Katona Twins - hungarian way to go

Listening to those gyus is real pleasure. The curse of guitar is lack of relaxation. One can put the hands to piano and let them rest there freely, feel the gravitation and let It to drive the music. But on guitar there is always some extent of itchyness present. Those fast fingers of guitar-players are'nt usually making convincing music. Allthough one can use left hand's gravity to help It's fingers to pull the strings down. Picking hand (the right one for fight-handers) is trying to lay on strings, but It can't use the full gravity of hand, never. Katona Twins have managed to find the relaxivity and using the power of gravitation on guitar.

I wasn't able to visit the Katona Twins concert, but was participating in local academy gathering, where they speaked about their views to guitar and life. Being in their level means obviously lot of hard and real work with instrument. There is obviously not much time left for philosophy and thinking about It. I'm not sure whether It's for good to think about and construct the theorys about everything instead of doing the thing itself. It's a kind of cheap conceptualism, in which the thinkers can be easily accused.

The twins have quit a same look and therefore I can't say about whether Zoltán or Peter spoke. There was amount of certain amount chitchat about average new composition price in England ect.
What I remember as important thing is, that Twins told about impossibility of exhaustive explaining the sound making method on guitar. It's obviously more question about feel rather the angel of fingers or nails.
Katona twins encouraged guitarists to find new contacts and to be active by himself. Not waiting for occasional offerings. Musician must send His CDs to everywhere and knock to every door he see in his way.

I sent my personal letter to them, to which the twins replied kindly
Q:
> 1. How is "twins" in hungarian? Have you tried to use
> your hungarian nature and benefit from being stranger
> to western world?
A:
1 Twins means "ikrek" in Hungarian.
Comment: Hungarian original would be "Katona ikrek" or "ikrek Katona". Maybe its too exotic, indeed. I'm not sure whether introduce myself as "Allar Õunapuu" or "Allar". The first one has It's exotic charm. For europeans, as far as I have got It, the exotic issues are very welcome.

Q:
> 2. How do the twins manage to play in syncro even
> after long pauses marked with fermata? Are the
> longered pauses precisely preconstructed or is there
> some inner telepathy between you two?
A:
2 After a fermata there has to be one person, who shows when to start
again.

Comment: The witness of the concert told me, that Twins can communicate in very discrete way.

Q:
> 3. And from the second question there arises the
> third: How much are your concerts improvisional? I
> don't mean using different notes like in jazz, but
> using slightly different tempos, different breathing
> pauses and accents. How strongly is the music
> preconstructed and do you leave some aspects free to
> play with in concrete circumstances (I do believe,
> that music made in rainy days differs from music made
> in sunny ones)?

A:
3. To play well in an ensemble you have to agree on the interpretation, but it does not mean that we always play the same way.

Q:
> 4. Are you using recording as rehearsal vehicle? Do
> you see recording yourself often as positive or
> negative thing?

4 Recording yourself is a very good idea as you hear things more objectively from outside.

Comment: Katone Twins had busy time, concert in every day. There is no arguing about over-recording or formal approach to music connected to recording (one may just to play clean and forgets about music while recording), I have gone even to theory, that one should not learn the music-theory nor notation too early. Those thoretical vehicles are alienating musician from music's real nature.

For my pleasure Katona Twins declared, that they play by hart. This is obviously prequisite for nice music made by hart.

With best wishes to ikrek-twins,

Allar 19.11.2005, Tallinn

Slava Grigoryan and Saffire. The australian way of quitar

I was in Slava & Leonard Grigoryan concert in Tartu at 2nd of august of 2005 and Saffire quitar-quartet concert in Pärnu one day later. Slava & Leonard are members of Saffire. There are also Karin Schaupp and Gareth Koch. Pretty german names. Name "Grigoryan" name is actually from Kasakhztan.

