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Bill & Ben
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Their space is made of strings acoustic strings. Strings have their own kind of chemistry, and steel and nylon played together have their own subtle dynamic and exchange. They talk back and forth, like old friends who don't get together as often as they'd like to.
Something original is going on. Part of it is the mix of strings themselves - one guitar strung with steel, another strung with nylon. We seldom hear this. Ben Verdery says that he tried it once before, in a couple of tunes recorded years back with Leo Kottke. It makes a very pleasing mix of textures, like silk laid next to satin. One helps to define the other.
But the more important chemistry is what the performers release in one another as they play. Bill Coulter and Ben Verdery have found a unique and energizing partnership. They first met back in 1984, when Ben was on a west coast tour and performing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Bill, who had recently moved to the region, saw it announced in the local paper. At the time he didn't know much about Ben Verdery. "The concert just sounded interesting," he said. "So I went, and with the first piece I fell in love with this guy's music." Afterward he introduced himself. They started talking and quickly found that they had a lot in common. Ben needed a ride down the hill to his hotel. They had a few beers and kept talking two young guys who shared a passion for the guitar. Though they lived on opposite sides of the continent, they stayed in touch and performed together for the first time in 1990. Bill had been exploring Celtic music and was putting an album together. He invited Ben to join him on one of the tunes. Three years later they teamed up for two more tunes on another of Coulter's CD's, and afterward started talking, in a general way, about doing more together. It had become a musical relationship they both savored, easy and fluid, with lots of agreement on how arrangements should go and how best to manage such matters as intonation and improvisation, to release the instrument's full range of feeling.
While listening to Bill & Ben's new release, Song for our Ancestors, one will note that most of these tunes have been around for a while, some for centuries. There are family lines, and there are musical lines. Many ancestries and influences converge in these twelve pieces from Ireland, from Germany, from Spain, Africa, and Tibet. Two were composed by the musicians themselves, and are recorded here for the first time. Bill Coulter's "An Daingean", was written for a seacoast town in the southwest of Ireland. He wrote the piece to celebrate his brother's wedding there and the rare beauties of that place. Ben Verdery's "Keanae", was inspired by a remote peninsula on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Yet the sound is fresh.
What we get from Bill & Ben is a guitar performance at its most intimate. There is a heartfulness here, and a meditative quality. Each musician goes inward to his still center, in order to come outward with a shared sound that is masterful yet vulnerable.
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William Coulter
William Coulter has been recording and performing traditional music since 1981. He has performed with the bands Isle of Skye, Orison and, currently, with the Coulter-Phillips Ensemble. He has recorded two solo albums, Celtic Sessions and Celtic Crossing, as well as three albums of traditional Shaker melodies with cellist Barry Phillips, Simple Gifts, Tree of Life and Music on the Mountain, all on the Gourd Music label. William has appeared on compilations produced by the Narada label, Windham Hill Records and Hearts of Space. Four of these recordings have appeared on the top ten lists of Billboard Magazine. In 1998, William produced Celtic Requiem for Windham Hill Records, which features vocalist Mary McLaughlin.
As well as touring and recording, William Coulter works as a producer and recording engineer, and teaches guitar at the University of California, Santa Cruz. During the summer months he teaches at a number of music camps including the California Coast Music Camp, the National Guitar Summer Workshop and Alasdair Fraser's Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddling School.
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Benjamin Verdery
Distinguished as "one of the classical guitar world's most foremost personalities," by Classical Guitar Magazine, "an American original, an American master," by Guitar Review Magazine, and "iconoclastic" and "inventive" by The New York Times, Benjamin Verdery has enjoyed an innovative and eclectic musical career.
Since 1980, Benjamin has released over 15 albums, his most recent, Branches, features works by J.S. Bach, Strauss, Jimi Hendrix, Mozart and the traditional Amazing Grace. His recording, Start Now, won the 2005 Classical Recording Foundation Award for his unique gifts as performer and composer, and his recording, Some Towns and Cities, won the 1992 Best Classical Guitar Recording in Guitar Player Magazine. Benjamin has recorded and performed with such diverse artists as Andy Summers, Leo Kottke, Anthony Newman, Jessye Norman, Paco Peña, Hermann Prey and John Williams (with whom he recorded Vivaldi's Concerto in G Major for Two Mandolins for Sony Classical).
