Episode 171 ChromaDuo
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Welcome back to Classical Guitar Insider. This is your host, Brett Williams, and today on the show, it's Chroma Duo. That's right, they are a Canadian guitar duo. Oh, lucky. I wish I lived in Canada right now. They are Tracy Ann Smith, who I've known for 20 years, and I got to know Rob McDonald. They are unmarried, which I didn't realize. I have known Tracy for 20, but we don't talk that often, but she's great. I liked her back then. I like her now, and I'm

Hopefully this is the beginning of a new friendship for the three of us. They're going to be at GFA this year. And they have an incredible new album out.

Chroma Duo. They have a couple of albums and I didn't really dig into their catalog until I set up the interview. I had maybe listened to a little bit of the Revelle album for some reason. I don't know why. And I enjoyed it, but I didn't get into their other stuff, their other commissions. And boy, is it vast and seriously beautiful and incredibly challenging music.

So there's a lot of virtuosity there. And I just fell in love with their albums. I've been playing it for myself. I've been playing it for Baby Wally. And I hope that that is enough ass-kissing to have it where Tracy will let me move into her government-subsidized guest house next to a government-subsidized pool. Very excited to move to Canada, Tracy. Yeah.

That's what's going on. And before we start talking about why I want to move to Canada, why a lot of you do, maybe not all of you, some of you are probably like libertarian. I can see how an angry guitarist in a small apartment in New York would have a draw. An angry white guitarist. Yeah.

I can see how you guys that, you know, you RFK guys would love listening to me. I thoroughly disagree with you. I think you just helped put like this absolute monster in office. So thank you for that. You know, no offense. We could still be friends, but that's what I think. I'm not going to tiptoe around it. You guys are acting crazy on my side of the fence. You're acting crazy too, but that's crazy.

You know, we'll talk about that. But basically, you know, what you need to understand is, is that in order to get the best guitars on the East Coast, you have to go to Savage Classical dot com. That's S-A-V-A-G-E classical dot com. That's Richard Sage. And he will give you the guitar of your dreams. Just tell him that Brett sent you. That's Savage Classical dot com. He just signed up for another two years.

of sponsorships. So I'm real excited to have him back on. He's our oldest sponsor. Let's hear it for SavageClassical.com. That's S-A-V-A-G-E Classical.com. The show is also going to be promoting a Kickstarter for Anthony Landman. That's right. Anthony Joseph Landman is my old friend. I just was talking to a new friend of mine, Nathan Fisher, who

the other day who's a guitarist and we both found out that we both love this guy and I just got an email from Tony the other day talking about a new album Homages for Piano now I for some reason can't say I know I can say Homage am I saying that? so I don't know but when it's written in front of me I can't say it so Homages for the Piano

The new album is in its Kickstarter phase, and he has Holly Rodfeld is going to be performing on it. He's got a Grammy award-winning staff of producers that are on board for this.

And it's homages that he feels very close to. It's people like Neil Gaiman, right? And Frank Zappa. And also like close friends of his that I know from, you know, kind of going to college with him and stuff like that. Tony Kushner, Manny Morris, all sorts of stuff, all the way down to Miyazaki.

who is the Studio Ghibli animator. If you don't know what Studio Ghibli is, it's the best cartoons in the world. Beautiful anime. Just on the highest level. Some of the best movies that have ever been made. Spirited Away is right up there. It's like a top ten film of all time. So if you're not into that, you're a little behind the game. I'm not going to judge you for it, but Jackson Pollock, all sorts of different things. So

It's a great way to compose, to compose to people. It's a wonderful project. And you can go to Kickstarter and all you do is enter Anthony Landman. That's Anthony Landman. That's L-A-N-M-A-N to support the project. That's Anthony Landman to support the project. You can also go to anthonylandman.com for more info about this outstanding composer and outstanding person.

Okay, so yeah, we have had quite a week. So if I'm making any mistakes about Croba Duo in this intro, if I've got something wrong, it's because I interviewed them on Monday. It's now Thursday and Tuesday happened. And then Wednesday was its, you know, day of reckoning. And here we are. Is my chair making a bunch of noise? I feel like it is. God, I hope I can edit that out. This chair used to be silent. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know what to do. I think last time in 2016, I was real sad. And this time I'm just kind of like beat up. It's becoming normalized, like too many things in this country to sort of just like have idiot presidents. The first time I felt it happened to me was in 2004. I was just completely shocked because it seemed like he had George Bush like propelled us into two wars and

I was like, there's no way he's going to win. He's a disaster. Like he completely destroyed American credibility by just all the, all these illegal things that he was involved with. And it was just so, so much going on. And his, his debates against John Kerry were awful, but they found a way to hate John Kerry. And he lost, but then, you know, Obama happened and I was like, okay, we just been over and over. It's just been awful.