Let's start form beginning: Tartu, 2nd August. Big hall of "Vanemuise Kontserdimaja". Slava starts to play Suite Castellana by Federico Moreno-Torroba. It's passionate. Slava rises often his right leg and puts it back to the floor with powerful clap. I'ld advise him to use the cover to damp the disturbing noises of shoe clapping. Neverthless, his sound is active and surprisungly fills all of the big hall. I was afraid, that this hall is too big for guitar. But I was wrong.
Then Slava takes baritone-guitar and plays the 1st cello-suite of JS Bach in C as written originally. He reads the music from sheet. This Bach was laud and passionate. But there was no musical control, no character, no breathing. Lack of intellectuality. Bach w/o intellectual clearance just doesn't work. Passion is nice thing to have, but It dies without intellectual help to it. And this observation counts to the whole australian guitar-playing I heared in those 2 days. It's passionate, but "undigested" intellectually. Technically It is OK. I mean, that there are no techincal problems for Slava and Saffire, but this is just the beginning of the musical development.

This is the sin of schools today. When one learns in enforced style just technique and only it, he finds himself in empty space, when he is obtained this very technique. One can play, but to play HOW. He has no answer to it. Because He has studied all those boring hours between 4 walls only technique and you can actually see those 4 walls of emptyness when you are listening to him in live.

This is very critical story from my side. Saffire and Grigoryan's aren't bad players, but for me they produced more headache then pleasure. As pity as it can be.

Victim of orchestra

When Slava played in solo I wondered, why He is so mechanic in pauses. It was evitable, that He added some precise amount of time to pause when it was needed. he was'nt able to "let the silence ring" freely till It's logical end. In solo music I consider this ability as one of the main skills. But this kind of free floating in rhytm is almost impossible in duo or quartet. There must be some kind of agreements made beforehand how long the pauses ought to be. The decision was given to Slava, who gave a signal with His head, when It was needed. Slava's pausings were too passionate. There was just too little pauses left between separate phrases and for me It's same whether you make pauses too short or whether you are taking off the meaning of music. Pauses are filling music with thought. It's like air for living organism. Slava gave too few air and the music wasn't live.

Concert review: Montreal Guitar Trio (further "MGT")
The concert took place in Mustpeade Maja, Tallinn. In Valge Saal (white hall) 23.07.05 at 8 pm.

Folk and academic
This trio can be taken as folk-music players. With the typical sins and virtues it has. The strongest side is the stage-behaviour. They are making jokes, feel free. It was obvious, that the positive response from audience warmed them out at the end. It gives a lot of energy, if performer feels, that the audience is "on his side" not against him. I have felt sometimes this: couple of warm applauses can give the wings. Academic performes aren't usually too relaxed on the stage. But this eminates from the nature of music himself. There is no need for anecdotes, when there is academic music being played. Academic musicians have still something to learn from those folk-fellows.
I liked the approach of "MGT" to guitar though. It was sincere. They were squeezing everything out from guitar. This is the way to go. Best academic players have same attitude. There is no excuse for not to use all power of it.
The sin of folk-musicians is the speed-cult. Excessive speed of music is killing the character in it. It cuts the "sweet corners" out. And, folk musicians aren't usually too form-aware. It is actually the result of speed: If characters are vanishing, the form (or feel of change, returning and ending) is disappearing, too.

Sound balance of ensemble
Negative thing was bad balance between heavily strumming accompaniment and solo-one-string-player. Strummer was too loud for subtle solo-player. Soundengineer can fix this in studio, but in live there is a problem.

Music for background and for listening
Generally the music of "MGT" is for background, not for listening in academic hall. It does not have too much musical meaning in it. But there is lot of technique and rhytm. It was pity, that there was no place to dance. Class of wine would suit perfectly, too. The situation was a bit alienated.

Common motives of other cultures
"MGT" is open for other cultures as one of them acclaimed. But it is not going too far from common imagination about strange culture. If one improvizes on black keys of keyboard and thinks, that he is open to chinese culture, then this is one kind of openness. It is possible to go far further from it. But "MGT"-s intention isn't to go too far. They are staying on "black keys". They are exploiting the common fetishes of other cultures: the common flamenco-rumba, the common indian sitar-bourdon-playing, the common reggey. Nothing too strange. "MGT" is mainstream band. They are excessivly exploiting the listeners "I have heared this somewhere, hey, I know It"-feeling.
Allar

I have uploaded my web-CD to two places:
In www.mp3.au.com
and in www.soundclick.com
Its called "Johann sebastian Bach For My CD-Player" and is firstly intended to my mother, who bought recently one CD-player and complained about lack of CD-s to me.
This is my challenge to provide to my mother music to be listened to.