There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and apparently more than one way to pick a guitar. At the San Francisco Guitar Summit, guitarists will perform works that pick, strum, bend, scrape, soothe, and electrify the senses, in almost the widest range of musical styles possible in one evening. From classical to world fusion, this concert provokes new ideas of what the guitar is all about.
The San Francisco Guitar Summit is a brainchild of guitarist and composer Teja Gerken. “I was inspired by an act I saw bringing in four guitar groups, all with different musical styles,” he says. Teja founded his own version, called the San Francisco Guitar Summit, also at the Noe Valley Music Series, back in 2006. His emphasis is on local talent, and offering a chance to experience different sounds and styles from a variety of both old and newly invented instruments.
Teja, also an editor at Acoustic Guitar Magazine, will perform his own original compositions, based on the classical guitar tradition, with an infusion of elements from jazz, folk, and world music. He plays the steel string guitar used by most folk or rock musicians, but with the classical finger-picking style, using his fingernails to pluck the strings. The steely sound of the metal strings alone introduces a new twist on the traditional sound of the classical nylon-stringed instrument.
Listen to the Music
Matthew Monfort, leader of the world music ensemble Ancient Future, adds a world music dimension to the Summit, by introducing most unusual instruments, such as the “scalloped fretboard guitar,” and the “Glissentar,” an 11-string fretless guitar. The Glissentar, developed by maker Robert Godin, is a cross between an electric 12-string guitar and an ancient oud, a fretless cousin of the lute. The instrument has 11 nylon strings (all but the bass is doubled) and a wooden top, but an electric pickup for amplification, plus a plastic back. It is strummed with a pick. “This instrument is great for playing Indian music, which requires perfect intervals between the pitches, unlike our Western-tempered scale for which the guitar frets were placed,” says Monfort. “It’s especially helpful for Arabic music, as well, because those scales use microtones that just can’t be played on an instrument with frets.”
The scalloped fretboard guitar is also an instrument maker’s response to Monfort’s and other guitarists’ interest in blending Eastern and Western elements into their music. It’s a combination of the South Indian vina and the steel string guitar, with the fretboard carved out in between the frets, looking from the side like a miniwave. This makes it easier to “bend” notes, since the guitarist’s fingers touch only the strings and not the fretboard there. “This guitar allows for some beautiful Eastern ornamentation, yet still has the limitations of the frets,” says Monfort. He will perform his own compositions on both of these instruments plus the classical guitar, including a few duos together with Teja. Like Teja, he points out that his own compositions come primarily from the Western classical guitar tradition and incorporate elements from world music.
The San Francisco Guitar Quartet adds the second half to this intriguing program. Its members — Mark Simons, David Dueñas, Patrick O'Connell, and Jon Mendle — are distinguished soloists as well as chamber musicians. To say they are the most traditional act on the show is something, since they have the reputation for pushing the capabilities of the guitar and performing new works like those by Leo Brouwer and Dusan Bogdanovic. Yet at the core of the classical guitar tradition lie intoxicating Latin dance rhythms and folk melodies, which the quartet presents in abundance, drawing from world and ethnic traditions and from improvisation, too. A nice stylistic balance is on the menu for the Summit.
Largely due to the fine teaching studio at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and elsewhere, and an abundance of local guitar makers, collectors, and advocates, the Bay Area has become a mecca for guitar brilliance. The San Francisco Guitar Summit might just help coax that brilliance out of the shadows and into the public limelight where it belongs.