Episode 164 The Brooklyn Classical Guitar Society
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Welcome back to Classical Guitar Insider. This is your host, Brett Williams. And today on the show, we have Josh Paul and Matthew Kaplan. Now, you might know, I mean, Josh Paul is sort of helping with all this, but he is amazing because he's an amateur guitarist who's dedicated so much of his time to becoming this way. And he can still become a guitarist. Look at John Olson of the New York Classical Guitar Society, Olson-Ducari duo.

He wasn't doing that when I first met him. He was just running the Guitar Society. Met people, got better at what he did, you know, and now they're releasing high-class music out there. But, you know, the fact is that John Olsen cannot take on the burden of a classical guitar society for something as large as New York City on his own. That's why we have two baseball teams, two basketball teams, two football teams, two hockey. We have that because the city is so big.

And Brooklyn is huge. And it needs to be serviced. The show is sponsored by SavageClassical.com. S-A-V-A-G-E-Classical.com. You can go there. You get the guitar of your dreams. Tell them I sent you. Longest running sponsor of the show. He's helping me, Liz, and Wally. Wally is here. Wally Williams. My firstborn son was born on July 15th at 9.45 p.m.

New York Presbyterian Hospital, right on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan. He weighed seven pounds, 12 and a half ounces, which is apparently the perfect child. It's a very good birth weight. He was in the NICU, which is, I thought it was an ICU, but I guess ICU is for everybody. NICU is for the little ones. Anyway, he was there for two days because he was spitting up a bunch of, you know, crap.

Liz was brave. Liz went through a very difficult sort of, uh, you know, um, thing. She had like a back injury from when she was a kid that was getting, he was whatever he was upside down, kicking it. You know, that part was bad, but as far as getting them out 11 minutes, that champion woman, 11 minutes, they were like, ah, prepare for about an hour and a half minimum to like four hours, 11 minutes. She pushed him out, got a blast.

One of those blood things in her eyes popped, you know, the whole thing. She just, boom, she was done with it. We'd had so much drama for two days with the, uh, with the hospital, with her back that it was like, we, you know, there's like a thing with the doula, the doula wanting her to not take drugs. She had to take drugs because of her back. You know, I don't know. It was back and forth. Wally. Unbelievable. Thank you to all of you who have children that said that it would be okay that I could still do this stuff.

After having a kid, I'm still nervous about it. I'm actually having a week, you know, I thought twice about doing this episode, um, today, but Liz is rarely gone and she's gone with Wally with her friend, Robin there at lunch. I should be back pretty soon. So whenever they come back, this intro is over, but, um, you know, I thought I would get it out. And, um, you know, am I in the, first of all, let me just say something.

This is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Right now, I'm not saying that's I never thought I'd say that. I was really concerned about having that sort of like not bonding with him right away situation. That was not the case. It was beautiful being in the hospital with him. It's beautiful getting out of the hospital, driving him over the over the Brooklyn Bridge with the sun going down behind us. Liz in the backseat of her car.

It's the best feeling ever to have a family and to be able to make this work. It's unbelievable. Now, I'm also very down this week. I think last week I was really high. So I did this. This is what happened. I went and I did an out-of-town summer camp for two weeks. Then I went and I did about a month and a half. I was doing a camp in the city. In the middle of that while he was born.

And then I came back last week. Last week was my first week of just being full time, you know, with Liz splitting it, splitting the night shifts. We're feeding them bottles. Um, bottles of, of breast milk is his favorite. We get them on the, you know, on the old tot there, uh, as much as we can, but he, you know, this is something people don't talk about, but this is like the worst that women in particular have to go through and the people around them have to suffer through as

Nobody told us about this, right? They just told us stick with it. Breastfeeding, blah, blah, bullshit. It's incredibly hard to breastfeed. I talked to all my friends who were girls. They're all like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I gave them formula. I gave up after four months. It's ridiculous the amount of pressure that is put on people to feed their kids breast milk. The humiliation that women have. Some of my friends couldn't produce it.

Some of the kids just rejected it. My boy, little Wally, he's pretty, he's okay, but he does freak out. He prefers the bottle, but sometimes he'll take the breast. Sometimes he'll just fall asleep with it in his mouth. Is this okay to talk about? It's certainly as shit should be. Now, the Broken Guitar Society is very important and classical guitar is very important.

Right. I kind of, you know, I was talking to the boys from the Guitar Society before and I was kind of kind of goading them maybe a little bit trying to get like maybe there was some sort of, you know, some revolutionary spirit, you know, who are we going to hang boys sort of situation? You know me, you know, I don't like anybody. And, you know, and they were like, we're just keeping it positive. So, you know, that's possible. I was like, all right. So it's positive. You know, it's a good thing. We simply just didn't need another Guitar Society and they are

working hard to make sure that happens for us. Anyway. Yeah. So when I came home last week, I was so filled with joy and gratitude just to wake up in the middle of the night and be able to feed him and look over at Liz. And there it is. Right. All these years, I have not been doing this. 46, 47 in February. All these years, I haven't been doing this. And here I am. And it felt great. I have the energy for it. I think. I think.

That's where things... So he wakes up a lot, right? Now, this is what you do hear about. You hear about the lack of sleep. I'm a sleep guy, all right? I thrive on it. When I wake up and I've gotten a lot of sleep, I'm more creative. I'm more loving. I'm more available to people, right? When I don't get sleep, generally, I'm just getting through my day. Well, that doesn't cut it when you got a little baby.

Right. You can't just get through it. You got to get through it and stay positive and stay happy for him and for Liz. And that I'm on week two of that. We're coming to the end of week two now. And that I'm losing my mind. You know, I think Simon, I think Simon Powess is like this, too. He was like he needed sleep. If he didn't get sleep, he was like, basically, count me out. Well, that's not an option. So I don't know if that's it or if I'm just like struggling with even thinking about what I'm doing next.