My adult political life has been just like insanity, a total roller coaster. And I don't know. I got sure that's the way it was for everybody else from like 1968 to 1974. What a mess. So, you know, just trying to actually I spent the first I spent yesterday just like comforting Liz. Today is like I said, today's Thursday. We'll see when this comes out. But yeah, so I spent yesterday just comforting Liz and.

I don't know. This is rough. This is a rough one. Because it's like everybody hates each other right now. That's the hardest thing about it for me. Before it was like we could all get unified and we could just hate on people for voting for Trump or hate on Trump or whatever. Just the whole side of things. You're just like, why are you doing this? This is terrible. This time it's like people are hating on Kamala hard on my end of the fence, on the blue side.

I don't understand it. I keep on looking things up. It's like, I mean, I know that if you feel one way or the other about, and I know that I have a lot of listeners that are passionate about, I've got a lot of really super close friends that have really passionate opinions on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. She did sort of skirt that issue, right? They just said, like, how do you, she goes, we just support Israel. So I get that.

I understand how that can be upsetting, but to start throwing away votes, right? What is it called? Protest voting? Something that was invented two weeks ago. You guys just start throwing in this little novel idea, you know, and I just think all the rhetoric is like a little bit like, oh, I hate her and I hate her for this. It reminds me a lot of what happened to Hillary Clinton, you know?

I had like people that I thought were progressive go like, yeah, but Clinton, man, she's the worst. And I was like, why? She seemed great in the debates. She says nothing but nice things. I don't understand what you're talking. Oh, you didn't see her speak to the miners guild or something? No. What are you talking about? All these anecdotes. It seems like the same things happen with Kamala here. And, um, yeah, I think they have something in common. I can't put my finger on what it is. Oh yeah. They're a woman. Um, I just, it's,

Can somebody explain to me on the left what, you know, it's literally, it's just like all the posts are like Bernie Sanders says that, you know, he's not surprised this happened. And also everybody, you guys can stop pretending you're working class. Like, you know, it's just all these, you know, East Coast elite guys that are dressed like bag ladies in Brooklyn pretending that they're empathizing or understand the working class. Anyway, so yeah, big loss, big deal.

The whole government, all those little branches just hanging. The court, the house, the Senate, the presidency, it's all red. And it's not just red. It's his red, a certain color of red. I want to say fight next time, but I know people went and fought their asses off to try and get this election to go the right way, the way it should have gone.

The only way, I mean, there was no, I can't believe this is happening. Anyway, I'm going to stop talking about it because I've got kids to work with and they are a joy to work with. They have brought me joy all week. Um, you know, my baby has brought me joy. My instrument has brought me joy. Uh, my wife has brought me some joy, but she's just a little too sad. I kind of got to bring the joy to her, but, um, she's doing the best she can, you know, we'll all, we'll all, uh,

We'll figure something out, right? We always do. All right. God bless America. I'm just kidding. All right. I will. Let's get on with it and let's talk to some Canadians, right? Hey, yes, definitely. Let's talk to some Canadians. Here's my time with Tracy and Rob.

Yeah, and Tracy, we were talking about how big of an effect that festival had on us because we saw the incredible duo. I think sort of the preeminent duo of that time, I'll say. Yeah. The early aughts was, yeah. And one of the best of all time, I would say, at least that I've ever heard. Solo duo is just such an inspiration for us and for...

All kinds of duos. I mean, I don't think I would play duo today if I hadn't seen them. I know. It was such a big thing because you were like, oh, I can do this. I can do this with a friend.

I can have this wonderful, you know, this collaborative thing that I think we're all very hungry for as soloists, especially back then, because it's just like competitions and maybe not auditions, but, you know, recitals, master's, all this stuff. It's just very isolating. And then you're like, oh, I can hang out with a friend and do it. Yeah. And it's not only that, although that's a huge part of it, but it's also that when you're a soloist, you're kind of on your own, you're doing everything by yourself.

And that can be really onerous after a while, but when you're playing in duo, you can kind of combine forces. If somebody's really busy, the other person can send out the emails or, you know, it

if somebody's got like some other project on the go you know the other person can can kind of step up and and help out and I mean even at one point Manuel said that one of us should do the fingerings you know and so we didn't kind of continue with that but it's such a brilliant idea that you know one person goes through and does all the fingerings figures out you know everything and then you go from there so yeah it's just amazing I think what you can accomplish when you

When you get together and combine forces. Yeah. And musically also, it's like, that's what I did when I did talk to solo duo, which was very long time ago. I, I think we talked about, for me, one of the things about being in a duo was especially when you have the melody line,

You can just focus on it and you feel like you feel like a violinist. All of a sudden you have this ability to really shape a melody and to shape phrases and do things that we just, you know, as a soloist, sometimes you just, you're just like trying to get through trying to just hold on for dear life. And this just, it feels very freeing, especially in the slower, more, you know, nuanced moments to be able to just spend time on that, on that one line.

