
• Urszula Clemins
• Dan Cederholm
• Johannes Booy
• Michael Witwicki
• Glenn Kennedy
• John Magnifico
• Matt Parmet
• Andres Martínez
• Aubryn Thompson
• Christine Pillsbury
• Scott Borg
• Frank Papineau
• Jerome Mouffe
• Donna Ricci
• Adrienne Smith
• Chris Ruth
• Michael Hurley
• Jason Yarrington
• Jennifer Donovan
• Alyssa Garber
• Robert Bekkers

If you found your way here because your name is on this list, please do send me a note and say hello! If you’re not here, and you feel you should be, my sincere apologies. Do say hello and let me know.

I’ve been a practicing musician for most of my life. The guitar is my instrument of choice. While I don’t make a living as a guitarist, I am always pushing myself to improve my playing.

After decades of playing rock and jazz, I shifted my musical focus towards the classical guitar about seven or eight years ago. Whole new worlds of music opened up before me. I discovered terrific performers and composers to which I was previously blind. As I dug deeper into this world and learned a lot of new and challenging music, I started to realize it was becoming difficult to retain command of the music I was learning over the long term.

For the past few years, I’ve been thinking about and tinkering with a new way to make better use of my practice time and gain more command over my repertoire. I also wanted another avenue to help me discover new music which I might like to learn, as well as a music-focused alternative to YouTube and Soundcloud on which I could publish recordings, both private and public. I’ve been building this platform, and I call it Repertoireist.

Are you a practicing musician? If so, I think you’ll find value in it, too. Take a few moments to read Introducing Repertoireist to learn more about this project. If it strikes your fancy, I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks to YouTube’s recommendation engine, I came across something which just floored me. It’s a clip from a 1965 Italian TV special called Chitarra, Amore Mio (“Guitar, My Love”).

In it, we are introduced to a modest, soft spoken man named Vittorio Camardese. We learn that he’s a doctor—a radiologist—working in San Filippo Hospital in Rome. Because of his work, he says he doesn’t travel to play music, despite all the stickers on his guitar case. The host asks him about a “particular technique” he uses when playing the guitar, and Dr. Camardese sheepishly says yes, he always plays this way, and that he is self taught. After a brief explanation and demonstration with a major scale, the host says “Let’s hear a piece”. The good doctor suggests a Mambo.

Then he plays…

I hope you watched that through to the end. I quite literally gasped the first time I saw it. This hit me hard on multiple levels.

When I was a kid, hearing the otherworldly sounds that Eddie Van Halen was able to coax out of an electric guitar for the first time transported me. I didn’t know sounds like that existed, much less that people could make them. I needed to learn how to do what he was doing. I soon got my first electric guitar and quickly learned about tapping. For the uninitiated, it’s a technique guitar players use where they tap notes on the fretboard with their picking hand, allowing them to play quick, wide interval arpeggios and lines, as well as percussive sounds. Eddie Van Halen uses it extensively and is widely considered to be a pioneer of the technique. When the first Van Halen album was released in 1978, guitarists everywhere were blown away when they heard what EVH could do with tapping. Many guitarists adopted the technique and some, like Steve Vai, took it even further than Eddie did.

For me, seeing what the humble autodidact, Doctor Camardese, was doing on his classical guitar, well over a decade before Eddie Van Halen popularized the technique, upended what I thought I knew about how this way of playing evolved.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Eddie Van Halen got it from hearing Dr. Camardese—he probably didn’t. As far as I can tell, aside from a few appearances on Italian Television, Camardese never recorded any of his playing and was unknown outside of Italy. Plus, there were other guitarists in the ’60s and ’70s who used versions of the technique in their own playing, albeit to a more limited degree than what either Van Halen or Camardese did. What fascinates me about this is the multiple discovery aspect of it, where disparate people can independently develop similar ideas more or less simultaneously.

The other thing that hit me about the video is that it’s a strong reminder that there is talent all around us that we don’t know about, or perhaps choose not to see. Most of Doctor Camardese’s patients likely never knew that he was a guitarist, much less that he was a mad genius at it. Perhaps his coworkers didn’t even know.

Every person you encounter has a story, most of which you have no idea about. Remembering that idea fosters empathy. To me, it also means that plenty of people have skills and talents we just don’t know, and I find that idea endlessly fascinating. Look out the window, see someone, anyone, and wonder what his or her talent could be. Their stories, their skills, have the potential to transport you, if only you knew what they are.

Homenaje a Debussy (the full title of which is Homenaje sur Le Tombeau de Debussy, or Homage to the tomb of Debussy) was composed by Manuel de Falla in remembrance of the great impressionist composer, Claude Debussy in approximately 1920, or two years after Debussy’s passing.

As I read more about this piece, I’ve come to learn that the intentions of it are twofold. It is at once a dirge, funereal in feel, and it also should invoke the feel of a Habanera, which is a slow Cuban dance. On its face, the two sides of this dichotomy seem to be at odds with each other, as the feels of each are quite different. I mean, how do you play a solemn dance? I’m not sure I successfully invoked both in my interpretation here, but it is definitely food for thought as I explore this piece further.