And I have this beautiful boy that I'm taking care of. Right? I'm trying to split the work. Again, Liz is having to pump. Right? Because Wally doesn't always want to go straight to the source. He wants bottled water. Not straight from the spring. I'm talking about breast milk. I'm talking about boobies. And he... But he's... God damn. I mean, all you... I don't really get mad at him. I'd say in the middle of the night, I get frustrated. You know?

I caught myself telling him to shut up once, you know, it's like four in the morning and I've got the bottle. He's got it in his mouth and he's still freaking out a little bit. And I was like, just shut up. And I went like, okay, that was the beginning and ending of that. You know, I'm not mad at him at all. I'm just confused to be honest this week. If I had done this last week, like I said, I was, I was maybe not going to do this because I didn't want to do it. I wanted to do it when I was having a happy day. Well, today's not really a happy day.

Today's sort of a sad day. So you're hearing from me on a sad day, right? A confused, lonely, deranged sort of sad day. And parents are allowed to have that. And I am having it as a co-parent, as a person that's with the kid as much as Liz is right now.

And what a gift that is. What a gift it is. Most people, you know, when I was working at the second camp, I was going to work and coming home and I immediately would just go into chores. Nothing after work, just straight home and then into chores, laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, shopping, all that stuff. And then, you know, with him as much as possible, throw him in the baby Bjorn, take him down the street, do the laundry. It just, you're relieving Liz as much as I could. But when you're working and someone is with the kid, you can only relieve them so much.

Right. So at least I'm here with him. You know, I work out with him. I meditate with him. Everything. Everything I can do with him, I do it. And most people that work don't get that. Right. You miss out on all that if you're the worker bee. Right. Mom gets that. Dad goes out. He works or vice versa. And a lot of vice versa, especially where I live. There's a lot of situations, a lot of stay at home dads, which I'm trying not to become. Right. Right.

But it's hard to be a responsible person who just naturally loves this person so much and not just want to be like, you know what? Fuck the guitar. It's not worth it. The podcast, give me a break. I'm not making any money with this. That's not what it's. It's just like it's hard to justify doing anything other than spending time with that kid, you know? So I'm doing the best I can, but I'm having a bad week. I'm having a bad week. I'm having a sad week. Sad but happy.

And when I look at him, I'm happy when he wants, he's wanting to be fed a lot more too. So it's like, all he wants to do when he's up is be fed. But that was a couple of days ago. So like the last two days, it's been a little bit better. Well, he'll kind of like look and hold your gaze and not just immediately start making. I want, you know, I want milk face. Um,

And luckily he kind of, he does something called tummy time while I practice. So I've been practicing, keeping my guitar up, keeping up for what? I don't know. I got one library concert in September, I think one in December. Like it's, I don't know. Yeah. So confusion, right? Like not really knowing exactly what the next step is. You know, I go in, I, this podcast, I go in and I want to look at the podcast and just check it out today. Right. And I look in, oh, it's, it hasn't been on Apple yet.

For like two weeks because there was a problem with the JPEG of the graphic. It's no longer up to, to code or whatever. So now I got to like, I don't know, redesign the logo. It's been the same logo for, you know, 13, 14 years. I don't want to resign. It's just like that kind of stuff. It's like, is that really, you know, when you have a job, you just go and you do the job, you come home, that's it. You're off. But, um, you know, people told me I could do it. So I'm doing it.

But I just don't want to become like a careerist where it's just like, I'm like, okay, I'm a dad. And then I'm also like, you know, doing the guitar and making money at the guitar. I'm moving and shaking. And I don't want to just move and shake. I need to also be like an artist. Like, that's the whole point, right? And I've seen that over and over again with people. Just creative, good people that sink deeply, darkly into this place of just like...

releasing concept albums for their fucking, you know, whatever, just career people, right? People that don't even, I don't know, the more or less have given up on the art of it. And I, I, you know, I don't want to do that either. So it's like, where did, where does the time go? Is this making any sense? And I'm having all these thoughts while I'm also rocking the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. You know, I love them. I love the shit out of them.

I should have known. I should have known I feel this way about him. I didn't. You know, the movies make me make you think like, especially if you're a person that likes freedom and and, you know, you have like intellectual curiosity and you want to watch film and you want to get art, all that stuff. You think like, oh, that's sort of antithetic to the idea of loving a child that much and wanting to take care of it this much. And it is. It is. It is. It is. But it's also like everybody else had both.

You know, how many did Bach have? Don't answer that. I'm just, you know, a bunch, right? Like 60, 70 kids. I'm not going to make jokes about how much sex Bach had. That's well trodden ground. Anyway, I hope you guys are doing good. Let's get on with the show. I am having a thousand different emotions, a thousand different thoughts a minute.

I hope that you enjoy my time with Matt and Josh and the Brooklyn classical guitar society. Make sure you support them, go to their shows. I know they just had Nicoletta Tedesco just played. This is sort of an interview that's, you know, from way back. I think it's like I did it like at the beginning of the summer or the late spring or something before I left.

for the camps. And, um, you know, so some of this stuff might be dated, but I really wanted to get out there and say, hi to you guys say, thank you for listening. Thank you for sticking it with me and listening to me complain about dating and all that stuff all these years. And now it's come to fruition. And now I hope you'll go on this new adventure with me, which is not being a, um, a broke down single, uh, guitarist in a small apartment, but being a, um, you know, a person in a small apartment with a, uh, a baby, uh,

Um, whether to move out of the city or not, that's something that, you know, we're going to explore, uh, how to make a marriage work while you're struggling with guitar and the kid, like, how does all this stuff come together? Is it even possible? Is it possible? Is it realistic?

for all that stuff to work out or is something going to crash and burn so i hope you're here with me and excited about what is essentially what like phase three or four of classical guitar insider and i'm i'm excited to see where the show goes as far as the intros are concerned the interviews everything um you know i'm looking forward to talking to to some guitarists again

with a different perspective, you know? And thanks again for listening. Here is Matthew Kaplan and Josh Paul from the Brooklyn Classical Guitar Society. Okay, Matt, I know you from, you know, a while back, actually. Probably, you know, I don't know, what it would be, 10 years, 8 years, whatever. I remember you were a student at Manus.

