Virtuoso guitarist Jason Vieaux looks back to look forward
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
MISSION STATEMENT: “High-profile musicians have a responsibility to play new music that they really believe in,” says guitarist Jason Vieaux.
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The first thing you notice about Jason Vieaux, right arm outstretched for a handshake, are his fingernails. His hand is a manicured tiger claw. How does one go in without getting cut? Like Wolverine, can he retract them at a moment’s notice? These nails, these human plectrums, are the required tools of the trade for the career classical guitarist.
Released in late January, Vieaux’s 13th record, Play (Azica), reads as a sort of “pop” record on which he tackles composers as varied as Andrés Segovia and Duke Ellington with grace, expressive intensity and flawless technical execution.
“My 13th release is kind of a record that most guitarists make as their first one, to introduce themselves to the public, playing these really popular pieces. But when I started out, in the ’90s especially, record companies were looking to — you’d do a CD of a composer, so they could catalogue it at Borders and be found more easily,” says Vieaux. “Now, if you come up with a theme or a storyline, you can have various composers represented. So, high-profile musicians have a responsibility to play new music that they really believe in and promote composers making new music.”
These sentiments echo what many within the classical world consider a given — that the form needs to evolve with new works — and Vieaux is well-poised to make that happen. The already skinny line between classicist orthodoxy and vanguard progressivism is thinned even further for the guitar, an instrument with some connections to pre-Christian culture that does not have the same presence in classical music as most other string instruments.
“Even to this day, the guitar is an exotic instrument, more of an ancillary type of thing,” he says. Most of the repertoire grew in the 20th century, thanks to composers like Segovia.
In spite of (or maybe because of) his chosen instrument’s minimized presence, Vieaux consistently attaches himself to genre-transcending projects. Last summer, he performed with a group of renowned Arab musicians working with West Philly-based Al-Bustan and LiveConnections to premiere Kantigas, a guitar-violin-percussion suite composed by Curtis colleague David Ludwig and based on Ladino (pre-1492 Judeo-Spanish) tradition. Future releases, he hopes, will travel through jazz and even hip-hop in a reconciliation of his long-standing interest in “groove-based” music. Vieaux’s longevity, it seems, will be determined by his commitment to pushing toward tradition while broadening its boundaries.
Sat., March 8, 8 p.m., $24-$51, Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts, 314 Linden Ave., Camden, N.J., 856-240-1503, symphonyinc.org.