A prolific composer, Benjamin Verdery's compositions have been performed and recorded by John Williams and John Etheridge, The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and David Russell among others. Benjamin's Etudes for guitar orchestra was commissioned by the Tidewater Classical Guitar Society and premiered at the 2004 Virginia International Festival. Doberman-Yppan (Canada) is currently publishing his solo and duo works for guitar and Alfred Music has published the solo pieces from Some Towns & Cities as well as instructional books and video.
Since 1985, Mr. Verdery has been the chair of the guitar department at the Yale University School of Music and is the Artistic Director of the Yale Guitar Extravaganza, a one-day guitar conference featuring guitarists and artists in concert and lectures. In 2005, Benjamin was also appointed curator of 'The Guitar' at the prestigious 92nd St Y, NY, NY.
For information on Songs for Our Ancestors go to Benjamin Verdery, click on Recordings and Songs for Our Ancestors.
Note: The above link will take you off the Gami/Simonds site. Please bookmark the GAMI/Simonds site or this page and/or click back arrow to return to Gami/Simonds page.
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NO BOUNDRIES
Ben Verdery and William Coulter met in 1984, when Coulter attended a Verdery recital at the University of California at Santa Cruz and fell in love with his music. They spoke afterward and found that they had common ideas about arranging, improvising, and the guitar. Ten years later, Coulter invited Verdery to be a guest performer on a recording he was making, Celtic Crossing, and the interaction left them both wanting more.
The collaboration wasn't much of a stretch for Verdery, whose 1992 recording Some Towns and Cities featured Leo Kottke on steel-string guitar. Verdery does not see clear divisions between popular, classical, ethnic, and jazz music and is just as likely to cover Jimi Hendrix or Price in concert as Bach and Lou Harrison.
Although Coulter has made a name for himself over the past 20 years performing and recording Celtic and American Shaker music on steel-string guitar in open tunings, he, too, was primed for the Songs for Our Ancestors project, having trained first as a classical guitarist. "Bill is an accomplished classical guitarist, who went D A D G A D," Verdery quips. The challenge for Coulter was creating arrangements for guitars only; most of his previous recordings feature guitar and other traditional instruments, such as fiddle and flute.
The material on Songs for Our Ancestors comes from Ireland, Africa, Tibet, and the United States.
When it came to choosing tunes for the recording, "trad" instruments were the obvious place to start. "Both Ben and I love traditional melodies from many places," says Coulter. "The traditional Irish slip jig 'Drops of Brandy' and the traditional Shaker melody 'How Great Is the Pleasure' are tunes that I have known for a while. Also on the record are tunes that come from Ben's interest in world music, as far-reaching as a Tibetan chant and an African mbira tune."
Improvisation, composition, and reading come naturally to both musicians. Their parts for the duets were developed through improvisations, which inspired the ideas that led to the final arrangements. "Bill and I are not improvisers in the sense that we play blistering solos over chord changes," Verdery explains, "but we allow flourishes and nuances to occur that might no have occurred in rehearsal. The intro to 'Frieze Britches' was completely improvised, and that was really fun to do."
Their work together was made easy by a common background and a shared sense of humor. "Our playing techniques and concepts of sound are similar," says Verdery, "and we have very sympathetic work styles. We both cry when the guitars go out of tune and then debate whether we should smash them. We make rude sounds in the recording sessions. And we both do 60 takes when we need only three!"
BY SCOTT CMIEL
For information on Songs for Our Ancestors go to Benjamin Verdery, click on Recordings and Songs for Our Ancestors.
Note: The above link will take you off the Gami/Simonds site. Please bookmark the GAMI/Simonds site or this page and/or click back arrow to return to Gami/Simonds page.
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