Episode 2 of A Year of Bach Podcast features my conversation with the great classical guitarist Jason Vieaux. We talked about the pleasures and sorrows of adapting Bach for guitar, how not to play too big in a recording studio, and the pleasures of live performance.
Jason is hosting a guitar retreat for students of all levels in Benicia, California from October 10 - 12, 2025 — learn more about it here.
My podcast editing AI got a little aggressive on jump cuts! I’m working on getting better at this. As with everything, it’s all harder than it seems to do it right…
Links & references
Jason’s Grammy award winning album Play:
His album Images of Metheny, a desert island disc for me:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kt99hh3nx2Rc2xK1GryK-YLzYu0qiltu4
Jason and Clancy Newman, Live in Philadelphia during COVID:
Fernando Sor’s tricky Etude #1
Ponce’s Sonata Mexicana
And we name-checked a bunch of brilliant guitarists:
David Russell
Julian Bream
Andres Segovia
Christopher Parkening
Zoran Dukic
Lorenzo Micheli
Aniello Desiderio
Kazuhito Yamashita
Marcin Dylla
Colin David
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Chapter markers:
02:43 Techniques and Approaches to Playing Bach
12:48 Teaching and Developing Musical Skills
19:25 The Influence of Julian Bream
23:27 The Essence of Musical Intention
25:08 The Challenge of Recording for Commercial Labels
26:33 Recording Techniques and Spaces
32:18 The Pandemic and Performance
34:50 Pop and Jazz Influences
38:46 Upcoming Projects
Intro music: Adagio of BWV 974, performed by your host on his home piano.
Transcript:
[00:00:00]
Evan Goldfine: Hello everyone and welcome to the second episode of the year of Bach Podcast where I talk with people whose lives have been touched by the great master.
Today I'm very grateful to host one of my musical heroes, Jason Vieaux. That's V-I-E-A-U-X, for everyone who should start typing his name into Spotify or Apple Music right now. Jason's widely recognized as one of the world's finest classical guitarists. I've spent hundreds of hours with his recordings. I recommend them all, but my special favorites are his Grammy award-winning album Play, and of course, Images of Metheny where, Jason adapted the tunes of Pat Metheny for classical guitar.
I've also, of course, enjoyed his two albums of Bach, and today we'll be talking about the special thrills and challenges of adapting Bach for guitar. So Jason, thank you so much for joining us here.
Jason Vieaux: it's my pleasure. Thank you, Evan,
for having me.
Evan Goldfine: Yeah. So [00:01:00] Bach never wrote specifically for the classical guitar, but his works are touchstones for all of us who have picked up a classical guitar.
I was hoping you could speak to the particular pleasures and sorrows about Bach has adapted for the guitar as we play it today.
Jason Vieaux: There Are definitely challenges of transferring the music to the guitar, not only just in playing the notes themselves, the pitches themselves, but making decisions I try to make it sound as if Bach did have a guitarist next to him, a modern guitarist with this more modern instrument, and how he might have made things sound better. In other words, change either octave displacement or, or even fill in, or in the case of cello works make something that sounded more germane to the classical guitar.
And I think that's a good approach because then you don't get too stuffy or analytical about, well, this isn't what he would do. I jokingly say to my students at Cleveland Institute of Music or Curtis, it's like, well, we can't ask [00:02:00] him 'cause he's dead, so if we could ask him, that'd be great, but we gotta just, you know, have a little faith and press on,
Evan Goldfine: Where do you get stuck when you're trying to do the adaptations and what are those decisions that you have to make?
Jason Vieaux: It's more like, it's more like baseline kind of things usually.
Right, or where you have to decide on an octave displacement, a lot of times you get stuck and then you've gotta work backwards, you gotta go to your destination point where that phrase or that section would finish and then kind of work back.
It's like checking your work and, and, I don't know, trigonometry or something like that, you know, math kind of thing. But that's all right. I mean, that's a fun process because it's satisfying when you come to something that you've figured out that sounds good and you feel like it sounds good and that it's something that you can, perform.
It's always hard, it's always difficult to play. The most difficult thing about playing Bach well on the guitar, in my view is making the polyphony sound effortless. Because that's a [00:03:00] big, that's a big thing for me. Like I've refingered Prelude and Fugue and Allegro 998, since I've. When I first learned it at age 20 in 95 I would've been 21.
Just short of when I did my first recital of it, my graduation recital, I was 21. From there on, I probably changed fingerings on that piece. Over 30 years, about four or five times, four or five go rounds. 'cause I, I tend to rotate them in and out of the solo program. I'll play 'em for three years, then I put 'em away for five or seven or something.
