Instrumental Influences: Reflections on the Classical Guitar From the Instrument's Most Influential Performers and Pedagogues

WINNER OF THE 2012 INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARD for "Performing Arts/Music RUNNER-UP of the 2011 GLOBAL eBOOK AWARD for "Entertainment/Performing Arts" Six Grammy Award Winners; multiple Grammy Award nominees; many former First Prize Winners in the Guitar Foundation of America International Competition; and many other world-renowned classical guitarists have lent their voices to the first book project of its kind for classical guitar and classical music. Over the centuries, the classical guitar in its various forms has inspired musicians and composers to create some of the world's most beautiful music. The elements of mastering the classical guitar have parallels in other areas of life; some parallels are more obvious than others and may be short-lived, while others reveal themselves over time to endure for a lifetime. Instrumental Influences from Donn LeVie Jr. is a refreshing original work that offers deeper insight into the demands of studying the classical guitar, and the rewards of that relationship that manifest themselves in other areas of the artists’ lives and in the lives of anyone pursuing serious study of the instrument. In Instrumental Influences, the world's best classical guitarists reveal what lessons they have learned through the study of the classical guitar. The book also examines the parallel lessons that emerge from the study of technique, repertoire, memorization, music theory, performances/recitals, teaching, the study of music literature, and much more. Readers will discover in the 60 essays in Instrumental Influences not only the variables that classical guitar students, teachers, and virtuosos must develop over years of practice, but how such acquired, disciplined training opens up other avenues for personal growth. Instrumental Influences is the first project of its type in the history of classical guitar and classical music. In Instrumental Influences for the first time we now have many of classical guitar’s most influential artists and teachers together providing their thoughts on the psychological, emotional, and even physical approach to performing and teaching the classical guitar. Donn LeVie Jr. has assembled nearly sixty original essays from his own experiences with the instrument as well as those of Grammy Award winners, Grammy Award nominees, Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) First Prize winners, and respected teachers. These fresh essays reveal the individual paradigms out of which are forged the qualities that create a caliber of musician that can perform on any world stage, or a teacher with the gift of imparting practical knowledge to some students, and removing the blinders from others. Donn LeVie’s role in this unique contribution has been that of “everyman guitarist,” where his essays present the perspective of anyone and everyone who has taken up the classical guitar, or for that matter, any other musical instrument. As “the ordinary individual” with whom the reader can easily identify—and who at times faces extraordinary learning or performing circumstances—Donn reveals the same struggles, victories, and rewards from the study and performance of the classical guitar that readers and audiences can relate to with head-nodding agreement. After reading the essays in Instrumental Influences, don’t be surprised if you now listen to music with a more discerning ear, approach your study with a renewed vigor, or just see positive changes in other areas of your life, as many of the essay themes reveal. In the words of the great contemporary classical guitar virtuoso, Pepe Romero: “If you are touched by music, you are touched by love in a very pure way.”