Totally. And in our duo in particular, Tracy is the best lyrical guitarist in the world, I think. That's a pretty big statement. But she loves and naturally plays these beautiful singing melodic lines in a way that I don't, like I just never have. But I really enjoy playing like,

like textural accompanying things, you know? So for us, it works really well. I think you're overselling me and I think you're selling yourself short because you're incredible that, you know, but Tracy has this natural lyricism and you're playing this different from mine. So that is a nice balance in a duo for sure.

That's amazing because, you know, I was talking to Joanne Castigliani and the Andreaccio duo, another duo that like I love big time. I don't know if you've ever been able to see them, but they're like a husband wife duo that is just like they do the work. That's what I would say about them, especially they're like on the older side. No offense, but they're just like older people. They're like older, like my parents age. And they but they still put the work into it that people love.

kind of like, you kind of, you know, you kind of phone it in after a while. Some really great guitarists will just sort of just like play the same rap for many, many years and stuff like that. They are really just on it, but they had it where basically they would go back and forth. So no one was ever on the top and the bottom, but it sounds like with you, that's not necessarily the case. You Rob, you're saying that you enjoy sort of the texture, maybe finding some counterpoint in that texture, exploiting that. And then Tracy, you,

I was sort of unaware of this, but do you generally take the upper line there, Tracy? Often, but not exclusively, I would say. And I would also say that because of the style of music that we play, melody isn't always a big part of it. Like, for example, our Brouwer piece that we commissioned,

for our new CD, you know, Brower had just baldly stated that melody wasn't important to him. So it's more about the musical cells and the texture and the, you know, he uses Afro-Cuban cells and kind of combines them in a really exciting way. So there isn't really a top part and a bottom part in that piece. It's just like a true duo in the sense that both of us are sort of playing a lot of, you

things like just really together, you know, and I think in that piece you do have some pretty amazing virtuosic moments, you know, that sort of take prominence, I would say. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I think for us it's not a rule, but it's a musical tendency in our playing.

When I listen to the CD myself or any of our CDs, I always just love hearing Rob play. He's definitely incredibly expressive and very subtly so. There's just so much going on in the way that he plays. And so I wouldn't say he's accompaniment and I'm the melody as a thing.

But it just often happens that, you know, I like the pretty parts and he likes more avant-garde things. And there are lots of moments on our recordings we experience afterwards where we can't, we're not really sure who plays what. Yeah. Like it's not totally clear on listening, which is kind of refreshing. Yeah.

Wow. That's what, so when you listen back, you're like, I'm not really sure where I am. I think that's true. I think that's, I mean, now that I, if I, if I listened to an old recording of me and Jock, it's like, I'll, I'll be like, I don't, I don't remember whether I, whether I'm doing that or not. But it's you guys, one of the big things about you and I just interviewed Sharon has been last is commissions. Yeah.

right? Commissioning for duo in particular. So you're commissioning people that write for the guitar often, but you're commissioning to them for them to write a new duo. And I mean, that's, that's really important, especially with Deans and stuff like that. It's really important that that rep is out there for the duo, because one of the things that you find with a duo is that you end up playing a lot of transcriptions at the beginning. At least we did. It was just a little bit, a little limited. I feel like to just sort of like Assad stuff,

And I don't know, what was your feeling about sort of approaching this music and starting your commissions? I know that your first album was 2012. Is that right?

I think 2010. Let's take a look. But you, you, that's the one water. Hidden waters. Hidden water. And this one is called what I saw in the water. A lot of water. There's water involved. There's water involved here. But what is your, what is your, what you obviously had some sort of a goal initially to commission. What is your process of commissioning? Process of commissioning.

I think, well, when we started as a duo, it was our goal to play contemporary music. And part of that, we wanted to create new rep, like you said, for us and others. So immediately we commissioned some composers that we just admired and loved. One was Roland Dienz, Steve Goss,

Then a student friend of ours from Peabody, Christopher Pierce, who we knew really well, but was more of an emerging composer. And that sort of made our first program, but I think we only intended to play this sort of music. So the process of commissioning, we ask people questions.

that's important let's see badger them yeah you have to secure any funding for for people like uh like deans or or asad i mean obviously asad doesn't need to write any more duos so you guys i mean to actually get something out of him written for you is that's pretty outstanding that that must have been quite a quite a quite a thing that would have been a process of um

of commissioning, you know, something along those lines. Absolutely. I mean, the first CD, we were lucky, well, I was lucky to get the Theodore Presser Award at Peabody, so that's given to a graduate student. You kind of apply and have some sort of project. And so it was, I believe, to record Pierce's piece with Rob and to commission Dan's.