Then I bring 'em back mainly because I'm learning other ones and then I want those, or if it's for a record. It's those, periods when you're away that are nice because you're learning new. Things from the stuff that you're adapting from violin or cello or whatever it might be.
I've not really attempted a keyboard one to date. But then you come back to say Prelude and Fugue Allegro or. The third Lute suite [00:04:00] and you have fresher ears, more experience, and that part is very satisfying.
Evan Goldfine: Have you found some of those interpretations to have changed when you came back?
Yeah. Three or five years later. What happens?
Jason Vieaux: Sometimes the tempos get faster, sometimes they get slower. Sometimes they, to some, if they get a little slower, it's again to accommodate more up stem, down stem kind of things. Like things in the, in, you know, that are in the top line that are you start to hear more as, two line type of, things.
And then I want to refinger some of that stuff across two strings to bring that out. You know, just things like that I would've missed when I was in my early twenties,
Evan Goldfine: that's interesting 'cause I find you're playing to be especially orchestral, you know, Segovia describes the guitar as an orchestral instrument.
I think part of that is being able to foreground and background the melodies with the accompaniment. 'cause you're trying to do a number of things with Bach especially are, do you have tricks to keep the contrapuntal lines [00:05:00] clear given the mechanical limitations of the instrument?
Jason Vieaux: Well, one of the things I do more often, this is really an oversimplification of it, is I don't do the thing that I think my best colleagues at the time, say 30 years ago, or where you push, you push your fugue subject line way out in front. Mm-hmm. Like an almost like an 80 20 ratio to the other voices. I like doing now more of a 60 40 if you have the touch to do it because. It's like everything, everything is melody.
So even though maybe a tenor line is not as interesting as, not as the now alto line that is now getting a spotlight for two measures, I don't, I'm not a big fan of subjugating the other lines for the purpose of really pushing this one line out way out in front. So I might give a spotlight to something that I think is particularly melodic, but generally I, I think.
When you, when you do listen to, you know, good performances [00:06:00] of, of Bach or like the orchestral the actual orchestral pieces, Brandenburg concertos and this kind of thing, there's more of like an even mix generally, uh, to the various instruments, the ensemble and that. And so I've always had a, I've always had a kind of a orchestrally minded or group, group of musicians minded type of approach to it. So I guess that's one of the things I think that, that have maybe changed a little bit, or deepened.
Evan Goldfine: I know you, you've been thinking about guitar for pretty much your entire life, but for most of us who are amateurs or less, the idea of moving from 80 20 with, certain melody lines to 60 40 seems like a superhuman achievement because for people who don't play guitar, that could mean, different fingers at different sort of plucking ratios. Yes. And also some left-handed techniques also about how you're gonna be articulating in the left hand.
Jason Vieaux: That's right. Could you talk
Evan Goldfine: a little bit about get, get real nerdy about this?
Yeah. Do you even think about it or is it [00:07:00] natural? How does that work?
Jason Vieaux: I don't have to think about it as much because I mean, uh, to be I, this, I mean I've performed probably somewhere between, at this point, after 32 years professionally, I. Probably 50 to 70 hours of different music. So after a while you're not, it's all that kind of stuff becomes much more instinctive.
But I will say that over the past 15 years, I definitely employ a lot more left hand damping or articulation. Or articulation if I wanna articulate. Say a fugue subject. I'll do a lot more of that with my left hand now than I did with my right hand, say 25 years ago. Because my left hand is just more developed and a lot of why it's more developed is specific challenges in those, dozens of hours of, of music, whether it be avant garde stuff where a composer's asking you to do something that you basically have [00:08:00] never really done before on the instrument or the various textures and things that are in romantic era pieces. Classical era, especially Fernando, but in particular Fernando Sor. Left hand is super, super important in, in Fernando Sors music in general because it's so highly detailed in, its in its polyphony.
He's really often you can almost kind of hear like he's writing for string quartet in a lot of these pieces. Even the so-called simple etudes, which are really not so simple and, and not particularly easy, to play. Sor is a great education in how to voice things on the guitar.
There's a lot.
Evan Goldfine: I love playing through the Sor etudes just because they look really simple like the c and c chord in the first position. Yeah. But you can spend your whole life trying to get it exactly right.
Jason Vieaux: That's right. Like Segovia one, which is, I'm forgetting the opus number right now, but it was in Segovia's collection.
It was number one. It's the three voice chorale in C major. Like that is [00:09:00] not a picnic. And it's, it just always used to crack me up. You know, when I first started teaching. When students would say they studied with, someone or whatever, and that was the first thing they handed them. I was like, well, this, and, and they're like, and they couldn't understand why they've been working with it for five years, 10 years, or this was years ago and I did it and I still can't play it.
