Episode 173 Derek Gripper
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Welcome back to Classical Guitar Insider. This is your host, Brett Williams. Today on the show, it's South African guitarist Derek Gripper. He arranges music for the West African Kora on to his Hauser 3 guitar. So that's how I knew him initially, and then I started listening to his Bach recordings later.

And he brings such a freshness to them. And there's such a uniqueness to it that I, I like, I get along and things wrong in this conversation because I think I know what he's doing. And then I have no idea what he's doing. Um, super innovative guy, super creative guy, true artist here, um, a real inspiration. And it was, uh, it was great to speak to him. I came across the West African Cora, um,

Through the music of Tumani Diabetes, I learned how to pronounce his name after many years of listening to him in the show as well. And I came across him because I'm, you know, because I'm an idiot. I came across him playing Little Big Planet on the PlayStation 3.

And there's this one level and it's my favorite level. And you're playing as this little sack boy that sort of jumps from object to object. He's little. He's about, you know, four inches tall. And you're just kind of trying to navigate your way through this little big planet of ours. Right. Super fun game. But that's not what we're talking about.

Anyway, so I've been in love with that guy for a long time. I find out on the show he recently passed. So that's sad. But you can always go listen to his music. But Derek's arrangements of Bach are super cool. That's something that...

you know, is, is something that we talk a lot about unusual for me. I'm usually not, you know, into just like more Bach recordings, but his are sort of unique enough and stand out from just a sonic standpoint that you can't help but go like, what's this guy doing? What's going on here? It's cool.

So the show is sponsored by Savage Classical, as you know, S-A-V-A-G-E, classical.com. Richard Sage of savageclassical.com has moved down to Florida. That's right. They're kicking us all out. We have no options but to suck it up and move to these red states because, you know, the economy's just got its thumbs on our neck. Oh, God.

Anyway, so he's down there in Florida now. If you were in Florida, you could check out the best collections of guitars, I guess, still on the East Coast or in what Trump calls the Gulf of America. Jesus Christ.

So if you're at the Gulf of America right now area, you can go out and check the best collection of guitars in the Gulf of America at Savage, S-A-V-A-G-E, classical.com. Richard, we will miss you so much. You have supported the show up in Long Island. You were living for a long time. Bayshore, New York. And I know a lot of people look to you for quality instruments. And I'm glad that you're bringing it down there. We can't afford these prices. It's insane. So...

God bless you. Good luck. And I'm humbled that you will continue to bless us with your support for the show. So thank you very much to Richard Sage down in Florida. You can go to savageclassical.com to get the specific location. We're also sponsored by Nick Hurt. Our friend Nicholas Hurt is back on the show. You may remember he released a video a year or two ago of several composers that he commissioned works from.

incredibly well done. Honored to have him back on the show. He's talking about his new series that takes place in Marfa, Texas and Alpine, Texas on February 7th. I know it's right around the corner and February 8th. But if you happen to be down there or you want to get down to an international destination, which is what Marfa, Texas is, I'm not playing. It's got more art there than anything.

anywhere in that area. It's incredible. There's just so much cool stuff going on in natural beauty. It's called Guitar in the Big Bend. That's guitarinthebigbend.com. And they will be presenting Alejandro Montiel, who I went to school with, and Isaac Bustos from the Texas Guitar Quartet. They've got Duo Fortis, and they will be performing two concerts, two free concerts.

down in Marfa. Absolutely, you know, great place to go. If you can't make it this time, keep an eye on guitarinthebigben.com for more. And I'll be talking to Nick in a little bit. I just want to kind of give you guys an update on what's going on over here in Bushwick.

I am attempting to get my teacher certification in New York State, so I'm back in school. It's been insane. And, you know, I had a friend, when I said certification, a friend goes, Suzuki? And I said, no, real certification. I just felt like, you know, this is such a big part of what I do. And with Wally waking up so early, it just, it's been really kind of draining, to be honest. These last, you know, coming up, well, he'll be two years in July soon.