So there was some money involved from the Theodore Presser organization to do that commission. And we were able to make the first CD. And we hired Norbert. We were doing an indie CD, basically. And Norbert liked it at the time so much that he approached Naxos and said, how about this?

How about we put this out on the Naxos label? So we actually have sort of the indie version because we needed it for a CD release party we were having. Well, a CD release concert, I guess, in England, right? We played for Goss's school.

in a concert where John Williams came, which was terrifying. Oh my God. Oh my God, don't even. I don't want that to happen. Yeah, yeah. We were in the green room and it had a window and we could see John Williams walking up. We were like...

All right, I guess either I'm gonna be a guitarist or not now But yes, so we played that concert and we had our kind of indie version at that time But Naxos was kind enough to allow us to print a certain amount of them and then they put it out themselves So that's how we kind of got

connected with Naxos and were able to get that commission and have that repertoire. But we really, I mean Rob's mentioning Pierce, one of the things that we really want to do as much as we can is to have these pieces by these great composers that are already established, but also to play some things by

composers who really deserve to be heard. So that was one of the drivers to record Pierce's piece alongside these kind of more famous guitar composers. Right. I mean, that's really what, because I mean, that's sort of the heart of your first album is the Christopher William Pierce pieces.

And they are, they're, they're more, um, they're more modern, I'd say than, you know, the, the Steven Goss is, there's a lot of cheek in it. There's a lot of, there's a lot of one. I mean, Steven Goss is one of the best composers for our instrument, hands down. Um, and people are really starting to take notice. So that's, that's really cool. But basically that first one is the Deans, the Goss, um,

And this, yeah, like you said, I was going to ask you about Christopher Pierce. I didn't really, I was unaware. I know for some reason I had heard though. I feel like he's done some things since, right? Or he's something's in my head about him. Cause the name rang a bell, but I was like, I don't know who this guy is.

Yeah, no, we were, we were in grad school together, the three of us in Baltimore and we're good friends. Um, and he had studied guitar in the past, like many, many, you know, composition majors sort of seem to come out of guitar players. Wow. Okay. So, you know, he knows how the instrument works. That's kind of important, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think you can hear it in his music. Um, so yeah, we were just close friends and loved his music. Um,

And, but he hasn't been writing so much lately. He wrote those two pieces for us on the album and some other chamber music exists. Yeah. What about, you know, choosing to record the goths first? I mean, that's such a good decision because it really is sort of like, it's a welcoming decision.

of pieces, right? It's very, it's approachable and it's also just, it's pretty, you know, it's pretty outstanding. It's pretty hard. It seems like there's some really challenging stuff going on there and some showy stuff. What a great piece, the raw and the cooked. Right, the raw and the cooked was not written for us. Still the sea was written for us, but the raw and the cooked was such a natural opening for the recording. And I think Norbert had a lot to do with

kind of deciding what would come first and how the program would kind of evolve over the length of the CD, which I really like because I've always liked CDs that you can listen to the whole thing, like whatever kind of music it is, you know, like the old sort of album idea where you listen from the beginning to the end and it's kind of an experience. And I feel like Norbert was really excellent in kind of putting it all together so that it flowed from top to bottom.

Yeah, well, we kind of come up with an idea, but then we have to kind of pitch the Canada Council for the Arts or an organization that does funding to kind of get some support and usually

you know, were in touch. Well, actually it's been different for each CD because the second CD, the Ravel Debussy CD, he had a contract with the Paris guitar duo who disbanded, but this contract existed for these transcriptions of French Impressionist CDs and when he didn't have that duo, he asked us if we wanted to do that project. So he had already kind of conceptualized that whole thing.

And kind of Naxos hired us really in a sense to make that CD. And at the time it was the only kind of music we were interested in playing aside from contemporary music anyway, is French Impressionism. So we kind of jumped on that. But this last CD...

we kind of discussed with Norbert more about the pieces that we wanted to record and asked him if he would support our grant application and whether Naxos would be

interested in that sort of thing and they immediately were so that was that was sort of the stage that he got into it that's that's a that seems like a very long process a lot a huge commitment and it must have you know been like you must have had to go back and forth on it because the trajectory of what you started in the first album is clearly continued

In this, in, in this, in this new album, it's clearly like, there seems to be a very clear through line, but then there's this, there's this massive, you know, collection of transcriptions that you guys did or that you worked on with Norbert. No, we did almost all of them. That must have taken forever. It must've taken a very long time. It must've taken many years of your life.