I'm like, you realize this is like a very, very difficult piece of music to play. Yeah. And then we're like, really? But it's number one in the Segovia, handpicked etudes, Sor, etudes. And it's an etude, so it should be easy. Right? It's like, no. Sor struggled a lot his whole life with quote unquote dumbing down, right?
The difficulty level of finally, by the end, he started to get it right, like OP 60, the progressive studies, that set of progressive studies, he finally started to, you know, kind of go, oh, wait a minute. And they're not. So I have to come down to their level in order to, [00:10:00] you know, to get them started. But it's nowadays we have like from unlimited, you know, really good, you know, training Etudes, Brouwer for example, was just really kind of the modern.
It's the most obvious example of the 20th century, but since then, you know now really lots of guitar star writing really good things that really help train a first year student, second year student, third, and so on and so forth.
Evan Goldfine: And they're musical, right?
Jason Vieaux: And they're musical.
Evan Goldfine: Exactly. Yeah. Some of the pianos exercise, I, I went back to start playing piano again after many, many years.
And to start at the beginning is pretty brutal. I, I'm, I'm trying to do what I did at this, the time in the beginning where I was learning guitar is try to play the pieces that I like and start from there. And it's a real motivator. Yeah. Uh, for me.
I'd like to go back to Bach and thinking about how, you're thinking about these performances again over the years. When you're approaching one of these piece, are you coming at it like thinking, I have a predisposed idea for what tempo and emotivity [00:11:00] and dynamics are trying to be. Are you feeling it in the moment when you get to the recording studio? Do you have a particular idea? How do you come up with your interpretations? Because I, I think they probably develop over time.
How does that work internally for you? I, I, this is might be a challenging question.
Jason Vieaux: Yeah. It's, it's a challenging question, but it's, I mean, the, it's really simple actually, to answer. I'd never come in with any preconceived notions about anything. When I start a piece of music, I don't have a concept.
I don't, I don't assign anything. My whole thing this whole time is really with, whether it's Ponce, sonatas, or. Transcriptions and arranging is a different animal obviously, but, but say playing, like making the Ponce Sonatas record 25 years ago, or the Albert Albeniz transcriptions even.
I just try to play what's there. I don't really try to do anything I, and that I just make the decisions along the way according to my skill level [00:12:00] and. I think the main kind of thing is, is it, does it sound good? Like my ear? I'm, I, I think if there's anything that I'm good at, it's listening to what my playing is outside of myself.
Like I'm, I'm, that's if if it's the only thing I, if there's one thing I'm good at, it's that like I can, I have a good sense of the performance aspect of what I'm eventually gonna do. I'm not there yet when I start. Right. But I have a good sense of what I want to have happen and how that's going to sound coming out of my instrument in a space, in a live space, which is why live is the best way to hear me actually, despite, I think the recordings are nice, they're fine, but like, really the live, live is really the way to hear me. I would say personally,
Evan Goldfine: I still recommend everybody queue up the Play album, which is just so wonderful. How do you inculcate that kind of skill in your students to be able to listen to yourself [00:13:00] outside of yourself? I think we all have to listen to ourselves speaking outside of ourselves.
Well, yeah. In the world. But how do you do that for musicians?
Jason Vieaux: Well recording, continually telling them to record themselves and, and even if it's not on the best equipment, but just recording early run throughs. Even snippets. It can even just be a section of a piece. If that's ready to go, go ahead and do a run through of it, and play back and listen back so that you're seeing yourself in a, in a kind of a sonic mirror. That's the best way to develop that, that sense. I mean, I had a good fortune of in, in growing up in Buffalo, of playing a pretty fair amount of recitals for a kid. I mean, starting with a full first, full length one at 12.
And in those days, just that we just, someone sort of slapped up a audio recording of it and having it on a cassette tape and listening to it. And then within a year, the local classical radio station, WNED, was [00:14:00] featuring me on something. I'd come into the studio and play something and they go, okay,
we're gonna play this on da da da on this date, and then you and your parents and would tune in to listen. And that's very exciting to hear yourself on the radio, but that's also the sensation of hearing yourself through the radio. It's all this, this, that kind of process. I had a good early education in that.
So, yeah. Um, I think that's a great way for students to develop that sense of being kind of being pretty critical actually of what, what you're hearing. I mean, you can enjoy it and at the same time be of two minds. You can enjoy the accomplishment aspect of it, but okay, now what's next?
What, what? How, how can this, where, what area do I, of the, 200 areas that there are to work on in music, which, you know, what areas do I try to improve in that?
Evan Goldfine: Most lay people don't like to listen to themselves speak. Do you have that experience as a musician or with your students listening back to what you've played and being like, ah, darn it.