But we're just on different schedules and I'm basically, I have to be up and dropping him off at daycare by eight o'clock. Right. And he had us up last night at 4 a.m. Well, I'm getting home at eight after 8 p.m. when I'm teaching in the city because I teach after school guitar. It's just not working out just from a scheduling standpoint. And I think I need a steadier paycheck. And it'd be nice to kind of like, you know, just take a little bit of the pressure off Liz and,

Um, and, uh, and, and, and we could like move somewhere or something and I would have this, you know, in the pocket, we could move upstate and I could be a music teacher. I don't know. It's, if you think it's easy to do, it's not, it's super difficult. It seems like one of the hardest things, um, I've kind of had to do from like just a logistics standpoint. You got the kid, you've got, uh, I'm teaching every day. I got a full schedule, um,

And then I took two classes, which is like eight hours, which is like a half a load. I guess it kind of like you, you officially are like a full load when you're 12. Anyway, you don't care. Um, I'm just, I'm in school and I'm reading a lot. I'm reading like 250, 350 pages a week. And it's, it's, it's just wild. It's wild being a student again. It's very cool to learn again. Right now I'm like learning about the history of teaching United States and I'm learning about how to, uh, you know, formulate lesson plans based on, um,

science. All that stuff is great. I mean, it's, you know, cause we all end up being teachers. A lot of us, right. I'm almost like, I'd say like 95% of us have to teach. And so just sort of understanding the way people learn and stuff like that. It's been fascinating. And, um,

And also just reading about the history of teaching the U S is sad too, because you start to kind of understand, you know, the reason that they don't make that much money is because they kind of maybe did make a little bit of money, not too much, but you, it got even worse when, um,

Horace Mann started selling, uh, the, the profession of teaching is something that women could do. So Congress was like, great, we can save a lot of money. And so they just like cut the salaries in half and it's just sort of stayed that way. And that's sort of why we are where we are. Isn't that fucked up anyway? Um,

Let's let's go ahead. So that's what I'm doing. Is it it's it's exciting and overwhelming and also I have I have a Substitute license that I had to get because I was supposed to be in this one school But they hired somebody right before I got my substitute license and it was a big disaster and I've been sort of shopping myself around and I have to like go in a couple of times a week and do like a full day and then teach after it's just I don't know. I don't know if I can do all of it. Do I sound overwhelmed because I am but I

It's kind of exciting. It's kind of exciting when you're in your middle ages and you are able to muster up the energy for this shit. But I'm going to do it. The guitar is taking quite a hit for the first time in a long time. It's really taking a hit. And that's sad, but I know that I can sort of, I've got it on the burner still. You know, I'm still keeping my shit up.

I got some things lined up in April in Portland, I'll tell you about. But yeah, that's what's going on. Anyway, so let's go ahead and speak real quick. This is gonna be a longer intro. It's gonna be about 15, 20 minutes because I do want to have you guys hear Nick talk about this wonderful festival. And then we'll get on to our interview with Derek Gripper.

in Texas. But yeah, we, I was living in Marfa where I live now and I've, I've now moved back and I started a series here in Alpine and in Marfa called Guitar in the Big Bend.

And I'm bringing out Duo Fortis, which is Isaac Bustos and Alejandro Montiel, to play concerts February 7th and 8th of 2025. That's what we're trying to get people to go to, February 7th and 8th in 2025. That's just a couple of weeks away, and they'll be your first concert on your first series. Is that right? Well, second concert, Drago Chile was out here last April.

And then Jeremy Waldrop was also here. They're both students of of Holtzman, Adam Holtzman at UT.