I think we really liked the idea of it, so we were happy to take on the project. And then I think probably totally underestimated the amount of hours it takes to do that amount of arranging. And I think even when we started that, maybe Tracy was still living in Baltimore and I was in Toronto. So that made it extra challenging. And then Tracy was here. But we love that music. Yeah.

Yes, we had to do it. I think Steve Goss worked on one of the arrangements with us, one of the Ravel pieces. And then I think the remaining are all ours. What did he do? What did Steve Goss... Do you remember what he did with one of the Ravel pieces? Did he make it more playable? Was there just like a moment where you were like, okay, he made it less playable? We made it more playable. Well, I think I remember at the time, I think...

I think he explained to us the way that he starts. I might be starting a vicious rumor. Anyway, I don't think it's, this isn't that bad. No one's going to listen to this. There are no bad rumors about Steve Goss. Don't I remember, right, that he input almost the entire score into his software notation to start and then chips away at it to make it fit the guitarist?

you know, so like putting basically the piano note for note in. And then just going like, nah, nah. Yeah. In some, I don't know his process then, but I remember that being a starting point, but we have lots of back and forth, lots of ideas shared in that. Well, so that would, yeah. I mean, I guess you could do that. Did you do that? Is that what you, is that how you guys handled it was sort of importing the

The score and then just sort of reworking it or sort of changing the keys. Obviously we have to do all sorts of things like that. Well, in part we did, but we also did,

knew that there were versions of some of the pieces that were both for piano and for orchestra and so we wanted to kind of make a third that you know used the best or most guitaristically interesting bits from either one so if there was some sort of fanfare in the orchestra we would try to create that sort of sound on the guitars

Or if there was something beautiful in the piano that didn't exist in the orchestral versions, we would kind of lean towards that. So it was a lot of going back and forth, like what was going to work and what was not going to work. That's good. I mean, it really allows you to sort of get into it. Also, you're experiencing composition.

You know, in a sense, you're using software, you're moving things around, you're making decisions about harmony, you're making decisions about counterpoint, all sorts of stuff that the composers are doing, right? That must have been super exciting.

Or stressful. Or stressful. Right. And like you said, you just didn't anticipate. You were like, oh, yeah, sure. So, yeah, well, you know, we'll do some Claire de Lune, whatever. And then you look at it. Yeah, it's fun. It sounds fun. It's also like amazing music, right? Yeah, it is. So you want to do a great job, of course. And wow, I mean, that album's great because you can put it on. I put it on with my kid the other day. It was great. And it's just like, and it's just such a wonderful way to, yeah,

That music is something that I think draws in a lot of people into the genre in general. And then if you put it on a guitar, man, I mean, it's just like a natural fit. So beautiful. You know, I want to go to the new album and I want to talk about it. But before I do, sort of thinking about this, the fact is, is that a lot of duos use the same guitars. A lot of duos are brothers. A lot of duos live in the same city. Like you were saying, a lot of duos now you live in the same city.

Uh, a lot of, we don't anymore. Oh yeah. Okay. So now it's, now it's back to the long distance again. Where are you? I mean, now you said that you are in the only area of the world that has a hour and 30 minutes. Cause you said, yeah, that's two 30 our time. And I'm like, I don't know. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm an idiot because Steve got said to explain to me what, what, what, what Wales was, you know, essentially. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, this is like the version of Wales. I live in St. John's now, which is pretty much the easternmost point of continental North America, I would suppose. Basically, although St. John's is on the island now that I think about it, but it's basically an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. And I teach at Memorial University of Newfoundland. And yeah, that's where the funky...

time zone comes into play it's the only half hour time zone that exists do we know why that is is i think it's just a weird placement of of like beyond that it's just ocean until you get to ireland yeah yeah okay so they want to give you a real time they're like well we can't just we gotta do something with them they're just being difficult i think but

Yeah, but Rob's still in Toronto. So right now we're both in Toronto because we have our CD release tomorrow night. But recently, last week, Rob came and we did a CD release in St. John's, which was fabulous. Nice to bring our music. Congratulations. That's fun. Thanks for doing this right in between sandwiched and between CD releases. Oh, we're so happy to be here. Thank you for having us. Of course. But you guys do have a lot of...

I don't want to call them obstacles because I think it's, I think there's a lot. I talked to McAllister and, and, and Cochran and they're, you know, that same thing, same situation, sort of a distance, but they get together. That makes some amazing music. They go on a little tour. But you guys have been doing this for a long time and you guys have kept it together as friends. And,

And that I found that pretty hard. I know a lot of people found it hard to keep duos going as friends, even solo duo. You know, they don't live in the same town anymore. They don't see each other that often unless they're on tour or recording. Yeah.