Or just, I wish it were [00:15:00] better.
Jason Vieaux: Yeah. It's, it's kind of a lukewarm response from me. It's kind of like, well, that could have, that could have been better. But, you know, every, every time you're making a record, you're really under sort of like some these kind of time constraints that they're, and they're not really conducive to a hyper busy schedule where you're traveling two thirds of every year and then you gotta find a date to slam in, two Bach suites or something, and then you come back another time and then you're working on those in a hotel room after, sometimes after a concert. I mean, I used to do that kind of stuff sometimes with like a couple glasses of wine after the concert. Like, you know, just kind of like, oh my God, I gotta get this, I can't do that anymore. Yeah. I just,
Evan Goldfine: It's an age thing.
Jason Vieaux: It's just an age thing. And I value sleep above everything else, including practice. Actually, I, as you get older, sleepy actually becomes number one and practice number two. Whereas when you're in twenties and thirties, practice is number one and sleep is number two or three or five or whatever, you know?
Evan Goldfine: I [00:16:00] hear you.
Jason Vieaux: Yeah. So it's kind of like you get it in when you can and then you listen to the result and you're like, well, I do that better.
I do that passage better now, but there's, there's probably, it would've been unrealistic to expect that I would play it the way I did then. Then.
Evan Goldfine: Sure.
Jason Vieaux: That I play now after what, 50 performances of that piece. It's of course. It's gonna get. Better and better and deeper and deep. You know, it's gonna become more and more high definition, of course, as you perform it in front of people.
Evan Goldfine: What's that moment?
Jason Vieaux: Let's just, I should just add that half of what you hear on my records, I learned for the records like Bach volume two. Here's a copy of right here, line two. I have it. I have one in here. Yeah, I never did Lute suite number four. I learned that. For the record. So I play the prelude a little faster now because I've now played in about 10 to 15 recitals only starting this time last year.
Evan Goldfine (2): Yeah,
Jason Vieaux: it was when I finally started playing fourth Lute suite. Third Sonata haven't played live yet. Sonata [00:17:00] one played it for since 1999.
Evan Goldfine: Yeah. And how does it feel to get more high definition from going from the initial engagement with a piece where you can play it with facility and it sounds okay.
Jason Vieaux: Mm-hmm.
Evan Goldfine: To going high def, what does that. Look like to you? How did the performances at the end differ?
Jason Vieaux: It was awesome. It was awesome. Because you're moving forward, you're not moving backwards and you're not standing still 'cause you're moving. You're just it's moving. The thing is moving forward. Yeah.
And it's great. Yeah. Yeah.
Evan Goldfine: And the deepening, you get more connected to something when you keep going.
Jason Vieaux: Yeah, yeah, for sure. One of those things that's hard. I played Ponce, Sonata, Mexicana last weekend, and two weekends before that. Those two performances were the first time I'd done that piece in 10 years.
And, and the, the previous 10 years of life experience and musical experience that went, that went into just prepping them and getting 'em ready to play in front of other [00:18:00] humans was like amazing. Like it's just so much deeper. It's just so much more real, then, and that's why the, that's why I try to tell my students that are making recordings and stuff like that, just remember that this is a snapshot.
This is like a photograph of you. Like as a, pimply, 14-year-old or whatever, right now you're gonna look back on this in just two years and go, oh my God, I play that. So I look so much better now. Right. We relate that to sound it's all really about growth.
Evan Goldfine: I wonder how to explain that to people. 'cause I've, you know, you live with maybe some, the way that people engage with certain pop music they loved, like, you know, how does the first Pearl Jam album feel to you now versus when it came out when you were a kid or you know, speaking I listen to Bach differently now than I did when I got the first Segovia guitar record. I was like, what is this? It like kind of knocked me back. Oh. Just getting deeper and deeper into it enriches it and all of us as listeners, if you can listen deeply, it's another layer deeper when you're [00:19:00] actually playing it.
And that's a sort of pleasure that's reserved for musicians. I. Right. And maybe actors too.
Jason Vieaux: Oh, I think so. For actors, I think for anybody in the arts. And, but in general, I think that's the, is the thing is because it's, it's quite normal and should be expected that you, well, one, this is kind of a two part answer.
One well, one that early on, if you're doing anything right, you probably should be rejecting. Some of the, previous things that you, thought were great, like, I had to get away from Bream. Honestly, when I, my teacher suggested John Holmquist when I got to college I was 17.
And, he wasn't just him like, Carlos Barbosa-Lima Alice Artzt, David Russell, they heard a lot of Bream influence in my playing, and that was purely from records. 'Cause that was my guy, right? Like of, you know, between Segovia and Parkening. I [00:20:00] loved the Parkening recordings that we had too, especially in the Spanish style.
