Eleftheria Kotzia

Ahead of her Purcell Room concert

GREEK GUITARIST Eleftheria Kotzia has been promoted in some of the most prestigious concert halls throughout the world and has received exposure on a number of media platforms including the BBC and WNYC. She is the dedicatee for music written by composers including Dodgson, Duarte, Bogdanovic and Domeniconi, and has produced discs among which can be found a Gramophone ‘Critic's Choice of the Year’. She made the premiere recordings of both Tippett’s The Blue Guitar and Tavener’s Chant, the latter in a special adaptation made for her by the composer, and participated in a live broadcast of Tavener's Fall and Resurrection at St Paul's Cathedral.

Kotzia began her studies at the National Conservatory in Athens, later attending the Conservatoire National Supérieure in Paris and finally the Guildhall School of Music in London. During her time in France she studied with Alexandre Lagoya, a challenging experience for the then 18 year old: ‘Paris was tough. I was very young and the milieu was totally different. Strangely, I always described it as “going to Europe”. Lagoya could speak Greek, but no one else did so I had to pick the language up very quickly in order to follow my other classes’, says Kotzia. Lagoya’s teaching method was not one Kotzia immediately recalls as being centred on the guitar itself, but she finds other areas on which to extol the virtues of his approach: 'I learnt a lot from him: in particular, the idea of striving for perfection. He was very focussed on the quality and projection of sound. However, he never really showed me how to think for myself; how to be independent. It was all very much “I do this, you do this” - a learning style of imitation. He was a strong man; a very resilient and strong personality. As a student that can crush you a bit; he was more like a very authoritative father figure. At low moments in my career, I have turned to his example and got strength from his strength’.

More practical instruction for Kotzia was to come when she arrived in London. In that period the city was a great place to be for an aspiring guitarist, and Kotzia found herself frequently having lessons with David Russell, Nigel North and Timothy Walker. Her decision to ultimately remain in the capital, however, was not one she had necessarily planned on making: ‘1 came back to London not by choice; I just wanted to stay for an Academic year, to do the British composer repertoire and learn how to transcribe from French tablature, things that I hadn’t done before. But when I returned to Paris to continue my teaching job at the Ecole de Musique, we, all the staff, went on strike because of changes in working conditions. We lost, and those on strike were fired. So I followed up a scholarship offer I had from the Guildhall School of Music to stay another year. In that second year in London professional opportunities arose: I got an agent and was asked to play in the Purcell Room and St John’s, Smith Square among other things’.

On March 29 Kotzia will perform at the Purcell Room. Although she has appeared here on a number of occasions since making her London debut in 1985, for Kotzia performances at the South Bank require a particular programme: ‘For a number of years now I have treated playing here as a bit more special. I can do things in London that would be more difficult to do elsewhere in smaller places, and I usually use the opportunity to present some new works as well’. In addition to solo repertoire including Villa Lobos, Isaias Savio, Maximo Pujol, Albeniz, Dyens and Rodrigo, Kotzia's recital will feature collaborative performances with Sonia Grane (voice), Sheida Davis (cello), Emma Murphy (recorder) and Gerard Rundell (vibes/bongos). A further highlight of these ensemble performances is the presence of two premieres: Ernesto Cordero’s Cantata al Valle de Mexico for voice, guitar, cello & recorder; and Ney Rosauro’s Toccata and Divertimento for vibraphone & guitar, works receiving their first performances in the UK and London respectively.

Cordero will also have a second item on the programme: Dinga y Mandinga for recorder, guitar, cello and bongos, a work Kotzia premiered on a similar occasion in 1997. Cordero's premiere this time around, however, is a work that has in fact been with Kotzia for some time: ‘Cordero wrote Dinga y Mandinga in 1995, and he sent me the music along with the Cantata al Valle de Mexico. I had ignored this other piece until now, since I didn't have a singer for the ‘97 concert, but I thought that I would do it this time since the players are there’. Both pieces were originally scored to include flute, but for her Purcell Room concert Kotzia has decided to make an instrument substitution: ‘The recorder was my idea; I felt that the quality of this instrument would work better with the music. I emailed the composer and asked if I could use recorder instead of flute for his Dinga y Mandinga. Then I thought, why should I have flute for his other piece in the programme? (Cantata al Valle de Mexico) Why don’t we try them both with recorder? He [Cordero] said “hmm... interesting, let's try it”.