A while after I graduated and I've seen you around and you're releasing beautiful things now. You just had your debut album came out in the last couple of years. And we're also here with Josh Paul, who is one of the co-founders of the Brooklyn Classical Guitar Society.

And Josh is not, I wouldn't, I don't know if you're new to the scene, Josh. I'm not, I'm not, I don't go to meetings very often or anything like that. But let's just start with you for a second. Then we'll get to our beloved brother, Matt. But Josh, what's your relationship with the guitar and sort of what brought you to want to be in a leadership role, you know, with a new guitar society?

Well, I played bass guitar for many, many years. And around 2004, 2005, my interests started to change, my lifestyle started to change, and I switched to playing classical guitar. Took lessons and basically was practicing at home. I didn't have too much ambition in terms of performing or anything. Occasionally, I'd play at a student recital, that kind of thing.

And about two years ago, I started studying with Isabella Albonizio and played at one of her student recitals and was sort of inspired to go out and play in front of people again.

And started looking around for opportunities and around this last summer. There really weren't very many for classical guitarists live in person open mic type of things. There was lots of opportunities to play other types of music, but I really want to do something. I really want to play classical guitar in an environment that was conducive to that.

So I ended up starting my own open Mike through meetup around a martial arts school. So I had a space people had been encouraging me to do it for a while. And finally, I was like, clearly, I'm going to have to do this myself if I want it to happen. And through that, I connected with Matt and Pierre and Rodrigo, and we started doing the Brooklyn classical guitar society. Because you also have a regular job. You're a regular person. Yes.

What's your regular job? What do you, what do you, what do you do? My, well, my two regular jobs are running the martial arts school and teaching and also raising my son. I mean, talk to me about the, well, raising a son thing. You know, I'm having a son. So we talked about this at Colin's house the other day. But this is,

This is incredible. This is a real gift. It really means a lot, I think, to Matthew and I when people who have full-time jobs, all the other things you could be doing with your time in New York City.

And it just blows my mind when you guys fall in love with the instrument and devote so much of your precious time as a father and running a karate studio, martial arts studios. Sorry. Yeah. The studio is called Aikido of South Brooklyn. Oh, okay. So that's what, this is a plug for your, for your karate. Of course. Yeah. I had to work that in somewhere, right? No. What's it called? What's it tell people? It's called Aikido of South Brooklyn. That's right. Yeah. Um,

I love playing guitar. And like I said, I wanted to create an opportunity. I also wanted to just do something new coming out of the pandemic and sort of apply all the things I had learned doing running the school to something else. What's Aikido? Which one is that? So Aikido is a Japanese martial art. It's focused on self-defense and personal development,

as well, right? So it's kind of like both things, very similar to playing an instrument. I was just thinking that. I've always thought about that. There's a guy called Klondike Stedman, who I went to school with in Texas. He's an incredible guitarist. He's not, you know, out there playing grab ass all the time, but he's as good as anybody else.

He was also really into martial arts. And I was an undergrad and he was getting his doctorate and he was really into it. And we were hanging out together and he told me about how much the two feed into each other. Yeah, there's a lot of overlap in how you go about learning both. My first Aikido teacher was Joseph Jarman, who was a saxophone player with the Art Ensemble of Chicago. They were a very avant-garde jazz group.

And he would often have like concerts and stuff in the dojo. So getting involved with the guitar society is really like a continuation of that tradition too. What an incredible crossover because it is about discipline and

And, and, and breathing and all the things that we have to do when we're on stage or, or otherwise, we all know how important it is. Like sort of monitor yourself breathing and sort of recenter yourself after making a mistake or whatever, all those things that must be right there. All about balance and all that stuff. Yeah. What about you, Matthew? Are you, uh, you learning how to take people down that come at you?

No, not these days. Not these days. Actually, right before I moved back to New York, I got back into marathon training. So if there's anything related to kind of breathing, practice, discipline, that definitely opened up a lot of doors for me in terms of just kind of shifting in perspective. Marathon. Are you doing the Brooklyn half? That's coming up, isn't it?

Uh, well, there was, there were two, I did a Brooklyn half through the NYC runs group. And there's also a Brooklyn half through the New York road runners, which was back in may. Both of them were rainy. I heard, I know the one I did was rainy and horrible, but it was a lot of fun. It was definitely worth it. Um, uh, so, so yeah, that's, that's been, that's been great. Oh, that sucks. That's as I wouldn't like it if it rained. I don't know why it never rains. Well, the November is it's always, it seems like it's always a pretty day for the New York marathon.

it seems like it's always a nice day it's probably pretty cold at the start i would imagine but then it gets it always seems like it's just sunshine and rainbows at the finish yeah and you live along that do you live along the route for that or where do you live matthew what part of work do you do yeah i'm in i'm in sunset park right now so it's it's beautiful and i do think they might come up fourth avenue now that i think of it because they start at the verrazano and they and they come up so i do i do think um

I know they come through here. I've always lived along the route. Every place I've lived in New York has been along the route. Upper East Side, all that stuff. Well, that's not true. The East Village, it didn't come through East Village. But anyway, so Matthew, what was your sort of idea here? You've always been involved with the Manus guitar community.

Oh, what's it called again? The symposium. Manus guitar seminar. The, yeah, the New York guitar seminar at Manus. I believe everybody will forgive me. Cause they know I have a good relationship with Michael and you know, they've had a lot of guests on the show from there. I've been going there for years. I kind of stopped cause I do the summer camp thing now, which is always getting in the way of all this stuff, including the GFA. I'm not able to go to the GFA because it's a huge shame. Um,

Especially all the trash I talk sometimes I talk a lot of trash on the GFA Oh It's so expensive to get to and it's you know, that makes it elitist another coming to me and I'm like, nah, it's alright I'm Backyard. Yeah, that's that's why I was like, okay I've actually known all my years never been to I in my first year in New York I performed at a GFA symposium event which

which was really cool. I did a, um, uh, two guitar and cello piece, uh, at one of their, uh, at one of their, um, meetings or, or performances or something like that. But I haven't actually been to a GFA event. So I'm very excited to check, check out a day or two. Yeah. Oh, that'd be great. Yeah. A lot of people haven't been, and it's, it's, um, you know, I think it's an opportunity for them. It'll be fun. I'd be great. I'm, I'm super, I mean, I'm sincerely bummed. I'm missing it.