And like I said, you guys don't play the same guitars. So how is that? Let's start with that. How do you balance the different guitars? Let's talk about what kind of guitars you play. I generally don't do that on the show. I generally don't care that much. But it's like, are they both cedar? Are they both spruces or something? What do they share in common? They're both cedar guitars. They both have...

couple of tops on them. My guitar is an interesting story, honestly, because Tracy chose it for me, basically. Tracy's the boss. Not only Tracy's the boss to me. I don't know if you want to tell the story. He's a great employee. I do myself. I hate...

trying guitars and I hate shopping for guitars and me too I'm out I just I'm not into it I know lots of people are I knew anyway I was home and this particular summer Tracy was at a festival in Germany and um was trying out guitars and fell in love with this one and knew well enough to order me one

Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I, I wanted one and that's the first time I've ever wanted one since getting the one that I actually still play now. So I play Matthias Dahmen guitar and I love it. It's a great instrument and I feel like it's,

sort of my voice and I've never like I walk through you know guitar fairs and people are like how about you try this guitar and I'm like eh no thanks I got what I got everything I want in this guitar so I've never cared but then I played this Antonius Miller and I quite loved it I was actually

trying guitars with Bruce Holtzman, which was an interesting experience. And he said, you know, I was playing my Domin and then I'd play the Miller and he was like, there's no comparison. There's no comparison. There's no comparison between... He loved the Miller. He loved it? He loved the Miller. So anyway... And of course he's using black and white Holtzman language. Yes. No comparison.

Yeah. Yeah. So I ended up ordering one and I told a few people and I think, you know, four people or something ordered a Mueller from that experience. You are showing some Mueller. So we both played Mueller for the French CD.

I think and then I ultimately went back to my dame and I needed it. And actually Alejandro Montiel has my Müller now so

Oh, he does? The Texas? Oh, I love that guy. I fell in love with it when he came to visit, and then he bought it. But it was funny because I told Miller at the time when I said, okay, we're ordering two guitars, and I said, you know, give me the slightly better one. And I was half joking, but mostly half. And then so he gave the slightly better one to Rob, I think. I liked it better. Everyone has agreed on that. Yeah, his is better. But our...

Those guitars were brother and sister, right? Yeah, yeah. He was going to make them out of the same piece of wood. And, you know, they were going to be really matched. And we thought, like, that would be a really nice thing for our duo to have the same guitar. But then, you know, couldn't do it after a while. I needed to play the Domin again. So this means you need to play two different guitars. Yeah, I mean, well, like you said, you needed to play the Domin again. And the fact is, is that what makes, you know, I like duos...

another sort of black and white holesman, you know, thing was Adam told me once he was like, duos, you know, the best duos are husbands and wives or brothers, you know, and that was sort of, that's it. Everybody else, everybody else is like, you know, going to be together for three years and then, you know, forget about it. And so I always had that in the back of my head, but now I'm starting to really kind of like have a lot of, I just think that that's very limiting. And it's also sucks to live in all of us to just, we all have to be soloists. Like that's no fun.

That's a lot of, you know, it's just too much. We already have so many soloists, so we need more duos. Let's talk about your relationship with Simone and her pieces for Frida Kahlo. It's an excellent way to start the CD, but more importantly, it's a big part of it. It goes on for a very long time, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So that, what, how did that, how did that collaboration come about? What's your relationship with those pieces? Well, we would, we should probably just say he's a dude. Oh my God. Oh, Simon. Simon. Yeah. Simona. I guess it's Simona. So anyway, Simona. Yeah. I've been a big fan of his music for a long time. Yeah. I think Lorenzo Micheli introduced me to his music.

Then I got to know his music actually no and when I was a student going to festivals in Europe there would always be one killer piece on a program of Yanarelli's played by an amazing guitarist and usually dedicated to them I think So that's how I got to know that that the composer and his music The piece though the piece is the only one on the album not composed for us. So it was written

for Risa and Martha's duo. But we found the score, I think, and the concept of it sounded amazing to us, you know? Like, individual movements based on Frida Kahlo paintings. And then, I don't know, we fell in love with it. It's a really beautiful, otherworldly piece.

Yeah, and Risa and Martha stopped playing together as a duo, and so they never sort of got around to recording that piece. So, you know, it was sort of a natural fit. We would make jokes that, you know, it's meant for us anyway, even if it was written for them. I don't think they've been in a duo for a very long time. You're talking about Martha Masters and... Yeah. Yeah, I saw them play together in 2000 in San Antonio.