My dad and I wore that out. But Bream consistently excited me as a listener, right? And so much so that I wasn't actively trying to, I wasn't never actively, actively trying to copy his style. I never, that never even entered my mind. It just. I just took on some of those kind of things 'cause I was 13, you know, 12, 13, 14 years old, so a couple of people mentioned in masterclasses you like when I play, you know, Choros number one, like boy this really sounds like you sound a bit like Bream or whatever. When I, when I play it or whatever. And I'm glad they mentioned it at the time. Of course. It was shocking to me to hear that right.
And then my teacher, like I said, when John Holmquist at Cleveland Institute of Music, where I taught now for 27 years, he basically made, he basically suggested that I not listen to those [00:21:00] records, you know, or to his records to get away from that because it was time to start, first of all, listening to other players, even those that I might not immediately like right away.
That was the key thing too. Because when you're young, you immediately judge something and you toss it or you own it, you know, like you love it and it's, there's not a lot of in-between. More like extremes that way, and then you learn to appreciate things and you start taking, bits and pieces.
You're not actively working 'em into your interpretation. They're more like, they percolates slowly or they sort of steep like, like a, like tea or something like that. They kind of, they steep very slowly over time and I think those influences then become more rich, more richer. And then when you listen to Bream, you either reject that or listen with fresh ears
but that was all over with by the time I was in my late twenties. That Was the direct result of touring
Evan Goldfine: because you got different feedback from the audiences [00:22:00] that let you go
Jason Vieaux: through. I, wasn't the feedback from the audiences. I've always been able to please audiences, but I never really cared that much about what they thought.
Evan Goldfine: Oh, wonderful.
Jason Vieaux: I take my pleasures now as I did then. From the fact that they didn't throw tomatoes at me and they seemed to enjoy it. They called me back for an encore or two. They, or they stood up, you know, when they stand up, that means they really liked it, you know, or what, you know, stuff like that.
And that's about the furthest I ever thought about. I never I dig. I was telling students this last week at this festival in Connecticut, 'cause they asked me these same questions and I said I wanna get to, I just wanna be in a place where I am digging, like I'm a member of the audience and I'm listening to this guy play.
And I go, I am digging everything that that person is doing. That's the way I want to, that guy is the way that I wanna play. But you're the one doing it. That's a great, that's a very good place to be. I know that sounds egotistical, but it's not. Because that's what [00:23:00] we're all actually trying to get to you're answering to nobody really after a while, but yourself.
And that should take place if you're a proper musician. Like you should have that voice, that inner guide, that inner compass should be firing by the time you're in your late twenties, early thirties. For sure. Yeah.
Evan Goldfine: Can we go back to Bream for a moment?
Jason Vieaux: Sure. Yeah. Why not?
Evan Goldfine: I love Julian Bream.
Jason Vieaux: Oh, yeah.
Evan Goldfine: For these listeners who don't know Julian Bream, go listen to a lot of Julian Bream. For me, the genius of Bream is that it feels like every note is so perfectly placed. It is just so songlike and lyrical at every moment. And I, I hear that still in your playing, that those aspects, at least
Jason Vieaux: that's
Evan Goldfine: so what does that work
Jason Vieaux: He had a natural intention behind every note. He's not second guessing anything. There's no, that's what it sounds like. It sounds, it's the it's, it sounds like somebody who gives zero Fs. About what I think about what [00:24:00] you think and about what the audience thinks. I love it.
And when I listen to that today that's what I hear. It's full one. It's like it's close to 100% intention. There's no hesitation. He says what he, he's he means what he says. He says what he means. That's the kind of people I like to listen to and I don't, you can take two guitarists and they're wildly different, but marans like that.
Marcin Dylla is like one of my favorite players of all time, Zoran Dukic, you know, it can be different every time, especially with Zoran. But like, those are just two examples. Lorenzo Micheli, holy cow, that's something like, it's just all, they're inside of the music and you can tell they're not playing....
they're playing for your enjoyment. But they would play that way. Whether you and I were there or not. I love it.
Evan Goldfine: And none of these guys are particularly showy players either. Do you know the Japanese guitarist? Kazuhito Yamashita.
Jason Vieaux: Oh God. Unbelievable.
Evan Goldfine: Yeah, like chops to, [00:25:00] from here to eternity. But I don't find his records particularly pleasing. There's too much. Going on.
Jason Vieaux: He's better, he seemed more convincing Live, right? Is is, let's say that on records, right? I think I'm more convincing live than on records. So too, because the thing about making records is you gotta get, you gotta make records.
