{"id":9311,"date":"2018-03-12T16:25:24","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T23:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=9311"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:25:24","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T23:25:24","slug":"sergio-assad-on-piazzolla-the-beatles-ginastera-transcriptions-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/sergio-assad-on-piazzolla-the-beatles-ginastera-transcriptions-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"S\u00e9rgio Assad on Piazzolla, the Beatles, Ginastera, Transcriptions, and more"},"content":{"rendered":"
BY BLAIR JACKSON, WITH MARC TEICHOLZ | From the Spring 2018 Issue of Classical Guitar<\/em><\/h6>\n

T<\/span>he instant we conceived of a Special Focus section on \u201cArranging and Transcribing for Guitar,\u201d it was clear that S\u00e9rgio Assad would have to be part of it. After all, even though we published an interview with him just a few issues ago, that was solely about composing. He has been important and esteemed as an arranger as well, helping bring so many wonderful pieces, spanning centuries from the Baroque to modern pop, into the guitar repertoire. Much of that work was for the duo he has played in with his brother Odair for the past five decades, but he also arranges for solo guitar and for configurations with other instruments. We have Assad to thank for the first guitar version of Piazzolla\u2019s now-ubiquitous Four Seasons of Buenos Aires<\/i>, for fresh takes on the Beatles via Milo<\/span>\u0161<\/span> Karadaglic\u2019s\u00a0Blackbird<\/i> album<\/a><\/strong>, for the forthcoming Pablo Villegas-Placido Domingo album, for the revelatory versions of piano pieces by Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth on the latest album by Marc Teicholz, and for so many other pieces in every style imaginable.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, it was San Francisco Conservatory of Music teacher Teicholz\u2019s 2017 all-Nazareth album, Celestial<\/i><\/strong><\/a>\u2014and hearing the guitarist play numerous versions of Assad\u2019s compositions over the last couple of years\u2014that led me to ask Marc to be part of this interview about S\u00e9rgio\u2019s arranging work. It\u2019s fair to say that few know the depth of Assad\u2019s work the way Marc does. The two became quite close during the period Assad taught at SFCM, and they have remained close\u2014when S\u00e9rgio came out to the SF Bay Area from Chicago in November 2017 to lead a workshop (and to attend a lecture by his internationally known astrophysicist wife, Angela Olinto, at the University of California at Berkeley), he stayed with Marc in his home. And it was there that the three of us convened late one afternoon, as the sun was setting across San Francisco Bay, for a freewheeling conversation about arranging.\u00a0 <\/span>\u2014BJ<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

SERGIO ASSAD:<\/b> Well, the first thing to do is define what \u201carranging\u201d is. Because sometimes people confuse what is arranging and what is transcribing. What would I call what I did with the Nazareth? Arranging? I think it\u2019s more an attempt to transcribe what he actually wrote, because I didn\u2019t change his harmony and I mostly copied his notes. In places where the [piano] texture was much thicker for an instrument with limitations like the guitar, I actually had to remove a lot of notes. So you have to choose the notes you want to keep there to keep the integrity of the chord, and the harmony. I probably changed keys here and there too, because the guitar is good in certain keys where you have open strings. So I wouldn\u2019t call that \u201carranging\u201d exactly, though you are required to pay attention to certain details. You have to choose the right notes; sometimes you even have to change the written notes a little bit in order to fit under the fingers. <\/span><\/p>\n

My approach, whether it\u2019s transcribing or arranging or writing music, is to make it as comfortable for the player as I can. If you have to struggle and stretch too hard, it becomes too complicated and it\u2019s not good for the instrument. Yet there are some composers for guitar who don\u2019t go through that, and they\u2019ve got all these impossible things for the left hand, but the music is good and we don\u2019t want to change their notes. It can be frustrating to play, however.<\/span><\/p>\n

CLASSICAL GUITAR:<\/b> With something like the Nazareth are you working exclusively from original scores, or do you listen to recordings, too?<\/span><\/p>\n

ASSAD:<\/b> Just from scores.<\/span><\/p>\n

MARC TEICHOLZ:<\/b> But with the Piazzolla Seasons<\/i>, weren\u2019t you working from recordings?<\/span><\/p>\n

ASSAD: <\/b>Yes. That was a different approach altogether. Nowadays, you can usually find the original notes in published scores. I think those were published by Berben; there were several publishing companies. But when I think back in time, like in the \u201970s, when I started working with the music of Piazzolla, there were no scores. He was still with his quintet and most of the manuscripts were not published. So the only way of approaching that music was like what they do in the jazz world\u2014copying the solos [from records], listening to the harmonies and all that; you really have to do it by ear. So that\u2019s what I did. But translating his quintet to two guitars, or one guitar, was very difficult. It\u2019s not exactly getting all the notes that are there and translating them to the instrument; it\u2019s understanding the harmony he\u2019s applying and making that sound guitar-like. It\u2019s a little like re-composing<\/i> what he did into the guitar vocabulary. Trying to not go fancy and not do things that are impossible for the instrument. Piazzolla\u2019s music was so thick in terms of texture, with a lot of polyphony going on, that some things were impossible to translate. So you make choices. That\u2019s what an arranger does.<\/span><\/p>\n

CG:<\/b> Why is it that Piazzolla became so popular with guitarists and arrangers? Aside from the appealing and somewhat exotic nature of the music, is there something specific to, say, the way the bandone\u00f3n creates a melody that makes it more easily translatable to guitar than some other instruments?<\/span><\/p>\n

ASSAD:<\/b> I don\u2019t think so. If you think about music in Latin America, there is quite a range. There are classical-labeled composers like Ginastera or Villa-Lobos, composers like Jobim that are really traditional Brazilian music, and then you have someone like Piazzolla who sits right in the middle. He\u2019s not a composer like Jobim, but he\u2019s also not like Ginastera. His music has more elements to it than just a single beautiful melody, which is what Jobim is all about\u2014a beautiful melody with a nice harmony under it. It <\/span>can give room for a nice arrangement, but it doesn\u2019t have the kind of solid architecture behind it. Piazzolla used simple forms, but the writing was more classical; it had several layers and everything was notated and written down\u2014although he left room for improvisation as well.<\/p>\n

One of our favorite young guitarists, Stephanie Jones, plays S\u00e9rgio’s arrangement of Piazzolla’s “Invierno Porte\u00f1o” from the <\/em>Four Seasons:<\/em><\/p>\n