IN CONCERT
Latin Guitar: Daniel Bolshoy with the Victoria Symphony
When: Saturday, 8 p.m.
Where: Alix Goolden Hall
Tickets: $20 for adults/seniors, $15 for students at [email protected] and 250-385-6515.
It wasn't always about the classical guitar for Daniel Bolshoy.
"I started with piano, like every good Jewish kid, at the age of five or six," said Bolshoy, who was born in Russia and raised in Israel. "Then, when I went to high school, I noticed that girls liked boys who play guitar."
When he picked up his electric guitar, it was with shredding in mind - Iron Maiden, Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen were his icons. But a guitar teacher with a gift for working with young people taught him that, with classical guitar, he could play the tune, the accompaniment and all other parts of a song on one instrument. He dropped electric.
Bolshoy, now a respected musician in the Canadian classical guitar scene, makes his debut Saturday with the Victoria Symphony.
After moving to Ottawa for his final year of high school (his molecular-biologist father got a gig with the National Research Council), Bolshoy studied at Carleton and the University of Toronto before landing at the University of Denver, where he found a mentor in Cuban-American maestro Ricardo Izanola. He moved to Vancouver last year to take over as head of the guitar division at the UBC School of Music, as well as head of the guitar department at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra School of Music.
His new positions suggest he has a gift for teaching, like his own early mentor. It probably helps that he can relate to his students.
"I think probably 100 per cent of my students have switched from electric guitar," he said. It's something he's trying to change with his younger students at the VSO school, however, by getting them to start with classical guitars.
"The new generation, they have all the advantages," said the 36-year-old.
Bolshoy carries his teaching into his performances, with a reputation for storytelling. Over the phone, he talks about Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez - a piece he performs regularly in public and will bring to Alix Goolden Hall. It's been covered by the likes of Miles Davis and Paco de Lucia - and borrowed for commercials as well as soundtracks, including those for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, School of Rock and Mad Men.
"It's one of the most beautiful movements, what you'll hear in the second movement," he says. "It comes from a very personal place in the life of the composer."
Rodrigo wrote it soon after being married, when he was expecting a child. But the baby was stillborn and his wife's life endangered - the tragedy that inspired the second movement.
The Latin Guitar program also includes Paul Frehner's Saratine Polyphony, Heitor Villa-Lobos's Bachianas brasileiras No. 5, Alberto Ginastera's Concerto for Strings, as well as Aaron Jay Kernis's Concierto de Dance Hits. (Don't expect electric guitar on that last one, though - even though it was written in the past decade, it's still classical-sounding).
Bolshoy says that, having come to the guitar when he was nearly an adult, he likes to teach people about the instrument the way he learned it.
"It's much more interesting to hear something coming from the player - this is why I like this piece, this is where I found music from the composer," he said. "And it's a way for me to connect with people. ... It doesn't matter where you play with the guitar. It always feels like you're in my living room." [email protected]