They're commercial records. If you're recording for a commercial label, like there is, I'll be honest, I mean, I know a lot of people don't wanna hear this, but you can't blast away like you're on stage playing to a thousand people at Kaufman Hall in New York City. Like, you can't play that way.
The mics are 10 feet, eight to 10 feet from you. They're gonna sound, it's gonna be like, eh, God, why? Why is this person screaming at me on a recording? And it's gonna sound like, like, okay, okay. It's like all caps. It's gonna sound like all caps, right? They gotta get reigned in. Someone with a big sound.
I have a big sound like Zoran got a big sound Aniello Desiderio , big sound, [00:26:00] Kazuhito, like massive personality through the thing. My, knowing what I know about making commercial records, they probably had to reign and they probably had to kind of rein him in a little bit. Or else all you'd hear was all this rattling of bass strings and, and just the detritus that's coming off of that right hand.
From like, he's like a John Daly. Like, yeah, John Daly was the golf, right? He's just swinging for the fences. Like there's no, there's no halfway with that guy. Right? So it's, it's kind of like, so those players sometimes don't translate on record. They may, they translate better live. And I think to a lesser extent, I, I do that as well.
I try to bridge. Those two things as best I can, but honestly, when you're like, I had to really learn how to create the sound of something that's loud on an open E string or D string without actually playing loud. Because if you play loud, the thing's gonna rattle.
Evan Goldfine: How do you do that?
Jason Vieaux: Uh, you play thin you, you thin out your tone [00:27:00] angle.
You don't play with your rich David Russell, sort of, sweet, dark, chocolatey tone, you know, angle, you know, you play straight across the string for that one note, right? And maybe a little bit more toward the bridge than you want to play. You gotta do these little tricks like that to keep Oh yeah.
Evan Goldfine: That kind of keeps the tone inside a little
bit.
Jason Vieaux: Keep it, to keep it clean. You gotta make a clean recording for radio because the record company's trying to get that stuff on the radio.
Evan Goldfine: The loudest record. I'm thinking about Your repertoire might be the Metheny album.
Um, not Images of Metheny, the one of his. Oh. He wrote for you to play right, that has some really big guitar. Sounds an absolutely amazing achievement of an album. I'd love for you to talk about that a little bit.
Jason Vieaux: that's not my producer, obviously. That's Pat producing.
Evan Goldfine: Right?
Jason Vieaux: So he, I
Evan Goldfine: He wanted that big, big sound.
Jason Vieaux: You want I by, if we're gonna make a comparison, he, the classical way of the, the more traditional classical thing of, of recording a guitar [00:28:00] is like I'd said like our, our guys, you know, like Alan does something between, I'm gonna give a really rough estimate, but like seven to 10 feet from the thing, and then he may put a couple mics in the back of the space to pick up ambiance so you get spatial depth. So it sounds like I'm playing in a nice, nice small concert hall. We have a wonderful space now to record it. Not that church that Play in everything before was, that was overly reverberate.
I never loved that place. I liked it, but I always thought that those were overly reverberate. The space that we have now that you hear on volume two and the next record coming up this fall. That's coming out is in this newer space and also the Escher String Quartet record is done in the new space.
It's in Indiana. Anything from 16 after that, Pat's approach of course is a bit different, right? It's a little bit more closer to the way he records things in general. I don't mean to speak for Pat because he know, I mean, I'm, I probably know just a [00:29:00] sliver of what he knows about recording a guitar or production or anything like that.
But it's closer. It's like you're more like inside the guitar.
Evan Goldfine: Yeah.
Jason Vieaux: So there are classical guitar recordings like that, but I like that kind of little bit of space between the mics and the guitar to get the sense that it's kind of nice to hear a guitar, like you're sitting in the fifth row of like of like a small, like a good concert hall that holds like the one that's good for guitar, one that holds like 300 seats type of, yeah. Yeah, but it's like with terrific acoustics that's the kind of thing we've got now. It's amazing
Evan Goldfine: when you first play start that Pat album, the Four Paths of Light,
it feels like, it's like that, it blows your head back, like in the very first string, uh, for the first moments. It's so exciting. And also very different from a lot of the other, uh,
Jason Vieaux: and that's exactly what he wanted. He had me playing with strokes with my right hand. I was playing them with my arm, so I was going, like, I was, I was basically using elbow joint and stuff, like it [00:30:00] was never loud enough for him.
He's like, can you, can you even me more? He is like, he said, he goes at one point, he's like. All right. That's good. That's good. But like, don't, he said Don't be afraid. I know. I get it. You guys like, you guys being classical guitars, like these guys, you guys are very careful about overplaying the string, right?
And, and rallying. He's like rattle away. He's like, I want you to get in touch with your inner Pantera is nice.