I have mixed feelings about guitar competitions and their place in what we do and the amount of power that that has over us individually, over the way we psychologically deal with being an artist. But I think that they do so many other things. They do the outreach and they give so many other people an opportunity to perform and they fundraise and they make it possible for so many people to play.

uh, you know, who, who are the competition winners and otherwise. So I don't know. They definitely have my support in a lot of ways. So I wish I could join. Also, we just, we get to hang out. It's fair and square. That's right. And we all, we all get to hang out with each other and get to know it. I'm, you know, I'm excited for you guys to, to be able to see everybody. You meet everybody. I meet people I've met ever before or who I've only met once on the show and get to just be great. I'm pissed. Anyways, but we're not talking about them.

We're talking about the broken guitar society, Matthew still on you real quick. What, what, cause you were the first person I talked to about this. What is, what is, what kind of gave you the idea? All of you, the idea who kind of came up with this, who, who started this?

Well, it's kind of funny because I want to say, what was it? 2022, I moved back to New York City from Texas. I did a COVID year in Texas. So I was living there, working there. Rent went up, skyrocketed. I was like, okay, well, if I'm going to pay that much, I might as well be in New York. So because they were getting all the transplants from California coming to where I was at, which was San Antonio, Texas.

But so I moved back and I ended up moving to Brooklyn as fate would have it. And before that, I had lived in Harlem for about five years. Then I was living in Long Island City. And now I'm in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

And it was at that time also that the other co-founder, one of the other co-founders, Pierre, was also moving to Brooklyn. So we were talking about, we just kind of got on the phone and we were talking about guitar concerts and events and things like that. And he had mentioned that he met Rodrigo Guzman, the other final co-founder, at a Group Muse event. And they were also talking about guitar events. Like, you know, they really liked the concert and this is awesome. There should be more of this and whatever.

It's not often that you see these things in Brooklyn. So I think that's kind of where it got started. And then we all met for tacos and drinks here in Sunset Park and I think late August of last year. And then shortly after that, we got started with our open mics and started growing this thing.

That's a really good point. If you don't live in New York, if you're thinking about building a guitar society, this is the episode for you too because we're talking about

You got to look at where the need is. And, you know, a lot of the classical musicians, by virtue of the fact that the three conservatories are on the Upper West Side or Manus moved down, but was on the Upper West Side. Now it's sort of the Lower West Side. It's kind of the West Village is where it really is. It's closest to probably the A-Train.

So it's all very sort of, yeah, like you said, did you live East West Harlem? Yeah. So West Harlem. So yeah. So around like a Manhattan school of music and stuff like that, all that stuff is right there. That's very, very far away. I don't think people realize how big New York is or how big Brooklyn is. Brooklyn is, it would be the second biggest city in the United States if it broke off from the rest of New York. That's how big Brooklyn is.

And as much as it's kind of in recent years become sort of a beacon for progressiveness or, you know, experimental art or whatever, as far as the fine arts are concerned, they are sort of still relegated to the upper Manhattan area.

And so that's, that's, that's an hour away from us. It's two, it's two hours away from you, Matt. It is a, it is a hefty commute. So they have to have to have every concert be, or every recital be up there or in Midtown or whatever. It can be quite a slog and quite a drag and it really leaves a lot of people out. So just giving us a place to go without having to get on the seven train, which even though, yeah, the trains run 24 hours, it's,

It pretty much shuts down at 1030. You know, you're pretty much, you're going to be waiting for a half an hour for a train after that with the way things are going on. So it's really great that you guys are doing it. And that must've been part of the reason too, is it like you're saying, you just had those tacos and, and you guys were like, we got nowhere to go to a concert that's local.

It was, and it was really interesting. When we first threw our initial open mics, you know, we were kind of under the idea that, all right, this will be slow to start. We'll get a few people out and, you know, we'll see how this goes. But we had some very big, like our opening party was well attended. Our first couple open mics. We're still waiting for the time at which we are, it's just going to be us playing guitar for each other. But that hasn't happened yet. So there's definitely...

a community out here of guitarists of guitar enthusiasts and amateur players and professionals alike. So, so we're really excited that it's, you know, we're getting going with it. And Josh, you, you know, as, as someone who these open mics are your only performance opportunity as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, I'm assuming a, a, a very good amateur guitarist, but you,

How important are these to you with your development of, you know, what I would like to think is a little more than a hobby.

Yeah, they're huge to have the opportunity to play in front of an audience. Because like you said, I'm very good when I'm playing at home for the cats. It's an entirely different experience when I'm sitting in a room where there's other guitar players who are really interested in listening to what I'm going to do. Oftentimes when I start to play, my first thought is, oh no, they're actually really listening to me.

Right and so being able to do that, you know, the preparation that goes into doing that I practice differently with these opportunities. I learned the pieces better each time I performed. Well, sometimes it goes pretty well, sometimes not so well, but each time it's like a big learning experience and part of my motivation when.

I decided I wanted to perform more because I was talking with Isabelle. I'm like, what do I do now? Like, you know, if I have a piece of music, you know, I can learn it at home, but how do I really push my playing to the next level? And her answer was by performing. That is totally. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. There's a, there's a, there's a, you know, it's controversial these days, but Aaron Shears book,

The first book of the series, the blue one. The blue one, yeah. The blue one, the one that's just words. And I've talked about it on the show before, but maybe only once. But that was a book we used in Texas. And the first thing Adam does is he makes you go home and read this book. And you're like, I'm like a 20-year-old kid. I'm like, what is this? Like, I don't want to do this.