But yeah, this is in some ways, this does feel like my first, this is the first concert that I'm putting on. That's got like a real budget in some ways. And so I'm kind of stepping up very much trying to invite people to come see music out here in West Texas, because it's a beautiful part of, of the state. And you can kind of couple it with a visit to everything that Alpine Texas has to offer, Marfa, Texas, along with a Big Bend National Park, which is a,

One of the gems of the state of Texas. Hopefully the beginning is something good for the guitar, bringing the guitar to these places where there's other arts. Do you feel the impact of the other arts while you're there? Oh, for sure. I mean, it's why, it's why I live here. My wife is a, is a, is a painter. She's a visual artist. And that's mostly what they're known for is a visual art, the sort of performance art stuff, right? Like. Totally. Yeah. There's like a world-class museum in Marfa called the Chinati Foundation, which

started by a New York artist named Donald Judd, and he came out here and made a bunch of art. And it's really, it's modernist, very minimal. I'm not super great about talking about visual art, but it's of a very, I mean, it's kind of, if you know, New Yorkers, if you know like Dia Beacon, it's connected to Dia Beacon and kind of an aesthetic and some of the artists are the same.

the national park, which is big bend national park is, is just got all kinds of wild stuff. It's got the Rio Grande river, beautiful canyons and, um, mountains and hikes and desert. It's, I mean, it's definitely a desert and, uh, you know, so you should be aware that that is, is the case if you're considering coming down and it's very isolated, which is something you should also be aware of, but it's, it's most certainly an adventure. And I think it's,

For me, it's been a great honor to bring, you know, what we do, this classical guitar out here to the best of my ability. And that's why I'm so excited about, you know, Isaac and Al coming and rocking everyone's world. People can go see these concerts. That's Friday, February 7th. Doors are at 630. That's St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Marfa, Texas. That's Friday's show. If you can't do it Friday because you're too busy looking at, uh,

all the beautiful nature or you're watching somebody cover themselves in pieces of roast beef and lighting the beef on fire and then using the charred roast beef as chalk to write, we will be free on the side of a...

Of a stuffed tiger. This sounds about right. And then, yeah, and then taking that tiger and turning it upside down and getting close-up iPhone video of you licking the tiger's face. And then having that be a comment on the current state of affairs in a distant plane of existence. Once you've washed all that off, you can go to a show again. That's going to be Friday, February 7th.

Doors are at 6:30, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Marfa, Texas. Or Saturday, February 8th at 6:00 p.m. That's Saturday, February 8th at 6:00 p.m. Doors are at 5:30. If you're an early bird,

And that's at the Museum of the Big Bend in Alpine, Texas. So we got something in Marfa, we got something in Alpine. And I'm assuming they're relatively close. Yeah, Marfa and Alpine, they're kind of sister cities. They're maybe 25 minutes apart. And I'll add, we're throwing out lots of times and dates and locations if you'd like an

you know, all this information in one place, please go to www.guitarinthebigbend.com or search on Instagram at Guitar in the Big Bend. Same goes for Facebook. All of that information will be available for you there to check it out at your leisure. And if this year doesn't work out, you know, I know, you know, the 8th and 7th and 8th are just around the corner. Hey, you know, consider making a trip next time.

Thanks so much to Nick and the City of Alpine for sponsoring the show. Very, very cool stuff. We go to guitarinthebigband.com and let's get on with it. This is my time with South African guitarist Derek Gripper. But it also sort of mirrors what we were talking about with your approach to the Bach, where it's just not in your constitution to just play the Bach or play somebody else's transcription of it. It's just, that's not...

That's not what you're here to do. You're here to actually play with things. And if they break, they break. If it becomes more difficult, it becomes more difficult. It takes longer. It takes longer. But the fact is, you're a relatively young man with an incredible amount of output. I mean, you have a huge body of work.

So I think the lesson here is be willing to make mistakes, be willing to take chances. Don't worry about, you know, getting all this stuff out there because, you know, you can do both. Right. I mean, that's it seems like you're out there to be an artist, not not a guitarist. Yeah, it is. My my approach is always, you know, I.

is just, you know, do it, do the thing, you know, and leave a record of what you've done. So, which is different to, I want to create the best Bach album ever, and I'm going to work on it for 50 years and no one's going to hear anything. You know, my thing is like, okay, you're thinking about this now, do it, you know, because I think, you know, you just don't know what other people are hearing, you know, because there's just no way, you know, my way of hearing is very different to yours.

