Jad Azkoul interview

Posted on September 27th, 2006.
This post was written by Jad Azkoul.

The following is an English translation of a 7-page interview with Jad Azkoul by Oliver Primus that appeared in the German guitar magazine “Gitarre Aktuell”.

Jad: Well, I grew up in New York City and I started like a lot of children playing the piano and, like a lot of children, not enjoying it at all. And then when I was about 10 or 11, we went to Australia, where I became very interested in the guitar. So my parents got me a guitar - by that time I was 12 and a half - made in South Africa with steel strings. And I took some lessons and learned to play with a pick, and really enjoyed that. When I was 13 we left Australia and went to live in Beirut. As I grew older I just started meeting musicians and playing the music of the Shadows and later on the Beatles, the Rolling Stones etc. I went to school there for a few years, then to university where I played in more bands.

Lebanon.

My father had a doctorate in philosophy, he had studied in Bonn, Heidelberg and Munich, where he got his diploma. He was there before World War II. He became a diplomat and represented Lebanon at the United Nations in New York and that’s why I was born in the United States.

Yes. And later on I continued to travel when I became a music student. I started the classical guitar at the late age of 22.

Yes. We were in Iran for one year during the time of the Shah, when I finished High School. Then I came back to Beirut and stayed six years at the university studying psychology.

When I was in Boston there were many times I said: What am I doing here? Who am I? I was 23 and saw the kids of 17, 18, 19 – they could play the guitar like Jimmy Hendrix. Many others played saxophone, the Charlie Parker tunes – some of them were really good. And here I was a little baby. One day I was with musicians from the school; and they were asking me where I was from and what I was doing and I said I was in Beirut and I have a degree etc. and one fellow that I liked a lot said: “You have a master’s degree in psychology? Why are you studying music?” And I thought the best answer for that was to ask him: “Why are you studying music?” I thought that would end there. And he said: “Because I don’t know how to do anything else.” So then I realized that it was I who had chosen to be a musician. And that was a great thing. And it also meant that I had to work very hard.

You know, it was when I took classical guitar lessons in Beirut (just before going to music school) that I heard of Sor and Carulli and Carcassi and Giuliani for the first time in my life. It was at the Berklee School of Music that I heard of Villa-Lobos, Stravinsky and Bartok. I remember thinking after hearing Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” that this was the best rock music I had ever heard! Rock’n Roll for me wasn’t the words, wasn’t the people on stage. It was the beats, the rhythm, the melodies. And I found this somehow to be even richer in classical music. It was also at the jazz school that I realized I wasn’t a jazz musician really. So I turned to classical music, took classical guitar lessons while being a full time student in jazz guitar, arranging and composition. And then I went to Paris where I stayed for five years. Luckily, my academic record was promising so I was able to get a French government’s scholarship; otherwise it wouldn’t have been fianancially possible.

To get back to what I told you about my father, he asked me: “How long do you think it will have to study music?” He thought I’d answer something like “one or two years and I’ll be famous”. I said: “Dad, I don’t know. Five, eight, maybe ten years.” (My father told me later on that this had been a test question, for he said to himself: “I realized that my son was very serious. It wasn’t just a fad.” As it turned out, Oliver, I was a full-time music student from the age of 23 to 33 non-stop, and this after six years of psychology! It was really a great dedication.

When I got to France and I was studying with famous guitar teachers like Alberto Ponce, Oscar Caceres, Carel Harms (the assistant of Lagoya), I was not very satisfied. I could not play very fast, I could not play very loud. I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe I should stop the guitar and just do composition. I was also a composition student. And then I went to a summer course. There was Leo Brouwer, Manolo Saluncar who is a flamenco player, and somebody called Carlevaro. So I said I want to go to Brouwer’s class but I don’t play very well. So I will go as an auditor. But my scholarship sponsors said, look, we pay for the whole thing. And it says here if you are a student with one teacher you are automatically an auditor with the others. So why don’t you go and study with this guy called Abel Carlevaro? Play your little Villa-Lobos for him. And then you can attend the class with Brouwer.

