John Williams is one of the world’s most famous guitarists, yet he owns only two guitars. Larry Schwartz reports.
BY HIS own reckoning, John Williams plays table tennis and chess quite well and is “very bad” at tennis. But as a master of the classical guitar, few would dispute his stature or influence.
The Australian-born musician has pushed the bounds of his instrument, tackling works by composers as disparate as J.S. Bach and Toru Takemitsu.
He has helped extend the guitar’s repertoire and broaden its appeal, playing solo, in duets with the likes of Julian Bream, and in collaborations with groups such as Sky, Inti-Illumani and Attacca.
While performing contemporary classical pieces with Attacca he worked with a long-time friend, ACT-based Timothy Kain, with whom he recently recorded an album and is now touring Australia. `Mantis and the Moon’ takes its title from one of three pieces by Phillip Houghton who, with
clarinettist Nigel Westlake, is one of two Australians whose work is featured on the new album.
“We wanted to start off at least doing something that other duos don’t do,” he says when asked about the inclusion of the Australian pieces. “We thought we’d at least have an Australian beginning. The rest was really making it culturally unbiased.”
Spanish guitar is an obvious component in an album dedicated to works from around the world. But Williams and Kain, head of the guitar department at the Canberra School of Music and a member of the group Guitar Trek, opted for arrangements of lesser-known works, transcribed from piano and harpsichord, originally composed by Manuel de Falla (1876-1946), Enrique Granados (1867-1916) and Antonio Soler (1729-1783).
Those familiar with Englishman John Renbourn’s light, steel- string renderings of resonant works by Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738) will be delighted by the inclusion of classical versions of three of the Irish harpist’s works.
“All his tunes are very, very simple when it comes down to it,” Williams says. “So everyone, from folk players to baroque classical players, can adapt it in their own way.”
There are two film scores. From Japan, Toru Takemitsu’s theme from `Bad Boy’ and Russian Dmitry Shostakovich’s `Guitars’ from `The Gad Fly’. And there is a clutch of pieces from the Americas (Peter Madlem, Benjamin Verdery and Frederic Hand, of the United States; Leo Brouwer, from Cuba; and Paulo Bellinati, from Brazil).
“It would be silly to do a record without doing some of the best Spanish pieces,” Williams says. “But then there were a lot of pieces like (those from) O’Carolan and the Americans which are really minor pieces. They’re one-offs by composers who are not very well known but for one reason
or another are really nice.”
Not for John Williams the acquisition of guitars as collectables.
He does not even have one that belonged to his father, a classical and jazz player and teacher who migrated here from England in 1939, two years before his son was born. The Williams family returned to London when he was 10.
He has only two guitars, both made by Greg Smallman, of Glen Innes, New South Wales. Kain also plays a Smallman instrument.
“Greg is a great maker,” Williams says. “About 15 years ago he made some small but very significant advances and changes to the internal design of the guitar.” These approaches to the strutting that supports the instrument were a break with tradition that led to a more expressive sound.
As a painter might, Williams talks of a general improvement in “color”. “In other words you get more gradation from sharp to sweet, dolce sounds and retain a nice resonant quality as well.”
As a boy Williams was trained by his father. In Melbourne, lessons were often held at Montsalvat, the home of his father’s friend Justus Jorgensen.
He went on to study at the Royal College of Music, in London, and in Siena, Italy, with the Spaniard Segovia. Williams is wary of talk about mentors.
“What I try and get over sometimes when I teach a so-called masterclass is you can learn from everyone all the time. There have been so many different influences . . . that have been more important than the guitar ones. I’ve learned more from the violinists and harpsichordists professionally and musically than I learned from Segovia. And I learned more about guitar from my father.”
Williams recently caught up with the young Melbourne guitarist Slava Grigorian, who has moved to London to further his career.
“He’s very good,” says Williams. “I don’t generally make public comments on other players of any age or sort. But Slava has got enormous promise and is an original guitar personality . . . We’re all keen that he gets the right direction.”
Though he has spent most of his life in England, Williams has a qualified sense of being Australian. “I’m more Australian than English,” he says. “I don’t feel English. But I’m more a Londoner than either.”
In London, he has all his family and most musical contacts.
But he has strong friendships here and feels an affinity with perceived characteristics: an openness to experience, an irreverence and instinctive lack of respect for hierarchy and class. “I like the character of Australia and I like Australians,” he says. “I can identify with it quite strongly.
THE SUNDAY AGE, 02nd of June 1996
Larry Schwartz Writer 