Yeah. The GFA that Martha won. Great duo. Yeah. Yeah. They were good. So, but I, I, yeah, I mean, they must've, that must've been over a long time ago. Right. Well, before you guys got in into the game, I don't know exactly. I don't remember them playing. When Martha and Risa stopped playing. I'm not sure. I'm not sure when, but you know, they said that that was too difficult of a piece to sort of put together and

you know, in a flash. And it's true. I mean, it's, it's a really complex and it's horrible. Yeah. The score to Torah is, is confusing. And you know, the, I think this is,

If there's one place in the world where we should complain about the score to tourists right here, right? Yeah, do it. Absolutely do it. Yeah. Complain about it because I did hear some stuff when I was listening yesterday. I was like, geez, sounds really, really hard. Like on a mental level to sort of, there was a lot of stuff to line up that I was like, man, I don't know. I don't know. I don't feel like they're doing stuff that like I, I, I made no,

not want to do. It's challenging. I think, I think Yannarelli has like very large hands too. So the left hand work is really kind of intense. And then the, but the, the tuning is the string one and six are both in E flat for the entire piece. Oh, great. That's always fun. So, so challenging, but, but it makes for these amazing sound like harmonic possibilities, I suppose. Yeah. What is, what's the Frida Kahlo in there? What'd you guys find?

Like, what is it? Is it just sort of dedicated? Well, he has, it's on seven paintings of Frida Kahlo. So their individual movements are named after actual paintings. So we could have a look at those paintings and kind of see, you know, what he was aiming for a bit. And I think just the general kind of idea of surrealistic art and the strange harmonies on the guitar, you know, we're good marriage together. Yeah.

But you know, there's some strange paintings. For example, "A Few Small Nips" is the English translation of one of the movements. And it's a painting that Kahlo did about a story in the newspaper about a murder of a woman. And reported in the story, the killer said that, you know, he hadn't really stabbed her, you know, it was just a few small nips.

like with the knife so yeah just to get her attention yeah to drop the purse and so there you know she really explores these kinds of topics one of them it mean nascimento i don't speak spanish but uh is my birth and it's a painting of her sort of giving birth to herself i think and so that has kind of a

striking imagery along with the piece. And then there's the more esoteric kind of spiritual ones where she's, you know, the...

talking about the love of the universe and that sort of thing. So there's, you know, her and Diego, her husband, and you know, the things that represent the sky and the universe and the moon and the stars, that sort of thing. So it's just a colossal piece and so interesting and stimulating artistically, even if, you know, at the end you don't necessarily understand everything about it, it still sort of puts you in a state of wonder in a sense.

And that's a great way to explore, you know, her art, her paintings, too. It's like it's like I really, you know, you can really get into it and sit in it, stew in it. That's great. And then you also have Leo Brouwer, Dusan Vakdanovich. Of course, my probably my favorite composer, right? Dale Kavanaugh is just, you know, outstanding. That was my second and not my second favorite piece. But I like them all. But I really sort of gravitated towards the Kavanaugh.

Were you able to, that was an original commission, correct? It was. Yeah. Does she play it with Tom or is it just, is it just for you guys? It was written for us. And then recently she played it with Margarita Escarpa. Oh, cool. And recorded it. They have a recording now as well. But she does play it with Thomas. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

But that was another thing that was supported by the Canada Council of the Arts. So we're very grateful for all the support. Canada Council for the Arts. Get me in on that. What's going on up there? Is it a big, it's a thing, right? It's like, it's a way to sustain yourself. It actually has an impact.

It does. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really important organization here for all of us talking about the national endowment of the arts. Me and a friend. And we were like, that's not even like, I haven't even heard that word. I know that term. I haven't, I haven't thought of the NEA for 10 years. I was just talking about it too. So crazy.

Yeah, we're still very lucky that Canada has a strong role in trying to create meaningful Canadian art that can reach people throughout the world. I mean, what do you guys think? Just like looking at everything that's going on here, does it just look like a barn fire from up there? I mean, it's just like we just... Every single person I talk to is like not...

proud of living here anymore. It's like, it's just, it's crazy. It's just like, nobody's like, nobody's like celebrating the 4th of July. It's, it's just, it's, it's, I mean, maybe that's a New York thing for sure. But like, I don't know, man, it's, is it, does it look as bad as it feels? Well, I have to say just briefly, I think things really changed. I was at

Was it Yale? Yeah, I was at Yale in 2000. And then 2001, September 11th happened. And there was like an enormous change that moment as into how as to how it felt to be in America as a foreigner. Like when I first went there was all possibility, American dream, you know, excitement to be there. And then, you know, it was just incredible.