But you read it and you get, you know, basically you get a lot out of it. That goes without saying, you wouldn't have assigned it if it wasn't important. But the whole end of the book, the whole point of all of this to Aaron Shear was you have to understand that this is all about performing. If you don't have a performance as your end goal, then you don't,

this isn't for you. I mean, it's not saying it's just, there's only so long you can sustain your motivation without those performances. Am I right with that? Josh, do you feel that you just get to a point where you're just like, what am I doing this for? Right? I yeah, but also like the just the discipline and making sure you practice something every day.

and trying to learn new pieces that are more challenging or sometimes that are easier, but that you think might be easier to perform. You know, and so how you go about, or at least how I go about picking the pieces I'm going to learn and how I go about learning them is completely different than just sort of that endless plateau of playing at home.

Yeah, because there's a certain enjoyment, I would imagine, right, Josh, to playing at home and playing for the cats and playing for your wife and playing for, you know, all that stuff. Absolutely. Like sick people in a hospital or whatever it is that you could do. You can always do that too, guys. Not you guys, but just the general public. There's always an opportunity for you to play at an old folks home or something along those lines. That's, you know, there's all sorts of government opportunities for you to play. But like you're saying, yeah.

Josh, to play for other guitarists who know what they're listening to are listening for certain things. It's a real experience and it makes playing at all those other places like eating candy. It's no big deal. Yeah. And even the pieces that I older pieces that I felt like I knew well, it's like I wasn't, I was really struggling to make them better. Yeah. Yeah. The older pieces that you, that you think, you know, well,

Because that's what my buddy Giacomo said. He used to say, you don't know whether you can play or not until you play it live. You think you can play it and then you play it for another person. You can't play it. You're like, Oh God. Oh shit. I don't know how to play this piece at all. Yeah. I don't know. I'm missing half of this piece. Do you play by memory, Josh? I do. Yes. That's what, what is it about us, Matt, that you think we've got such, you know, there's a guy named what's his name? Seymour Bernstein.

He's on the tone based piano podcast all the time, ranting at the top of his lungs. It's like a 93 year old piano pedagogue. I don't like everything he says. He talks a lot of shit on going gold. I don't like that. Um, but I do, he always says one thing is really interesting and he always is going after, um, having to memorize things. He's like, and I, I'm, I'm the same. I only play memorized music.

I that's the way I like it. That's what I like seeing. That's the way I do it. Even if it's, I would rather have it memorized and not, what is it about us, Matt? Why are we going to memorize everything? It adds so much stress. He says, he says that it adds about 80% of stress to your performance. If you have to memorize something.

Yeah, I guess it depends on how you practice, how you interact with the music itself. Because I find that for some people, memory is the way to go. I prefer, if I can, to play for memory. And that's because for me, with the sheet music,

whereas someone might feel more secure with it. Like, okay, I got the music. I don't have to worry about it. For me, it's one more thing to navigate. You know, I use, you know, an iPad with the foot pedal. So I'm like, okay, let me just stomp on the right. I don't want to do that. I don't want to have to think about that. So if I can avoid it, I'll memorize it. Yeah. I mean, it really is, you know, you're, you're kind of, you're, you're taking the audience and you're asking them for so much. And to also just have like the distraction of you looking back up

And down at something. And usually it's tablets these days too. So there's like a blue light on someone's face, which I think is also like a little distracting, right? Like a little hard. Yeah. That, that too. But, but yeah, I think it's, it's, it is interesting. What do you think about the Josh? Is it as an amateur? It seems like, wow, that's really amazing that you would take the time to, to memorize something. What's your, what's, what is, what is your Isabella's memorization process? What did she say to you? Because she's, I interviewed her many, many years ago.

And I know that teachers get better and better and come up with new perspectives every week. So I can only assume, I can only dream that what she's doing now is amazing. But what do you guys do when it comes to memory?

Sometimes the memorization for me just kind of happens of its own, just through repeating the same thing over and over again. My teacher before Isabella was Yasha Kaufman, who encouraged me to memorize mostly through repetition and really understanding.

the piece both through physical memory, but also like intellectually he could sit across the room, no music in front of him, no guitar in his hand and tell you like where you made a mistake in which finger you used and which finger you should have used. And it was pretty like, you know, it should have been no third finger on the third string, not your second finger on the fourth string kind of thing.

Just sitting there listening, he knew the music that well, and he really encouraged knowing the music that well, because he felt like it built confidence when you were performing right to be able to show if your fingers make a mistake, your brain knows where.

you left off and where, what, what you're, where to pick up. And if your brain makes a mistake and you get distracted by, you know, somebody walking into the room or whatever, that your fingers will know what to do through the muscle memory. That's Yasha Kaufman. Yes. Everybody. Yeah. I like it when people talk about their original teachers to unsung heroes right there. Is Yasha Kaufman still running around town? And he is still in New York. I'm not sure if he's still teaching, but I think he is.

That's great. That's great because he's right. That is exactly what it is. Isn't it, Matt? It's a matter of you have to depend on all these different things to get you through the performance. If it's all just me saying the names of the notes back and over and over and over again, I'll lose my shit. If it's me...

just being able to relax. But then like you were saying, Josh, somebody comes through the door or something and you got to like recalibrate, get the score back in your head. You need to be able to do that. You need to be able to say those names or those notes to yourself and be confident. Not only do we, me and Matt, come to New York, all three conservatories and Yale people come flooding into New York every single year. There's like a fresh batch of like 60 classical guitarists

and they don't have a place to perform for money. There's something called the Salon Series that John does. Awesome. You can get in there, and usually he's presenting maybe one or two max classical people at the beginning of their careers. There's not enough room. There's not enough room in that one guitar society to sort of house

60 new guitarists a year. Let's just say that. I think that's a fair number. You know, what do you got in each studio? Each studio is, well, not 60. Let's say even if it's 20. That means that each studio is accepting five new players and that five new players are going to take some time after college or during college to live in New York. So that's a lot of people to house. That's a lot of talent.

