ALEXEI ZIMAKOV

THE GREAT ALEXEI ZIMAKOV is dead!

Yet another music hero of mine is gone! Another musical virtuoso, and yet another tragic tale of a needless death.

You may recall my post of the shock and horror about the murder of Jaco Pastorius, or the post about weird death of Chet Baker.

Alexei was not a Jazz musician, but an amazingly gifted classical guitar player from Tomsk in Siberian Russia. He studied classical guitar from an early age and graduated the Academy of Music in 1993 – but it was not enough for Alexei – he recorded himself playing and sent in the tape to apply for entry to competitions – however, everyone thought he’d sped the recording up because it was too astonishing!

Eventually, though, this got him a break and he was on TV showing off his incredible skills – he was able to bring the orchestral sound to the guitar, and soon began winning competitions.

He became the first Russian to win the “International Guitar Foundation of America Competition» (GFA) in Miami in 1991 – before he’d even graduated!

Forty-two year old Alexei was invited to a party in town by his father and fiends, so he dressed up and had a great time drinking too much vodka and having fun.

It was a particularly cold Siberian night (-44°C) in December 2013. Alexei somehow made it home. The controlled entry system was on the blink, so he banged on the door and shouted to be let in.

Maybe his sleeping neighbours didn’t hear him – or perhaps they ignored the drunk guy shouting outside. They were afraid of criminals and hooligans, and it was very late. No-one let him into his apartment block, so he decided to wait to see if someone came home, or to see if someone leaving the building would let him in. He eventually fell into a drunken sleep in the doorway out in the cold.

He got frostbite in his fingers, possibly because he didn’t have his warm gloves, just thin leather ones for the party. He was dressed warmly otherwise – he didn’t even get a cold. It was a case, perhaps of simply having the wrong gloves.

As you can imagine, this has to be the worst thing to happen to a musician, or to a guitarist, let alone to a virtuoso and famous guitarist at the height of his powers. He ended up having all eight fingers amputated, leaving him only with damaged thumbs.

The operation cost 1.5 million Rubles, and as classical guitar playing is not lucrative. Zimakov was not rich. The international outpouring was amazing! There were many fund raisers for the operation, including a gala concert in Moscow, even the GFA was receiving donations.

He apparently died aged 47 of a heart attack – a blood clot or thrombus detachment between 4th and 8th of May 2018 while in Rostov-on-Don with a student. He died lying down reading a book.

Reports are that he was never fully recovered from losing his fingers and his life as a guitarist, and many say he died of a broken heart.

In this world of global communication and 24 hour streaming news, it is extraordinary that it is only now that I found out that he’d died last year. I’m annoyed about that, quite frankly.

From the accounts I can find on-line, he was a lovely fellow, a generous spirit, and a kind-hearted, sensitive man.

Алексей Зимаков (1971-2018) RIP

Embedded YouTube video from April 2017 LINK here@ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdgyj-2VB8M

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ARNOLD BAX

Years and years ago, I went to see the White sands of Morar with a girl called Barbara. This short trip was actually a long weekend that became My Scottish Tour.

We stayed at Fort William, travelled to Oban, and returned through Perth and Balmoral.  Apart from a wee run to the Electric Brae, that has been the sum total of my Scottish travels in my half-century.  Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against Scotland — nor England, for that matter (I know little of England too), but I will not get lost in Rome, London or Paris due to the weather, the food, the history, the museums and music and art…

Anyway.

Morar.

The reason I was talked into this Scottish Trip was because of Arnold Bax.

Arnold Bax was a composer I was studying at the time.  Not very well known even today, he was pretty famous once. In 1942, Bax was appointed Master of the King’s Musick, and he composed for the Queen’s coronation.

I was actually quite impressed with Morar, albeit on a blustery day, it had white sands, greeny blue sea, and palm trees, so our photographs (on my trusty Olympus OM10, with telephoto lens and filters) made it look like we were on a south sea tropical island!