One issue Kotzia is keen to raise at this stage is the accessibility of the contemporary ensemble repertoire she will be performing, pointing out that the connotations of ‘new’ can often cause listeners to make certain assumptions about the music. Her description here of another more recent composition in her programme can serve to diffuse some of those preconceptions: ‘Brazilian composer-percussionist Rosauro is very well known. He is a superb percussionist and has written a huge repertoire for it. I heard a concerto of his for marimba and orchestra, which I thought was fantastic. Then later, by chance, I discovered this other piece of his [Toccata and Divertimento] for vibraphone and guitar. The work is based on the mood and popular Brazilian melodies found in the desafio, a kind of musical game from North-eastern Brazil in which two people sing and make rhymes, challenging each other to create a story on a given theme’. Kotzia will also perform Villa Lobos's Bachianas Brazileiras No. 5 and Modinha with Sonia Grane, a collaboration that began after Kotzia saw the postgraduate singer from the Royal Academy perform in a concert celebrating Villa Lobos’s music.

Although this recital is perhaps slightly atypical for Kotzia, having predominantly worked as a soloist over the years, her experience as a chamber musician is nonetheless extensive, collaborating with artists such as Leonidas Kavakos, Clio Gould, Patricia Rozario, Levon Parikian, Judith Hall and Robert Max. It is interesting to draw on Kotzia’s experience in this area to learn something of the guitar's interaction with other instruments: ‘If you collaborate let’s say with a cellist - I did some UK concerts with Alexander Boyarski and Robert Max - the relationship doesn’t really last, because they don’t care for us so much. If you have the option to play wonderful Brahms sonatas with your pianist, or go back to your trio and perform Beethoven, you don’t really want to have a steady concert programme with a guitarist. This may be, but Kotzia’s collaborative history highlights engagements with a number of instrumental genres. The collaborations themselves are perhaps short, but together they speak of the guitar's inherent eclecticism. Moreover, there is something to be said for what defines a short collaboration: Kotzia’s work with Robert Max,took place over a period of three years, which, we might consider prolonged.

Despite the fact that ‘here Kotzia cites repertoire as a potential shortcoming in these instrumental relationships, her ideas are not directed at inadequate ensemble music for guitar so much as the reasons for why other instrumentalists are likely to remain close to their own repertoire. That said, there is an area of the ensemble repertoire that Kotzia believes could support a more permanent relationship: ‘I can never understand why there is not a famous guitar and voice duo, there's some fantastic repertoire for that. But singers always want to aspire to opera. Their dream isn't to work with a guitarist, but to do Carmen perhaps’.

Probing a little deeper into the practicalities of working with other instrumentalists, Kotzia also touches on the subject of amplification: ‘In the past I have never used amplification performing with cello or violin. But now I would, even in the Cordero pieces for instance, which are very well written to allow the instruments to be heard equally. I once did a series of concerts with Luigi de Filippi, the then leader of the London Mozart players. In one particular concert he pretty much drowned me, because he got so carried away and was projecting his sound so much. Even the best players need to be extra careful with balance. It must be frustrating to feel you have to play mp or pp when you would rather ff and mp. But amplification doesn’t necessarily solve the problem either: they hear you playing louder and then they play louder still’.

The role of programming is something Kotzia finds lots of points to talk on, but central to her is the need to remain open to a number of programming alternatives: ‘Some people are intrigued by an unfamiliar programme; others are equally fearful about the new: they want to have more of the same thing. Right from the beginning I have always included familiar repertoire with more challenging pieces. Nothing terribly avant-garde, but we need to hear new or lesser known music several times to appreciate it’. So what does Kotzia make of the demands of a main-stream audience such as the one the South Bank is likely to attract?: ‘I really couldn't say. A concert I did in 1997 at the South Bank was sold out. Five years ago, in the same place, when I gave a recital and had a guest singer for some numbers, it was a rather good hall. I think the popularity of concerts has gone down a bit since then maybe’.