It's fun on the first movement, right?
Evan Goldfine: On the first, right? No, it's huge. It's huge. Very cool. You've recorded some of these works of Bach for guitar. Not, not all of them.
The biggest, most famous one is the D minor violin sonata the famous Chaconne.
Jason Vieaux: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Evan Goldfine: What are your feelings about that piece as it's arranged for guitar? Is that something that is on your mountaintop? Are you waiting to do that one? What do you feel?
Jason Vieaux: Yeah, it's not so much of a mountaintop thing, I guess.
I mean, in some ways I've always, I, I play, I played, I learned the Chaconne in high school. I've been basically [00:31:00] working on it with students for, I don't know, 32 years really, or, or 30 years or something like that. I mean, I've been at CIM for 27, 28, Curtis for 13, 14, 14 now. And so, especially, particularly at Curtis, I'm working on Chaconne like every year with someone all through the whole school year, so.
There's so many different transcriptions of it. And at this point I would almost rather if I had an AI type of brain, like I could process it in my brain. I'd rather have AI just cherry pick what my proclivities would decide are the best, you know, kind of ways of doing it rather than have to do the work myself.
But eventually I'm gonna have to do the work myself if I do it. And that is a future recording that I like to do. Yeah. In the way that volume two completed. D Lute works by doing the fourth Lute suite, which is even, we call it a violin works cd. Of course it's the third partita, right?
Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm.
Jason Vieaux: By eventually [00:32:00] completing The Sonatas by doing the second sonata, that would make a record right there.
Second Sonata and second partita done. 60 minutes.
Evan Goldfine: Well, I'm glad we've decided together.
Jason Vieaux: Yeah. Eventually I'd like to. I'd like to get to that. Uh, my playing is really getting pretty strong right now. I mean, it's in a really good place.
Evan Goldfine: Does it feel like you're like climbing another step?
Jason Vieaux: I'm
actually kind of making another, well, the pandemic is really kind, I have to say, it really kind of took a chunk outta me. It took the wind outta my sails. 'cause I was, I, I was such an trained animal by my profession that when I didn't have.
You know, initially anything to really prepare for. And then even then, like when people were starting to piece things together through virtual concerts, like the virtual experience, for me personally, just didn't really Yeah. Do
Evan Goldfine: many of us.
Jason Vieaux: Yeah. Because that's what we all learned, right? As humans.
That there's something about [00:33:00] the all of us in a room, in a space together. And there's an energy there. And that's a thing. That's a real thing. I think that's what we really discovered. So like a lot of these more tech-minded people at the time that were writing articles, a million things came out on your media outlets or whatever came out on your phone. Oh, and this, you know, people are gonna, this is gonna change things forever. 'cause then when, when the pandemic's over, people are gonna continue to do this at home. And I was like, that doesn't that doesn't sound right at all.
You're really gonna go. You know, see Metallica or Coldplay or whatever, or, or whatever pick Yeah.
Evan Goldfine: On your screen.
Jason Vieaux: Yeah. Oasis or whatever. You're really gonna go see Oasis on your screen if you have the money and time, to go see him at a stadium, please.
Evan Goldfine: Jason, you had a pandemic at a concert with a cellist named Clancy Newman from Philadelphia.
Jason Vieaux: That's a good one.
Evan Goldfine: That concert is amazing, including the. Cello and Guitar Sonata by [00:34:00] Radames Gnattali.
Jason Vieaux: Oh yeah. I love that piece. I play that a lot.
Evan Goldfine: Such a cool, that's the first time I heard it when I heard that streamed, and it is just a gem of a piece. It's my and I went down the rabbit hole listening to other recordings, and that live recording is, I think, the finest recording of that piece.
Jason Vieaux: Oh, thanks. Yeah, that was a good, that was a good, I was starting to get a little bit more used to the thing, the thing, 'cause it felt like you had to learn how to perform in a way all over again when you're when it's virtual. But then that they allowed by that point. They had allowed, uh, 30 people that were distanced in the hall.
Evan Goldfine: Mm-hmm.
Jason Vieaux: So that was nothing.
Evan Goldfine: At least
there were some people there. Right. They probably changed it. That was it. You got the
energy.
Jason Vieaux: Oh, yeah. If there was five people that would've changed it for me. That was, that's the whole thing. I mean, it's like, if there's one person in front of me and they're there.
I mean, my dad told me that when I was a kid. You gotta play to that person. Like you're playing to a thousand people.
Evan Goldfine: Yeah.
Jason Vieaux: Yeah. Right. Well,
Evan Goldfine: thank you so much for taking the time to chat today. There's one, question I wanna end with, so I wanna [00:35:00] switch to gears about another band that we both love.