And a guitarist is very different to a non-guitarist. So more and more, I realized this, you know, you just got to, you got to kind of forget about what you think the effect is going to be and just, just do something because you're, you're always listening with your own prejudices, you know, and, and your own, you know,

set of interests and set of things that you're listening to. And if we sit for hours a day listening to the guitar, we're hearing a whole world of stuff that no one else is even hearing. So yeah, I just put things out. I just do things. Like what I'm doing with the cello suites at the moment. I'm exploring one and then I record it. And the first cello suite to the second cello suite has changed the approach because I'm thinking differently. So

So, yeah, it's like improvising, I suppose. And you were, for the 2018 Parties, this is the last thing I'm going to say about that album because you've got like 20 albums. But, you know, as far as that's concerned, was that just on a nylon string or is that a steel string you're playing now? No, no, I've been playing the same guitar since 2004.

two three 2004 maybe 2004 so 20 years i've been playing the hauser that i've been playing yeah yeah that's it's by hauser three and you had him specially design it or no it's just no you know then you've got to wait many years you know so i i i got hold of him and said i needed a guitar and he said no problem i'll put you on the waiting list seven years that time and it's this amount of money and i said great that's fantastic two problems

Don't have seven years, don't have the money. So we were able to make a plan regarding the seven years because he had a collector that had just bought his second guitar and he said, look, this guy doesn't need two of my guitars. I'll persuade him to sell it to you. I had to make a plan for the second part. He wasn't going to waive the money part, which was a pity.

But, you know, you take what you can get. So I ended up with that guitar and that's been what I've been playing. That's that's it's it's I understand it. And, you know, we have a good relationship. It doesn't it doesn't cause any problems. You know, it's very stable. It can put up with everything that I do to it, you know, which is, you know, a lot of traveling, a lot of changing tunings, a lot of bashing around. It's extremely robust instrument. It's very non neurotic.

It kind of spoils me because I'm just expect guitars to behave well. The other thing is you can really hit it hard. I think that's the thing about Hauser's in general is that you can hit them and they don't crack. You're not going to go into the red as easily as you will on some of those more delicate and louder out of the gate instruments. They have a built-in compressor. It's like an optical compressor that's in the wood.

And when I play a normal guitar, I often have this thing where it just growls, it bites you all the time. You hit something too hard and you get this horrible fret noise and this... And I've got kind of lazy with this Hauser because, not lazy, but I can be free. Your hands can be totally free because there's nothing you're going to do that's going to sound...

awful. So you just, you know, as I remember, you know, this was 20 years ago, but I remember it. It's just like relaxing every day you play. You just realize, oh, I don't have to worry about this anymore. I don't have to worry about and just letting go, letting go. And I realized that 80% of my practicing was to

learn to accommodate the extraneous mess that the instruments that I was playing before would make. So I had to practice, okay, if I'm going to go from first position to 12th position, I can do it, but I've got to do it in this kind of smooth way and I've got to slide in. And I just take my hand and I flop it over now and there's no problem. It just holds you.

I mean, it's pretty, that's pretty fascinating that you're playing a, an instrument that is, cause I also play, I play something that's based on the Hauser, the 37 Hauser and the Met over here in New York made by Walter, Walter Verite. Have you ever heard of him? No. Well, he did. So the guitar I play is a Hauser. It's, it's the Hauser 37 model. And I spent a lot of money on it, just recently got it. And I had the same sort of thing that you had with double tops and all that stuff where you,