Back to Bax. I have no problem with his Irishness, nor his romanticism; I think this is because he is always nostalgic for me.  Bax is my childhood, or at least that syrupy sweet, early television version of it.  There is something of the Whisky Galore, or Ealing Studio film about Bax that takes me to “that place”.

Through my study, I discovered that he was oddly in turmoil — receiving awards from the Queen (UK) pulled against his Irishness, and his music was being slated for being “old Fashioned” and melodic. He apparently never recovered from a relationship with a Ukranian lass, and he was influenced by quite a lot of disparate, but northern European, music, and I like that; I like that he was pretty conservative, and yet somehow he was the rebel. I like that Bax succeeded in his lifetime, but that it made little difference, other than to unsettle him.

In short, I had a lot of time for Arnold Bax.  I think he is all-too-quickly dismissed and forgotten.  Maybe one day Bax will be back, and we can hear his lush, large scale music more often.

The very least I owe Bax is that he made me do a lovely sunny mini tour of Scotland, during which I took a great many superb photographs! In fact, writing this has encouraged me to both dig out some Bax, and to consider visiting places nearer to home — maybe England, or Scotland again?  I’ve heard Yorkshire is lovely, as well as the Lake District, Devon and Cornwall. Hmm. We shall see…

• Arnold’s website (!)
• David Parlett site

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JACQUES LOUSSIER

I have always loved Jacques Loussier’s piano playing, his interpretation, his sheer talent and inquisitiveness. Now my wife has found him, he’s back in my life in a bigger way.

I guess it started for me when I was listening to “Weather Report” back in the day, and the rival fusion super group was “Return To Forever”.  This led me to Chic Corea, and through a few superb players, like Joe Sample or Oscar Petersen, to the great Keith Jarrett at Kóln 1975. My wife got turned on to Jarrett through this work, and it became a real staple in our musical diets.

It wasn’t much of a leap from Jarrett to the great Jacques Loussier.

I used to have his famous Bach stuff, but now I only have his Beethoven variations, the Allegretto From Symphony 7, and now that she loves it, we share the appreciation.  He is all over YouTube and Wikipedia. He was born in 1934, so he’s nearly 80 at the time of writing this, but he’s still cool. Very Cool.

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NARCISCO YEPES

Rodrigo’s ‘Concierto de Aranjuez’ was the first time I heard Mr Yepes play.  I still have the vinyl LP, and it is his version that I think of as the standard or benchmark.

I always found it odd that Yepes was not rated properly.  He had a very clean technique, but that doesn’t mean he was emotionless!

I have found this sort of thing a lot with guitar-players and critics over the years — they compare and compete.  The fact is that Yepes had to be compared with Segovia or Bream, which is unfair as they are so exceptional.  Yepes died in 1997, Segovia in 1987 and Bream is still around, so they were contemporaries.  Perhaps Yepes would not be accused to being detached and emotionless in another context.  I think he suffered from the comparison — and yet they did their own distinct things.

Yepes pioneered the 10-string guitar and transcribed loads of lute stuff.  The impact is clear today with the likes of  Dominic Frasca — or even with harp guitars of the likes of Andy McKee and Antoine Dufour, or more traditional work by Pasquale Taraffo, Mario Maccaferri, Luigi Mozzani, and Gian Battista Noceti.

[embedded videoclip from YouTube of Yepes playing Recuerdos de la Alhambra]

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLHR8zaEsA8]

[embedded videoclip from YouTube of Dominic Frasca playing 10-string guitar]

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2BOApUvFpw]

Vai gets a lot of stick for being more technique and less emotion, yet I think that criticism is often founded on dubious contextual comparisons or personal preference.

So if you take Narscisco at face value, and listen to his playing on ‘Concierto de Aranjuez’ (especially the Navarro one I grew up with), and you will hear a superb guitarist.  He has such a natural affinity with Spanish music.  When it comes to Spanish guitar music, not many can do it the justice that Narciso Yepes did.

Anyway, he deserves a mention on my blog for “sharing things I like” as he has always been around when I need him.

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