Two Guitar Legends Reflect on Originality, Independence

Sometimes the media surprises us, with great but publicly unheralded artists showing up in unexpected places. Recently the Wall Street Journal caught up with classical guitarist Sharon Isbin, and the New York Times Magazine profiled electric guitar pioneer Les Paul.

Les Paul, now 88, is a "man who changed the course of guitar history," according to the Times. His early experimentation with electric guitars (and tape loops and other sound effects) brought him recording fame in the 1950s with his then-wife, singer Mary Ford. But his legacy as one of the jazz guitar greats was made immortal through his collaboration with the Gibson Guitar company, which led to the development of the Les Paul model guitar. Paul plays every Monday night at the NYC jazz club Iridium (since the closing of his previous regular venue, Fat Tuesday's). He asks people why they come see him, a guy who hasn't had a song on the charts in decades, and he claims he always gets the same answer: "They own a Les Paul [guitar], or their son has one and plays it too loud." (He's fond of his namesake, especially so of the black model, because the dark contrasting background "really accentuates the movements of a guitarist's fingers.")

Why does he still keep up such a playing schedule? And tolerate the frustration of arthritis, which has hobbled two fingers on one hand and three on the other? He likes working with the young gifted talent that comes to sit in with him (as Jimmy Page, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Al DiMeola once did, he recalls).

"I really can't offer much advice on what to play anymore. I was never much for rules, anyway; otherwise I wouldn't have invented anything or gone so far in music... Thank heavens there was no one around to tell Wes Montgomery [who used his thumb and not a pick] what to do when he was learning... we'd never have had him to admire."

Les Paul recalls that he first saw an unknown Jimi Hendrix auditioning at a New Jersey roadhouse one afternoon in 1965. Paul happened by just to drop off some records, but "when I heard this guy wailing -- he had that guitar wide open -- I decided to stick around for a while." Later Paul returned to ask the bartender whether Hendrix had gotten the gig. "Are you kidding? He was too loud. We threw him out."

Paul: "To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any." And apparently some of those kids who are playing their Les Pauls too loud, or in the wrong way, might amount to something really original.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the versatile guitar is present in a wide range of genres and was popularized in classical music by the work of the late Andres Segovia, but until Sharon Isbin came along, it still occupied the "edge of concert life." The 46-year-old has independently blazed several new trails in the world of classical guitar. Educated at Yale and once a student of Segovia himself, Isbin founded the guitar department at NYC's prestigious Julliard School in 1989 and has and served as its head ever since. Her "Classical Guitar Answer Book" is a compilation of Q&As from four years of master classes. Frustrated with the sonic challenges of playing with orchestras in large concert halls, she helped create a high-quality portable amplification system, which she had refined and manufactured by custom builders Cane Audio Systems. She uses a wireless microphone clipped inside her guitar's sound hole; and places a speaker box 10 feet behind her. A graphic equalizer lets her fine tune the resonances to each hall's own acoustical properties. The speaker placement lets the audience the "great big" and natural Isbin sound they love, coming from the right place, the orchestra. At the same time, orchestra players also can hear her quite clearly.

Pieces actually written for classical guitar are relatively few in number, and Isbin has regularly commissioned new works to augment the limited guitar repertoire. In her latest recording, "Baroque Favorites," with Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Isbin plays the works of Bach, Albinoni, Vivaldi and others.

None of the works were originally written for guitar, so Isbin had to oversee all the transcriptions, doing some of them herself. She loves the challenge of arranging 4- or 5-voice counterpoint for the guitar, commenting in the Journal, "You're only using four fingers on the right hand and various configurations of the left, so you have to find ways to achieve the independence of the lines and the control that allows you to do so."

Isbin has pushed the boundaries of her instrument even further, by making recordings in styles that also include Renaissance masters, Latin Romances, American Traditional, 20th Century works, lute suites, Brazilian jazz and World musics.

"Emotion is the most important thing to me as a performer... Performance is about making beautiful music -- and making music beautiful, something I learned when I heard Arthur Rubenstein play Chopin in concert when I was 14."

Examine the legendary guitar that bears Les Paul's name, and read Gibson's telling of the Les Paul story

Read (and hear!) a biography of Les Paul from the Smithsonian Associates

Read the New York Times Magazine feature on Les Paul [fee required]

Visit Sharon Isbin at her web site and read the Wall Street Journal article

Examine her latest release, "Baroque Favorites," at Amazon.com

Read about Isbin's upcoming (Sept. 6) solo recital at Yale's Sprague Hall as well as background about the renovation of this historical concert venue (Ticket information is available at 1-203 432-4158.)

Browse her "Answer Book", with reader comments, at Amazon.com

Learn more about custom audio builders Cane Audio Systems