I just felt like I wasn't, yeah, I had to manipulate. I had to be very aware of what I was doing with my right hand at all times, or I would go over or under. But basically I was always trying to like lighten up the approach, you know, so that I could do things. And with this, I do feel like the more I dig in, the more relaxed I get. It's almost just like using larger muscle groups and having it work. It's an interesting sort of thing that I didn't really realize that you played

uh hauser till recently and and it is interesting that you're doing so many innovative things but yet your instrument is pretty much your standard nuts and bolts

you know, the Stradivarius of classical guitar, which is the... No, there's nothing fancy about it. Nothing fancy about it. And, you know, they say that they're not loud. You know, you said earlier, you know, a louder guitar. But the thing with the Hauser is that it projects, you know this, and you know this, you know, that's why you got one. They project incredibly well. And I did a concert, an unamplified concert at Shakespeare's Globe there in a...

their indoor one that they just built is called the Samoan-O-Maker and it's a 350 seater wooden reconstruction of a

17th century you know it wasn't the globe which is the outdoor it's it's for the gentry yeah so next door it's like attached on there they've built the sam wanna maker which is just incredible and it's it's got you know it's lit with 300 candles and the audience is right there because there's like four layers you know so they're right they're coming up you can like touch the people at the top and um john williams and i did a concert there unamplified the first time

And the second time we played there, I think we amplified the second time. First time we played unamplified. And I had friends in the audience who said, you know, there was no sound difference in volume with the two guitars. And he's playing the quintessential loud guitar. If you're in a room with him, then you're like, oh, my God, this is so loud. You know, it was just like, you know, it's loud for three meters.

But once you get out beyond five meters, they balance out fine. I think so. That's what my understanding about Spruce and all that is. I talked to Kenny Hill a while ago, and I've been talking about the guitars. You know Kenny, we're great friends. Yeah, no, but I think that is interesting that you were on stage with the small men and you were able to kind of keep up.

- Yeah, no problem. - It's wild. That's insane. But that's sort of what I felt when I talked to a friend about it or when I was making my decision and the audience has already heard me say this before, but I feel like the note itself, what the note is on a pure level gets further. And what we're hearing with some of those guitars, which are quote louder is we're hearing just sort of an echo of that note

you know, being reproduced on different parts of the guitar and thrown out into the audience within 20 feet. But I think you're right. I think the thing is, is that these guitars are sort of designed to go a little bit further

And so you're not going to get that initial like big, robust, oaky boost that you get out of the smallman. Well, there's much more wood involved. I mean, the extreme opposites are the smallman and the Hauser. And the smallman is just the table going as quickly as possible. And they work hard at that. I spent a few days with Greg and...

and his son Damon, uh,

beginning of last year and Damon and I had a great time. We like totally geeked out on sound and amplification. We had like a PA set up and we were trying this and trying that. And they're like real scientists. They're real mad scientists. You know, they're like every little thing they really, you know, those guitars, there's so much thought goes into every one, you know, um, it's a company, you know, having mine there was like, I'd arrived with a, you know, I'd arrived at a fencing duel with an ax, uh,

You know, it was like, because it's just really like, you know, it's like a...

German farming implement the Hauser. It's very simple and very like, you know, and upfront, you know, there's so much more going on in this. But I think it's what happens is further down the line. And then, you know, once you introduce a microphone, everything changes again. And I think there's something really great about what the Hauser does to a microphone. They work incredibly well amplified because they don't have a lot of overtones and everything is fundamental.

So I've tried to put pickups on the Hauser for years. And you put like even a small K&K sensor under the saddle and the sound is gone. You change the saddle and you put like a Barbiera in there. It'll sound amazing amplified, but your acoustic sound is gone. It's like you just mess with one tiny little bit of the resonance of the top and you lose the top end that there is, you know, the overtones that there are there. Right.