Although programming is clearly important in matters of audiences, one of the outcomes of twentieth-century music is a change in the pecking order where composers and performers are concerned. Today it is performers who are the icons of the music industry, and we are frequently attracted to them rather than the programmes they promote. A performer such as Kotzia can supply an interesting commentary on this phenomenon: ‘Very successful performers can take their appeal with them to any performance. I recently saw Barenboim perform some Schoenberg. I think the audience gave all their attention to this in every way demanding piece. He introduced the work, very cleverly, in an unsophisticated manner. Barenboim is such a personality that he made Schoenberg feel familiar to everybody there: the charisma that he has and the pianist and conductor that he is was enough to make the hall feel awesome. I think Bream had this as well: people would go to hear him regardless. He would play Henze, but people would still go and they would buy anything he produced because he was Bream. He managed to make that same connection with people’.

The performer's position in this sense has been evident for some time, but Kotzia notes a change in the way performers at the top end are currently working, as she explains: ‘Even great performers, or rather the ‘big names’, who can perhaps afford to take risks don’t anymore. The period when you had players like Bream taking all these risks no longer exists. I think the combination of big artist and standard repertoire is in for the moment. New composers have very little chance. There's not enough money out there for performers and concert promoters to take risks’.

Kotzia’s recording catalogue is marked for a number of features. Firstly there is the Greek identity, which is evident on almost every disc she has produced. The notion of a performer including an element of nationalism in their repertoire is a familiar one, an expectation even, particularly among those musicians from countries whose composers are not so well represented. But when Kotzia decided early on to promote Greek music, she met certain obstacles: ‘When I did my second disc the idea to include Greek composers was for me a very natural one. But the record company said “Who knows these composers?”. I was scratching my head and saying “But these are very well known people in my country”. Nowadays a lot of performers commis-sion composers from their own country perhaps, but when I wanted to make this disc it wasn't so common’. In order to improve her ‘pitch to the record company, Kotzia pursued the idea of having recognised composers write Greek-inspired music so that these new works could be placed alongside the lesser known Greek composers: Bogdanovic and Domeniconi have been among those to be supplied with a Greek-orientated compositional brief.

Kotzia has also come to be identified with Tippett's The Blue Guitar, which received its premiere recording from her and was subsequently awarded ‘Critic’s Choice Recording of the Year’ by Gramophone: ‘There were a lot of companies who didn’t want to do the Tippett, simply because it was very modern. Let's not forget that all the composers except Villa Lobos on that disc were contemporary or unknown. In the end I had to find a sponsor. I wanted to record the Tippett and the other works since it had all been part of my repertoire for a long time’, says Kotzia. And has Kotzia ever wondered why Bream didn't record it himself?: ‘I think if Bream had wanted to do it he would have done it. He could do anything he wanted, he was Bream’. Despite the fact that her disc The Blue Guitar was clearly a great success, its future for the time being is uncertain: ‘Now my record company doesn’t want to repress the CD: according to them, CDs don’t sell anymore. In a sense it has become a sort of collector's item, and I have heard here and there that it sells for quite a lot of money. So then I ask the company “Why don't you release it on mp3?” They say they are thinking about it, but they have been thinking about it for four years already’.

Among Kotzia’s other roles can be found festival director and authoress. Her editicational book Cahier de ma Guitar has been pressed in French three times, and the second volume, Cahier no2 - Guitarobics, has recently appeared in both French and English. There is also lots of performance and recording activity pending for Kotzia at this time. including a concerto written for her by Rene Eespere: Clavi in Crusem-Visionis. For more information and details on upcoming events: www.eleftheria.info