And I think we just needed a second classical guitar society. So when you guys were posting on Instagram that this was happening, I was beyond excited because I just think we got two baseball teams for a reason. We got two football teams for a reason. Not everybody's going to fit in those stadiums. You know, you need to split them up and we need two guitar societies. Do you think I'm right about that?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. I like that. I like that analogy a lot. That's a good one for sure. I mean, there's tons of, you know, as we get started with this, you know, there's just tons of local talent to tap into. I mean, the people that have come to our events, you know, friends and colleagues that I've met over the years performing and going to school. I mean, they're wonderful people and wonderful players. So it's we're really excited to kind of get this going and to

have them in a space, you know, we're doing, we're throwing house concerts, library concerts, and I'm sure that will grow to bigger venues. And, you know, eventually I'm sure we'll get, get our feet wet with some international offerings as well. But, you know, for now that we're having a lot of fun, a lot of fun doing what we're doing. Yeah. What do you guys, do you guys have sort of like a, an idea? Like you guys must've, you know, you had the taco conversation, but you've had conversations since then, many conversations, right?

You started out, you're performing, I believe you, it was, it was Isabella, right? It was a guitar duo. What's the name of that guitar duo? It's the Artemis guitar duo. Artemis, that's right. And I meant to go to that. I was at a friend's birthday party. I thought it was at night. It ended up, it was at 2.30 PM on a Sunday or Saturday? Saturday afternoon. We had it in the Coward Gardens Public Library. That's beautiful.

It was a beautiful space, but we were limited by the hours that the library is open. Yeah, I mean, I play at libraries. Yeah, so they close at 5. Yeah, but I really wanted to go to that, and I mean that. So that would be a prime example, right? That's a duo that might not, that just, you know, the New York Classical Guitar Society, certainly 92nd Street Y would not have...

the, the appropriate sort of resources to present something like that, you know, and you guys are there. I'm assuming. Yeah, this is great. Right. Is that, do you guys have a mission statement or anything like that? Sort of something that like, what was the idea? You guys had to do this for more than just like,

just having a place for open mics, which is great. I mean, that's super Josh, that's everything, right? But for the mats out there, what was, what's, what's, what do you guys think? I mean, our mission is to nourish and grow the classical guitar community in Brooklyn and abroad, right? So starting with Brooklyn, of course, and to generate just awareness and appreciation for our beloved instrument, the classical guitar.

And I think you know one thing that's that's really interesting that we were talking about earlier about the open mics with like the nourish and grow part Like the open mic, of course for if you're a performer you're gonna grow right if you're an audience member You're gonna you're gonna tickle that itch to come see some classical guitar and really good classical guitar Our programs have been amazing like we have we have Bach we have chamber music there's there's lots of really good a good variety of music and

And also, you know, when you perform, when you sign up, you have the option to also receive criticism or feedback from the group. You know, we try to keep it brief. We try to keep it helpful. So there are people that come in saying, hey, listen to me and like, I need your help, guys. Like, what am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? So, you know, I think we're all in this to learn from each other, to grow as a group and to just keep getting more guitar in our lives. Yeah.

Yeah. Without having, without, without the commute. Without the commute. Yeah. And, and, you know, as a professional, you know, as a professional guitarist, you know, we have, we have a good mix in our community. It's just a great place to try out a new piece that you want to include in an upcoming program. I know I'm going to do that. I'm performing on Sunday for Isabella's Lonciano, uh, international guitar seminar event, I think, um,

some, uh, an online, I'm not sure on the details, but I know I'm going to be performing on that, but I'm going to take my solo piece out for a spin this Thursday at the open mic. So I'm very grateful for that opportunity to do that, you know, myself. Yeah, it is good because how's the group I haven't been, but is the group, is it a small enough group to where you feel? Cause sometimes with, with, uh, you know, with, with other guitar societies, they'll go and there'll be like 40 people and I'll be like, I just don't want to,

sit here for four hours and play like you know come on like yeah that's a lot that's a lot of guitar there is too much guitar no no i'm just kidding no right right so it's it's it's good it's good that people go but like how would you deal with that how do you deal with the fact that like you know no one wants to sit there and listen to people uh play guitar for four hours like how do you how do you kind of like politely

Tell people like okay. Thank you. That's it. It's good. You're good. You're good. You feel good. You feel good I mean, what do you do about that? That would terrify that we've been doing Yeah, there are a few things like so so we do have I mean on average so far to get start to get started we've had probably on average about 15 to 20 people every time and not all of them are playing and

But a good amount. And sometimes we got to keep it moving. We start every open mic up with a warm-up. So it's usually like a minute or two ensemble piece that we all play as a group. So that's a lot of fun. We sight read. We learn something new. We've been asking for people from the community to write warm-ups for us. So we've had...

a good variety of those. And then we get started with the event. So there's a little bit of variation. You can be an active participant in music making. You can just hang out and relax. And then we also make it, we try to make it like warm and inviting. So people bring snacks. It's BYOB. So you're not just sitting there doing nothing. You can have something to munch on, something to drink. We have a little intermission and we talk. And then usually afterwards there's time. So we just hang out.

which is a lot of fun. So people, if you're listening, that's right. It's not going to cut into your booze time. Exactly. Exactly. Josh, I don't know if there's anything I missed, but I think that's, you know, in terms of trying to get it. And, you know, of course there's a time limit, you know, we're not trying to hear the nocturnal every, every set, but. Right. Yeah. No, but you know, so far, even though it's been full and we've had some pretty like packed programs, we haven't had the problem of too many, right.

And I think we'd all think that that'd be an amazing challenge to have, like, that so many people wanted to play that we needed to extend the time or have another event or something like that. But we try really hard to keep it moving. We ask people to tell us in advance what they're going to play. Just so we can sort of plan it, know when we're going to have an intermission and try and time it so everything goes smoothly and smoothly.