In the immediate aftermath of the death of Steely Dan's Walter Becker, you posted, attributed to him a video arranging a bunch of Steely Dan tunes. It sounded thrown together, but what I am requesting is Steely Dan cover album in the same way that you did the Metheny cover album. And what do you think about that?
Jason Vieaux: I do. I do think that, and my producer, uh, also, has, that's a possible record that's on the table, like the works of, Fagen and Becker and stuff like that. That would be a very easy record to, honestly, like I've, I've arranged so much pop music and jazz material for the guitar by this point.
A lot of it off the cuff on request. Yeah. You know, like I've done it at festivals with, for a friend or something like that, you know, like a Stone Temple Pilots song or whatever. Right. But for my boss at CIM I did an arrangement of Limelight, by rush or whatever. Just because, just because they, it was, that was like the request.
That was meant as a medley and that happened like the, I think I put that up the day after.
[00:36:00] Or something?
Evan Goldfine: Something and it in the immediate aftermath..
Jason Vieaux: I remember having to practice it at home and I actually asked my wife and my kids were really quite small then I was like, could, if could you put them to bed? And then I, because I'm gonna need a couple hours to kind of run it down. And then I took several takes and that was the cleanest one. And it was like 2:00 AM and I'm like, all right, that's going out. That have to be it. But I listened to that back again.
I was like, that's a lot. I mean, that's, that's a lot to do. In one afternoon,
Evan Goldfine: i, I think you have a lot of people listening to that one. I, I'd love to hear more of your pop covers. It's not easy to do, and I think I, I'll close by saying that your sensibility with pop and jazz informs the composed stuff that you're interpreting that kind of, uh, ear for different styles of rhythm and um, and integration of harmony and dance helps everything.
Jason Vieaux: And it does.
Evan Goldfine: You really hear in the music.
Jason Vieaux: It does. In the nineties and stuff when, you know, sort of the coming in age years, some, some [00:37:00] people, musicians in a given community would say, well, don't you feel that might prohibit, your experience or learning with, of like say Bach 'cause you also play a lot of Bach and whatever.
Do you feel like this kind of works its way into this or the other thing? It's never felt like one encroached on the other, that one suspended the other or anything like that. Like I've never, and also when it comes to say this idea of crossover, I think you've probably noticed, 'cause you seem to know my catalog really well and li and live performances and stuff on, on YouTube from radio stations and whatnot.
I've never had a desire to cross hybridize to say Rock up Bach? No. Or Bach up? No, no. Or Bach up Rock? No. Like, always sounded, it's always cheesy. Sounded cheesy to me. And it, it was never really convincing. If I now. It's different if I do. What a wonderful world that has like a dash of Joni Mitchell and a pinch of like [00:38:00] Brazilian That's what pop music is really good at doing is you can, I. You can sort of, you can spin the thing into another thing, but a piece by, but something like by Bach or whatever, or like, I just can't, it's just like it doesn't need anything else to me.
Evan Goldfine: Yeah. There have been some people in my listening over the course of the year, people have said, you should listen to this.
I've listened to Jacques Loussier Trio who did like these jazzed up versions of the classics. Oh, not great. Yeah, not great. And then, I'm trying to remember, there were a couple others. The s Swingle sisters or the Oh, the
Jason Vieaux: Swingle singers. My dad had
Evan Goldfine: singer. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Vieaux: Do bottom, it's like, yeah. Okay. I mean, they look.
Evan Goldfine: If it gets
people into it, fine. Right. Like if it gets people interested, but that's not, uh, those are more novelty acts and that's not what we're going for here. All right, Jason, well thank you again. What's your third album? What's volume three looking like for the fall?
Jason Vieaux: Well, volume three would be after the one that's coming up in the fall. It's actually all [00:39:00] my compositions, all my,
Evan Goldfine: oh, wow.
Jason Vieaux: All like, um, mostly like, uh, intermediate, etude kind of things for students, but then some sort of con pieces you can play in concert.
They're, they're perfectly harmless. They're mostly kind of like Americana sort of influence type of things. But I've been playing, I played one this last, these last two cities the new one called Tidal Pools for the first time. And it's gotten great response from it.
And Home is a tremolo piece and there's a couple really great guitarists that are playing 'em now. Colin Davin and Bo Kyung Byun. She's a GFA winner. So people are already starting to play that, which is wild. So
Evan Goldfine: yeah, who knows? Just
Jason Vieaux: the
Evan Goldfine: world. Alright, well Jason, thank you again. Uh, I'll put some links in the description to get everybody to click on all this wonderful music you've, uh, made and shared with us today.
Thank you again.
Jason Vieaux: Thanks, Evan.
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