this terrible thing that happened. And I hope that, you know, things are going to get easier and better for our American friends. But I think that was a seismic event that just is going to take a while to fully recover from, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. Was it big? I was going to say something though, too. No, I was just going to say, I've, I've, I've, I less and less follow what's happening in the States I find, but, but it's sort of, it's interesting for me because I spent three years in Baltimore in grad school and like every single American friend I made and the people in the staff and everyone I got to know, I just thought were like amazing people.

people and I'm in a music school, I know, but so it's very, that's sort of my view of America in some terms, right? Yeah. You always say Baltimore is your favorite city. It's my favorite city. Yeah. I loved Morris. I loved it. Yeah. My brother wants us all to move to Baltimore. We got to move. We can't live here forever. The New Yorkers just can't. Yeah. They just keep on moving to see stuff like in the East, most,

part of this newfoundland yeah come up to st john's yeah they'll give me a whatever my time zone will will have a mark in it just like yeah so that's it well you know i mean is there anything else that you guys want to uh talk about before we wrap it up and let you guys get on with your

your day out there in the middle of the ocean? Or are you in the middle? No, you're in St. John's. - We're in Toronto right now, yeah. - Oh, you're in Toronto, okay. So right now you're in Mainland. - I guess one of the, sort of the heart of the recording for me at least is the Assad piece. We were just very lucky to have a piece by such an incredible

duo player and when we were coming up with that piece we looked through his repertoire and he was doing all these portraits, you know, portrait of David Russell, portrait of this person, portrait of that and we decided that we would want to mark the passing of Rolandian and have a piece, you know, five years after that unfortunate occurrence and loss to the guitar world.

So that piece is very interesting, I feel, because it quotes so much of the music that Roland loved, that he arranged, that he played, you know. And also Sergio and Roland were such good friends that it has a real intimacy and immediacy about the relationship that they had together over the years.

And I just think that I feel very lucky. I think we both feel very lucky that we have been able to have been some small part of the creation of that and to honor Dien's and everything he did for the guitar. Yeah. And I would just add that in working with composers on new pieces, we always have these initial discussions to brainstorm ideas, you know? And I think that one...

with Sergio was the, like the most immediate and easy and incredibly well-received by him. The idea of this, it just, yeah, I think he was thrilled to do that. Well, I mean, it's great because you guys gave him an opportunity to mourn his friend and, and, and, and create art out of that. You know, I mean, it really was like a moment where he can,

you know, he's, he's able to sort of reflect on this in a musical way. It's, it's a pro and that's, I think I can understand Tracy, why you kind of consider that the center of it, because it is this, this moment that's so important and it's so beautiful and it encompasses so many things in one, one piece of art, three pieces of art. Right. And the album is available right now, even though you guys are having these album release parties, I'm assuming that's the physical release.

physical version. You guys doing CDs? What's happening? I mean, I guess it's up to Nexus, right? Yeah, yeah. Nexus is manufacturing CDs. Yeah. Are they not manufacturing records? Do they do records? No, I don't know if they've ever done vinyl.

I don't know if they've ever gotten on board with that. I've even seen cassettes coming back lately, so you know. You never know, right. All of these formats, but yeah, we just have the CD and of course all the streaming services that you could want. You can listen to our playing on there.

Well, it's absolutely beautiful. And thanks so much for coming on and working so hard on this. This is obviously, this album does not seem like it was an easy album to do for me. It seems like it was a real labor of love. Absolutely. Absolutely. Labor of love. And thank you to you for having us and for doing this great service.

for the guitarists and giving us a chance to talk about what's important to us and as a community and providing a forum and really great questions. Like you can tell that you know what you're talking about, about the guitar. It's just...

to such a degree it's great it's wonderful so no i appreciate that i do and i gotta say i gotta say i know that tracy you're also a baker right you're during covid you were like you had the best pictures of sourdough out of all my friends everybody else was just putting up these garbage pictures of their bread and then tracy ann's feed would come up and it would be like this you

you know, nebula of, of Brett. I had to do something. We had to do something and you really did it. Yeah. You took it, you took it to the next level. All right, guys. Rob, Tracy, thanks so much for joining me. I had a wonderful time and let's stay in touch and talk soon. Sounds good. Thanks for having us.

All right. That does it for my time with Chroma Duo. I hope you enjoyed the show. I hope it was a little bit of a palate cleanser considering all the things that have happened. And please go to brettwilliamsmusic.com. That's B-R-E-T Williams music.com slash support to support the show and, uh, you know, maybe support some music of mine and stuff like that. All right. I've been working on some new compositions and I could use your help. So do that. And also visit

Anthony Landman at Kickstarter. That's right. Go to Kickstarter and in the search, it's Anthony Landman and you can listen to homages for piano. All right. And help support that project. Thanks so much. Go to savage classical.com. See you next time.