That's good. So, I mean, a big part of what you're doing now is, is the open mic. That's sort of like the sort of that's getting the people to come in. Is that something you would suggest to a lot of other guitar societies? I mean, that's an excellent way to kind of just like get your audience on board without just, you start with the concerts and then you're like, you should invite whoever is listening. You put it in papers or whatever. It's,

We all know from throwing our own concerts that that doesn't always work, you know, that you can throw everything at it and it's still just the same 20 friends that came to your last concert. So this is a great way to sort of involve guitarists, right?

As far as like the budget is concerned, how do you guys work along those lines? Are you guys nonprofit yet? Are you guys working on that? Right. So right now we are set up as a partnership and we partnered with a group news foundation. They're acting as our fiscal sponsor.

And through fiscal sponsorship, we're able to do a lot of the activities that a nonprofit would do. For example, I have concerts in the public library. That's a thing that a nonprofit can do that a private company cannot do. But through our relationship with the group news foundation, we could do things like that. We can apply for grants and yeah, receive tax deductible donations.

Um, so we're able to function in a lot of the ways that a nonprofit would without, but we haven't yet like set up our own nonprofit. So it's a whole other undertaking. So it is, it's a group. That's cool. The group means is functioning that way. That's sort of like an online startup sort of, I love that.

That's right. It's very cool. Yeah, because they sort of handle all the all the paperwork and you just sort of sign up with them. Do they take I mean, this is just do they take a fee? What like what's how does it work? They do take a percentage of the donations. There's like an admin processing a fee.

And the donations would go through the Group News Foundation and then are distributed to us or to any of the organizations that they're working with that they provide fiscal sponsorship for. But like you said, then you do not have to, you can go to the public libraries, you can act as a non-profit.

Right. Because group means is already vetting you. They're already going like, yeah, these guys are good to go. They're there. They're a nonprofit. Right. That's cool. That's that's what a streamlined way to do it. Yes.

Yeah, we're super proud to be with Group Muse, by the way, just because, you know, that's kind of how this started. You know, Pierre and Rodrigo met at Group Muses, like as artists, you know, Pierre and I perform a lot of them. And, you know, they have a very similar ethos to what we're trying to build with the Brooklyn Classical Guitar Society, you know, making classical music more accessible, you know, more fun, more open. So, you know, that's we're really glad that that it ended up working out with them.

You know, with classical guitar too, it's, it's just, it's the perfect setting. You know, it's kind of like how classical guitar was meant to be heard probably, you know, originally in, in salon, you know, environments, you know, so what's, what's better than, you know, having a living room, you know, intimate space, people hanging out and listening to a really high level concert, you know?

Yeah. What were you going to say? You were, you had something to Josh, didn't you? And it's a very different experience to go to somebody's house to hear the concert where, you know, they open the door, grease you, introduce you to whoever else is there. And there's like somebody really like hosting versus going to a big concert.

You have your tickets, you sit down, maybe you chat with the people next to you, maybe you don't. But that's one of the things we're really trying to build on for the Guitar Society. Exactly. And Matt, you nailed it on the head. This is a salon instrument in its origin. It is not a concert hall instrument. It doesn't sound that great in a concert hall. It sounds good. It sounds fine. Some sound better than others.

but this is not necessarily an instrument that you are supposed to be in a giant room listening to. And so even places like Viola Recital Hall, the Carnegie Hall, stuff like that, they're big, they're big places. And it sounds pretty good, but there is an intimacy that we get at these events that is awesome.

You know, and, and you get it at the libraries too, you know, and I think that's what you guys are working with. You're working with the libraries too. And that's true. I've always felt with that, with libraries, I usually get to talk to every member of the audience, you know, intimately at those, at those shows. And, you know, you take it for granted, you complain, Oh, everybody's old, you know, and stuff.

But it's pretty cool. It's pretty neat. And I know, Matt, you play at Rockwood too, right? Because I just played there in January. Oh, yeah, that's great. Yeah, I did a set with Pierre, kind of a very similar kind of situation for the open mic. We used it as an opportunity to try a new program. You know, it's just, you know, Rockwood, you get a variety of musicians. So everyone was kind of scratching their head when they saw two classical guitars jump up there after a headbanging.

heavy metal bands that were like, we're going to mix it up. I hope you enjoy it. And they were into it. They all stood around and listened. Which stage were you on? Was it the one that has the, it's the one that's street level? Like the bar? Yeah, I think it was just stage one. Yeah, exactly. No, it's good. They also have a good, like, I played the stage three for the first time and it was great. It was like candle lit, every other table, very cabaret style. But it's, yeah, there are venues like that.

But they only let you play for an hour. That's it. You are in and out in one hour. And that's where you guys come in is that people can actually have a real concert, you know, that lasts more than an hour with them kicking you off. So the next band can come on. What are your visions? You know, we're kind of coming to the end, but what are, what are your visions individually? Josh, where do you see this going as a person that does other things? You've got the karate studio, which, you know, that, that,

You grew that, that doesn't just happen. That doesn't grow on trees. You know, just keep that sustaining to keep that relevant. Where do you, where do you see, what do you see for the Guitar Society in the future?

I would like to see what I would say, continuing with the open mic, um, building on that, maybe even having more similar types of events. Um, we've been talking about different types of concerts that we're going to have, um, and also special events for members, um, you know, like workshops. Um, and I think Matt could speak more about what we are, you know, some of the things that we have in the works, but, um, really just continuing to build what we have going and, um,

learning to play better. Exactly. What do you think, Matt? Yeah. I mean, for me, I would definitely want to, you know, talk about the future of the Brooklyn classical guitar society. I want there to be a future. I don't want this to be like, well, that was a fun year guys. And, you know, see in a couple of years, I definitely want to keep doing this. I think the open mic will, will continue to do. And if they do grow, you know, maybe we have two a month or something like that. Who knows?

But, you know, for us, I'm really excited to see a variety of offerings coming for our community and for our members, as Josh had mentioned. So, of course, I want to get a concert series going, you know, something, you know, right now we're kind of, we're scheduling these as they come. We're trying to get it started, but hopefully we'll have something a little bit more established and a little more regular.