Guy Traviss - Classical Guitar Magazine

SoundBoard Interview with Steve Marsh June 2007

When Eleftheria Kotzia made her London debut in 1985, the Times reported her as having “skill, a beguiling tone and an ability to vary her touch with fluency.” Since then, these characteristics have evolved to a high degree and, over the years, her extensive touring of Europe, North Africa, Canada, the U.S.A., South America, Australia, and the Far East has instilled a confidence in her playing usually only acquired from widespread experience of this type of exposure. When on stage she has that indefinable and mystifying quality we have chosen to call “charisma,” and this was much in evidence in a recent concert she gave in the Oval Hall of Sheffield’s City Hall (Yorkshire, U.K.). A fewweeks after that concert, we met up for a drink and a chat where we talked, amongst other things, about her views on guitar courses, her recordings, commissioned works, working with composers, and guitar students. First, though, I began by asking her views on amplification and why she had chosen not to use the amplification available in the Oval Hall, a hall which is notoriously unsuitable for classical guitar from an acoustic aspect:

EK: I knew that the hall was quite dry. When I arrived there, the organizers said that I would have to have amplification. Well, we tried it. I got the impression that the sound engineer was more accustomed to setting up for electric guitarists and when we did try the amplification, it produced a horrible metallic sound; naturally, I didn’t I like it. There was very limited time, since I did not arrive at the hall until about 35 minutes before the concert, so I didn’t have very much time to become “manic” about it. My concert was the last in the chamber music series being held at the Sheffield City Hall. When I asked if the other performers had used amplification (pianists, quartets, etc.), and was told, “No,” I said, why should I use it if they were quite happy with the sound of the other concerts? I think most times the intimacy and range of colors of the instrument are lost with amplification. The ear adjusts to the volume. I’ve played without amp in St. David’s in Cardiff and in the Fairfield Halls in Croydon, London, and these are huge halls. People told me afterwards that they could hear the guitar’s nuances right at the back; it’s more the physical presence that we don’t have, but the sound is still there.
   The guitar is a poetic instrument. It can touch and move by its timbre. Part of its charm and magic is its fragility! I think, over the last few years, classical guitarists have been panicking about the volume; they talk about construction, projection of the instrument, and so on. Guitar makers seem obsessed with making things louder at the expense of losing the characteristics of our instrument. A lot of players these days are not so careful about studying the projection and quality of their sound because they think that, if there is a problem, then they will just use a microphone and that in a recording studiothe engineer will do magic with technology. When I was a student it was a very important element to be able to produce a very large and beautiful sound and to be able to fill the hall yourself, without all this technology. I don’t understand why leading and influential guitarists such as John Williams need the use of a microphone, even in concerts of six or seven hundred people. When I go to a guitar concert, I don’t want to hear a piano concert! You know, where there is all this volume, it’s as if there is a piano out there.

SM: The big attraction of the guitar, for most players, is the natural beauty of the sound of the instrument. I’ve attended quite a few guitar recitals where amplification has been used, and none hasever matched up to the natural beauty of the instrument.
EK: Exactly. Recently, in a festival in France, we were playing with a mike, which was O.K. as we were playing in the open air. Similarly, when playing with an orchestra, that is O.K., of course. Without it, the instrument will be drowned out. Playing in that hall in Sheffield, for me there was no question of using amplification just because the hall is dry.

SM: I remember sitting towards the rear of the Royal Festival Hall in London at a Segovia concert and the first few bars he played seemed incredibly quiet, but, after a very short time, one’s ears got accustomed to the sound and the volume seemed to grow as the concert got underway.
EK: And I do remember Julian Bream in Paris, in the Théâtre des Champs Élysées—what a treat! Yes, the sound of the guitar comes out of the silence. The instrument draws you; the guitar cannot come to you, you have to go to the instrument. I think, in a sense, the guitarist should reinforce the magic of the instrument because that’s what separates us from the other instruments. I’ve worked with chamber ensembles. I remember the cellist, the flutist, and the violin partners were very intrigued by the colors of the guitar. I was not going to compete with the violinist’s or the cellist’s legato or vibrato, but when they heard all the coloring available from the guitar, they were amazed, and when you have amplification all this magic is lost.