So I went, it was in the lovely city of Arles in France. As Brouwer was absent the first two days, I attended all the Carlevaro classes, listening and watching. On day one, there was an audition with 20 students. After the first five played, Carlevaro said to them, “That was very good. But all of you have the same problem.” This sounded wierd since some people played, I thought, much better than some others. When the next five performed, he said the same thing. And then I played with the remaining four. Again after hearing everyone play he said: “You all have the same problem.” I thought this guy is either crazy or he has something new to reveal.

I waited excitedly for the first lesson to find out what this “problem” we all had was? What he told us was very difficult to understand because none of our teachers had ever mentioned it. He talked about this relationship of the body to the guitar, and what a good sitting position was. And using our arms. It was all very, very strange but most interesting. It’s funny that Carlevaro did not have the stereotype look of the artist. You know, the long hair, long fingers, trendy shirts and a scarf. He looked more like a Uruguayan country person. He didn’t have this aura that guitarists like Segovia or Lagoya portrayed. He was very simple without showing off (he didn’t act like a big star). He just spoke clearly.

It turned out that I was the first to have a lesson, chosen alphabetically. I had been practising Prelude No.1 of Villa-Lobos which I had played in a master class for Oscar Caceres a few month before. I remember that after playing the first two notes Caceres said: “Don’t make that noise.” And the noise was the buzzing of the string against the frets when I played the second note (the E of the 5th string). I learned that I shouldn’t strike the string too hard and how careful I should be. Useful advice that I happily applied. So imagine my amazement when now Carlevaro said: “Don’t make that noise!” Of course the noise he was talking about was the squeak I produced when I did a glissando on the 5th string. I didn’t know that you could take that away. Everyone told me that was natural part of the guitar. So he showed me, and said: “You have to use your arm.” Well, a few trials and suddenly I did it. Of course the other students didn’t realize what was happening because you have to experience it yourself to understand what he was talking about.

And from that day on I was really captivated by everything he said. He talked again about the arm for the left hand, the arm for the right hand. For example, the right hand. He talked about a pianist I had never heard of, Walter Gieseking, and his book “Piano Technique” Gieseking said that to play very loud you must use your arms, not just your fingers on the piano. That makes sense. He said: “But also to play pianissimo you must use your arms.” And on the guitar it was the same. And I said, well, this is what I am learning in composition, in orchestration and this is what I already know about the piano. This is amazing! Is it possible that the guitar is like everything else, it’s not some strange extraterrestrial instrument? It’s a real down-to-earth-instrument! I was just taken by this. Of course when I could I would go and watch Brouwer’s class, and even had a lesson once with him.

But basically I became Carlevaro-fascinated and attended the next two-week master class which was a year later. And again the following year, and another, the fourth, which was in Spain. I was the only one who went to all of them. Why? Probably I saw something I felt was true. I said to myself: “I am not going to give up the guitar. I can play! This man shows me a technique for handicapped people… the first year I used to tell people when I was studying in Paris -: “Hey, I found a great technique. If you are handicapped there is a way to do it!” I remember I practised slurs for the whole year using the whole arm. The next year at the second workshop I went to, Carlevaro said: “Let’s do slurs. Who would like to show us how to do them?” Oh, I was so excited. I went and sat there and did them with my whole hand, with my whole wrist, everything. And he says: “Not with the arm!” So I said “Wow! he has changed his technique since last year”. Of course I was so absorbed by the idea that the arm could be used that I wanted to do it everywhere. I didn’t realize that there was a time for everything.

So I continued these summer studied a lot. And people would come to me in Paris, students who were more advanced than I was to ask me my advice on this technique! And I thought, oh, I have become the expert. And they would bring me wine and cheese as gifts… Every year I used to ask the Maestro, “Can I go and study with you?” And he used to say: “You know, I travel a lot. I am very very busy.” In 1978, during my fourth masterclass with Carlevaro in Madrid, the maestro realized that I was very serious and he said to me: “Would you like to come and study with me?” And I said: “I’ve been waiting for that!”
(to be continued)