But then, yeah, a variety of offerings. So coming up, I was talking with someone about hosting a Alexander Technique workshop specifically for classical guitarists. So it's going to be something hands-on, something that we'll throw at Josh's dojo, so there'll be plenty of room to...

To do the exercise. Yeah, exactly. So we'll do something like that. I have my good friend Matthias in Barcelona was talking about doing like a virtual presentation on developing programs because he has a lot of experience doing a variety of program curation. So based on stories, based on art. So it's not just like, oh, here's my music.

Or here's, you know, Renaissance, Baroque, classical, you know, here's a, our last program, for example, was centered around a book by Italo Calvo, The Invisible Cities. So we did a whole program based off of Invisible Cities, which was a lot of fun.

um so he might he might speak about that and and you know other concerts i know coming up uh you know depending on when this airs but coming up we have uh july 29th uh scheduled with uh nicoletta tedesco and she's going to take out a really interesting program she calls it um she calls it guitar songs because she said there's no other way to describe it it's similar to the lute songs where she's going to sing and play the guitar but the music that she has written is meant to be

played with the guitar. Like you can't take out that element or else it loses its identity. So she's going to do, she's going to do her whole program for us. We're really excited. And it's a show, it's a full show about identity, you know? So for her, she was talking about that,

She's a classical guitarist, but she also does and enjoys other things. So how can she combine her interests with being a classical musician and finding her voice? And we're all going to get to be treated to that really soon. So hopefully we can kind of find more unique offerings like that.

other artists for our series. That's incredible. And the unique offerings like that, that is exactly what, you know, I mean, everybody can do what they want. If you want to be a preservationist, I understand. I respect it. I agree with it. You know, we need that. We're classical guitarists. That's our bread and butter. This is an old preserved art form. But for me to kind of want to go to something, it usually needs to be, yeah, a little bit more. There needs to be something tying into it.

Um, and, and I think, I think that's it, whether it's cultural awareness, whether it's, you know, whether it's all sorts of things like identity, all this stuff, this, those stuff, that stuff can be addressed through the classical guitar. I'm convinced. And, uh, and it's, it's kind of up to, up to the presenters, which you guys are now to sort of look for those things, look for those, uh,

uh things to present especially when you have such a big city that does such a great job at presenting traditional things because it's the old the old city over here in the us it's a traditional city in a lot of ways um but we're in brooklyn too man i mean it's supposed to be kind of cool right

That's why we live here. It's very cool. It's not supposed to be that. I'm not saying that it's bad or good. We talked about that's not what I'm doing. I'm just saying that it would be cool if we were sort of honoring the fact that we are in this

magnificently creative borough. There is nothing like Brooklyn when it comes to going out to a restaurant or a bar and being very confident that you are surrounded by people that prioritize creativity

and intellectual pursuit above almost everything else. Like that is like the baseline for the people in this borough. And that's not, that's not as much as, you know, we went to school there, we love Manhattan and stuff like that. That's not the way Manhattan is all the time. It's, it still is like the center of commerce and,

There's all the hospitals are there. That's where the scientists and the doctors and the lawyers are. And so this is this is our borough. And it's it's it's where it's where this stuff happens. So I'm I'm really glad that you guys are doing it. And and I can already tell that you're putting so much thought into it. And I'm very, very proud of.

of uh i'm happy to meet josh i'm really proud of you matthew because i met you when you were kind of a little guy kind of a you know a young a young guy just still in college i think you were it may have been up 11 years ago yeah that's right so it's amazing to see this i love you know being 46 and just watching everybody become because you just you never know you never know what people are gonna are gonna do

When they're, when they, when they come onto the scene. So thank you. Where, where can people go to, to learn more, to become a member? I understand you guys are having memberships and drives for that, but tell us more before we go about that.

Sure. Yeah, that's going to be, um, you could, okay. So our website is, uh, BKCGS.org. So you can go there. We have all of our information on memberships. There's an open mic sign up. Uh, there's, you know, um,

There will be more content there too as well, but we also have pictures and we have an archive of all of our open mic performances because at every open mic I record and do video for the performances so you can check out what other people are doing. So that's a lot of fun there. And then we have Instagram and Facebook. Our Instagram is a little more active right now. That's at the BKCGS, so T-H-E BKCGS.com.

And then yeah, if you sign up if you're a classical guitarist at any level sign up for one of our open mics become a member Yeah, and you can also you know, there's our emails and stuff there So if you have any questions, you can reach out and you know, we're happy to answer anything for you Josh, I don't know if there's anything I missed there. I could also subscribe to our mailing list yes, there are monthly newsletter and you know updates about special events and stuff and and

And as Matt said, everything can be done through the website at bkcgs.org. That's right, people. Reach out to them now because they're going to get busy. So this is the time.

Because these guys, it's going to turn into what it's like when you try to get a hold of anybody else at any other guitar society. So get in there and make your voice heard and become part of the Brooklyn Classical Guitar Society, whether you're in New York or whether you're not in New York and you want to support what these people are doing.

This is something that we can all kind of get behind. So help them out there. Thanks guys for coming on Matthew and Josh, of course, if you decide to just switch careers, I wouldn't, I wouldn't wish that on my worst nightmare. I'm on my worst enemy. I wouldn't wish what Matthew and I are going through on anybody. But if you do decide to quit doing what you're doing and, and you become a classical guitarist, come on the show.

Thank you for having us. And Matthew, we definitely had long overdue. I'd love to have you on sometime soon just to talk about, you know, your art and, you know, we'll talk the next time we got a project going on in wall. Yeah. There's lots, lots to talk about. I'm always game. Yeah. There is a lot to talk about. So I will talk to you guys soon enough. Have a wonderful day. You too. Thank you so much for having us.

That does it for my time with Josh and Matthew. Thank you to them, and thank you for everybody who's working at the Brooklyn Classical Guitar Society. Make sure you support them, the Brooklyn Classical Guitar Society, and go to brettwilliamsmusic.com slash support. That's b-r-e-t williamsmusic.com slash support to support the show. Thank you, and I will talk to you next time. Wally says hi.