SM: Let’s talk about your recordings. It’s noticeable that, with the exception of your South American CD, all your other recordings always feature at least one Greek composer. Is this your own idea or do the record companies insist upon the program?
EK: The record companies I have worked with never insist; the programming is always my own idea. In my first recording, The Blue Guitar, the music of a wonderful friend of mine who died, Kyriakos Giorginakis, was included, and then music by my teacher, Dimitri Fampas, but this was only a small part of the program, alongside the Tippett, the Villa-Lobos, the South American and the French works. I wanted to put into the program something Greek that I love. But the CD Mediterraneo, my “Hellenic/Greek” CD, was a very conscious choice. This recording was made more than ten years or so ago and the programs on recordings at that time tended to feature Spanish and South American music. Now, of course, we have CDs with American, Russian, Finnish, and Czech guitar music. I felt I wanted to reveal the richness of my home country’s music. I wanted to make a recording of only Greek composers; to my surprise, though, I found out that hardly any record company wanted to hear them! They said “Who knows Giorginakis, Theodorakis, Fampas, Miliaresis, Mamagakis?” They were not well known at all, so no one would be interested to buy.
   So I had this idea to get composers who were well-known, especially in the guitar world, to write for me, and so I approached Duarte, Dodgson, Biberian, McGuire, and various other composers, and tried to get them inspired by Greece —by the music, by giving them mythology books, poetry books, and so forth. Jack (Duarte) and Dodgson, who are featured on the CD, were immediately thrilled by this idea, and in fact most of the composers I called upon were delighted by it. John Tavener’s piece Chant was also featured on this recording; this work had already been written, but when he heard that I could sing, he made a special adaptation for me.
   The whole idea of having composers to write with the inspiration of Greece has been because I couldn’t put together an album of only Greek composers. So the end product was a mixture of “known” composers alongside the “unknown” Greek composers, all of it inspired by the traditions of Greece. I was absolutely thrilled and honored that the composers I mentioned and, later, Bogdanović and Domeniconi, wrote for me; all these works are now published.

SM: When you made the premiere recording of Tippet’s The Blue Guitar, did you feel any sense of pressure at all? For instance, Julian Bream’s recording of Britten’s Nocturnal set the benchmark for all other performances, so did this influence your perspective of suchan important piece as this at all?
EK: No, I didn’t think about it like this at all. I just was already playing The Blue Guitar in concerts; it was part of my repertoire. Of course, Julian Bream had already given the first performance. The British Council approached me to give concerts in Greece and they suggested that I should do an English work. I alreadywas playing English works such as the Britten and Bennett, butI wanted to play something new and I started learning The Blue Guitar. So I committed myself to a performance of this challenging work, and from then on, it became part of my repertoire, and I played it in many concerts everywhere.
   The difficulty was to convince the record company that didn’t want me to record it, because they were saying to me, “Who will buy a piece like this?” It was only at this stage that I realized I was doing a work by a major British composer and a major guitar piece. I had to do it well, because it was my first CD, and also I had to try and do it full justice, as there was no model for my ear to base it on. I’d worked through it with a conductor friend of mine, I’d played it to some guitarist friends to ask their opinion, and so on. I tried to do my best. The whole thing about The Blue Guitar, I think, was that it was announced in the Times and then Gramophone, and made such a big “do,” and after that I was asked many times to perform it because of the praise it received …

SM: You received an award from The Gramophone, didn’t you?
EK: Yes, but it was for the whole CD called The Blue Guitar, not just for the Tippett piece! it was the “Critic’s Choice” in The Gramophone.

SM: Aside from the ones you’ve commissioned yourself, you’ve had quite a number of works dedicated to you; it must be very satisfying and pleasurable when that happens, especially from “known” composers such as Edmundo Vasquez and Carlo Domeniconi.
EK: Oh yes! For instance, Vasquez wrote something for cello and guitar; I didn’t necessarily ask him to write it for me; probably it came after talking together, when I said I needed more cello/guitar repertoire pieces.

SM: This is his Cantos de amor olvidados?
EK: Yes. However this work is not inspired by Greek music by the way, it is inspired by old tunes brought to South American by the Spanish conquistadores.

SM: When you do commission a work, how closely do you work with the composer; do you ever have to drastically change parts due to impracticalities?
EK: You can put suggestions to the composers; for instance, many years ago I played a work in London by I. Haliasas, a Greek composer, and in some sections I put in some guitar effects that were not written in the score and that eliminated some short section. So I called him, and said I wanted to do “this and that,” and I played it to him down the telephone, and he said that it sounded much nicer that way, with these effects. So, a lot of times composers are very receptive to ideas. With the John Duarte piece …

SM: Musikones?
EK: Yes, with that piece, the original order was different, the tuning of the last piece was not the same, and I suggested the title. When I asked for the piece, I said that the music of ancient Greece and the folklore could be very appealing, and somehow he took aboard some of these ideas and some of the music was inspired by ancient Greece and the folklore. With Stephen Dodgson it was different; we changed a couple of the fingerings and positions, but mostly he was very precise and didn’t want things amended, even if they presented difficulties for the player.
    In the Domeniconi piece (Krysea Phorminx), I didn’t interfere at all, but Domeniconi changed his mind two or three times about various sections. In the end, just before I was going to record, the session had to be postponed for a month because the day before the recording he rang me up to say that he had made various changes in the score!

SM: We’ve had that experience with a couple of the editions from your series haven’t we? [Eleftheria Kotzia has her own published series, which she edits, within Lathkill Music Publishers, which Steve Marsh runs].
EK: Yes, indeed. [laughs] When something is going to be published, it seems to make some composers think again about the final, the end-product, and they come out with changes. I remember some years ago premiering in London a piece for violin and guitar by Houghton. He was sending me letters about little changes between this note and that note, just because a premiere was coming up. But I think the pressure is even stronger when it is going to be printed; it is for posterity.

SM: It's got to be quite frustrating, surely, to have spent a long time working on a composition and then the composer starts to make changes here and there?
EK: Well, to take the Evangelos Boudounis piece, the Spring Songs—I recorded it in my CD Fuoco! according to the manuscript, but changes were made after the recording but before it was published, so if you see the published version, there are differences. When I told Evangelos about this, he just told me not to worry. Vasquez initially wrote the Cantos de amor for cello and guitar, but then he changed it to bass flute and guitar, and then, when he decided to publish it in the cello and guitar version, he made quite a few changes to both instruments that he feels strongly about. So there we are! Do they say original version? What matters is the final product!

SM: As well as solo recitals, you've given many concerts with other musicians—violinists, cellists, flautists, singers, and so on. Have you any plans to record any of these works, because, up to now, everything you've recorded has been for solo guitar, hasn't it?
EK: I would love to put some of the repertoire I've played with other musicians on CD, but these days you have to deal all the practicalities of the record companies; they ask where they will sell it, who will buy it, how to promote it. There are a lot of people buying solo guitar recordings and the record companies don't seem to know where the guitar will fit into chamber music. I am thinking that this might have to be a private enterprise, and fix the whole thing myself. Before Fuoco! came out with Harmonia Mundi, a chamber music program was my suggestion, and, once again, solo guitar became the choice for the recording. But I would love to do a recording of duos, trios, quartets, etc.

SM: Most of your recordings tend to be “themed;” so there's been a Mediterranean one, a South American one, a twentieth century one, and now, with Fuoco!, you've returned to the Mediterranean.
EK: Yes, you are right, I prefer themed CDs to single-composer ones. I feel there can be more variety. However, the Mediterraneo one was Greek inspired, while Fuoco! is Mediterranean-themed and features Spanish, Greek, French, Italian music, and so forth.

SM: It is good to hear the Roussel piece Segovia on your disc. This is such a wonderful miniature for guitarists, but you never hear it in concerts.
EK: It is hard to play well; it is so small—two pages! I don't know why players don't play it, though; it is a good piece, but it does have a reputation of being very difficult.

SM: You've just returned from teaching at the two-week guitar course in the Château de Ligoure in Limoges, France. Do you teach at many guitar courses?
EK: I do two or three a year. This year, they were in Germany and France, and I thoroughly enjoy doing these; the one in France lasts for two weeks, and I think this is a good length for this type of course.

SM: I agree. I teach at an annual guitar course in the south of England, but that lasts only one week, and not only does time seem to fly by but, also, the students are just about getting to grips with the many ensemble works we study and then it is home time! It would be good to just have those extra few days.
EK: Well, I think it depends on the type of the course. There are some guitar courses/festivals that have a lot of activity—every day lunchtime and evening concerts, lectures, music shop, etc., and of course, master classes, orchestra, ensembles, and sometimes even private lessons. So much happening gives a fantastic excitement to the festival, a fabulous buzz. I remember that, at the Stetson International Workshop in DeLand, Florida, a course that I absolutely loved, we performers and all the students of the course even had the chance to go out for dinner in a typical restaurant of the area! So, it is natural that so much energy can last for a shorter period.
    A course like the one I did recently, in the Château de Ligoure, is structured differently. It is smaller in numbers (thirty) and it feels like a family. There were fewer evening concerts, just four, but there was more private one-to-one tuition. In fact, every two days, an hour's lesson for each student, with the same teacher! The participation for chamber groups was unlimited, and was rehearsed always by the same teacher, every day. And then, of course, there is the orchestra. So, there was less “action,” there was more time to “digest” and to meditate on what's been said and experienced during the lessons.
    There is so much on offer, you know, and I find that students can feel a bit lost if their education is not yet solid. They hear different impressions and beliefs; sometimes, in a course, four or five different guitarists/teachers express completely different opinions from those the student had previously heard. It is inspiring, but it can also be quite confusing for some.
    In the past you had one or two teachers who you were relying upon for your progress. You trusted them, and let them guide you and help you with your progress. I keep saying to my pupils, when they are confused, that every guitarist has a different opinion and every human being is different, so conviction and choice are what you have to seek. You cannot expect, because so-and-so expressed an opinion, that it is necessarily the correct one for you. Students must decide for themselves which paths to follow.

SM: It’s like the student hearing the same work being played by six or seven top players. They’ll hear six or seven different interpretations, sometimes very diverse, and if they are studying that particular piece and are looking for interpretational ideas, they need to decide which player or players most suited their way of thinking and take their motivation from there.
EK: Yes, they must be guided by their teachers, but in the end they must make up their own minds and use their own opinions and follow their own paths.

John Duarte: Two Coffee Stories by Eleftheria Kotzia

I was honoured to be invited by John Duarte to perform In Cannington on various occasions and also to eventually join the teaching team. Jack wrote the beautiful Musikones for me—a piece I love, have performed on many occasions, and recorded. During these collaborations and over the years, I enjoyed his sense of humour, and his engaging stories. I admired his wisdom, his lucidity and his honesty. In his presence I felt motivated and inspired but also challenged. He was bright, human and sensitive. The memory of two simple incidents—that I would like to describe here—brings an affectionate smile to my face.

It was my first visit in the Duarte household and I was immediately guided to Jack's studio. Dorothy brought is tray with coffee and biscuits and left it on the table. Jack, full of energy and enthusiasm invited me to hear his new pieces; recent recordings of his works. as well as other styles of music that he loved. The delicious smell of the coffee had almost been forgotten. We chatted, time flew and I realized It was time for me to go. I said good-bye and headed for the bus station. On the way back, feeling thirsty, I was thinking of the cold coffee totally forgotten in its tray by two absent-minded people.

On another occasion I was invited for dinner. After dinner, the conversation continued in his studio. Dorothy brought a tray with coffee and left it on the table. I asked Jack how much sugar he takes and he said "four spoons." while simultaneously I heard Dorothy's voice— she was just ready to go out of the studio—saying "one and a half”. Puzzled I looked at both of them, the one after the other, not knowing quite what to do. Dorothy insisted, “one and a half. He doesn't know” and so, one and a half it was. Jack sipping his coffee was happy enough.

Many people think of Jack with a glass of beer and his famous pipe in his hand, possibly in a pub. I don't. Now that he is gone, he comes back to my memory in his studio, either writing articles, reviews. CD liner notes, books, and especially his musical compositions, listening to Django Reinhardt or chatting with his friends, while somewhere in the room a cup of cold coffee—with four spoons of unstirred sugar in it—is waiting to be drunk ...