and suddenly you've got a dead piece of wood. It's very subtle. So you cannot put anything on the body of this guitar if you wanted to keep it sound, on the table. It's so sensitive in that regard because there's not a lot of upper information. And that's what blows people away when they pick up a Lauda guitar. "Ah, there's so many overtones!" But it has its own problems. If you have a clean sound,

you know i mean it's it's 2024 if you want to reverb there's some really great algorithms out there yeah i would prefer to play like a woody cheap you know 70s yamaha than i would most concert classicals they're too neurotic for me like it's just there's too much going on and they make you play

they pick up too much it's like the difference between a really high fidelity um condenser microphone and people think you know it's or even better example uh you know like a digital camera versus a film camera you know you think oh the more information the better but you know a digital image can be really boring you know it's totally crisp and everything whereas you look at some you know beautiful film you know a Cartier Brisson picture and there's that the grain and there's all this like you know and it softens and people just looked so much

better. My grandfather passed away a year or two ago and the family was sending me photographs of him to make a booklet for the service. And they were all sending these digital pictures from their phones or even from cameras. And he didn't look great. He was 94. And then I looked back at photos that had been taken of him before and it's all beautiful, black and white, soft light, things like that. It's like the guy deserves to look

good from the technology of his age. So that's a little bit, you know, there's those concert guitars because they're looking for clarity, because they're looking for more, more, more.

For me, it doesn't. For everything I do, it doesn't work because it limits your freedom of movement because there's too much information. I will say that going onto your other recordings, you do seem comfortable. You don't seem to try and trick us too much with the balance in volume between the Cora and the other instruments, even the cello recording.

You kind of are under a lot of the time and it's very honest in that way, I would say. Do you kind of feel that way? Do you kind of feel like, was that sort of a decision that you're making in post-production is to keep the instruments the way that they actually are? I don't know. It's usually just like, can you hear the guitar? Yeah. Okay, great.

yeah and just getting a good balance I think um yeah um but yeah you can obviously hype thing hype things up a lot I used on all those recordings you're talking about I'm I'm using ribbon mics so there has there has you know they have their own characteristics they're more bottom they're exactly they they replicate the characteristics that I'm talking about in in the Hauser

You know, the low end, not too much top end information, not too much definition, a little bit, just a little bit warmer, a little bit more forgiving, you know. Right. Is that what, that's not what you used on the Bach though, is it? Yes. Okay. So that, yeah, the Bach is a little more straightforward. It's heavier. There's more of an attack to it.

Yeah, I mean, that's just because we got a capo, you know, that's all played capo on the third fret. So, you know, that's why you're hearing a small guitar. That's what I'm hearing. That's incredible. Okay, so that's what I'm hearing is the capo. Okay, great. That makes sense. All right, now I can rest.

- Yeah, and it allows you to play more fluidly because most of it's happening in the first position. But if you were playing without the capo, it would be very muddy, you know, it'd be like trying to do ballet in Wellington boots. You know, it's like, you know, whereas with the capo, I'm gonna say capo, you went in wrong. - No, say capo, say capo. I say capo and there was a guy who called it a capo from New York and, but he didn't know what he was talking about. You know what you're talking about. Is that, so.

I'm sure that they say all sorts of things differently. Yeah, no, we do. We do. We do. We do. Let's talk about your relationship with your country and where you live and how you were able to sort of... Do you feel like... Obviously, being in South Africa, you are in much closer proximity to Mali and the West African people.

Strangely, you would think that, but it's actually not the case. As an American, you've got much more access. Is that not the case for like Geo... Yeah. Oh, really? Because you've got much more access. Well, no, no. No, no. Just because, you know, first of all, there's many more Kora players in this country, in America, than there are in South Africa. By a factor of whatever high, however many Kora players there are in America, there's that many more than in South Africa because there are no Kora players.

know so you're not going to come across kora or kora music unless you're looking and you're interested in that kind of music it certainly certainly isn't common no here's many sometimes yeah exactly and there's many more you know great virtuosos that live here there's many more american musicians who fell in love with the instrument and flew over to wherever marley gambia whatever to study

As a South African, that's harder. The connections within Africa are very expensive. We don't have the currency that you have in America where you can make those kind of leaps. When I got interested in kora, it didn't even occur to me to get on a plane. I could never have afforded it. It was too far. Forget it. It's like saying, I'm going to go to China. No ways. But then when I came to America and I met people, they were like, yeah, I heard this instrument, the kora. And the next month I got on a plane and I went and I studied the kora. I was like, cool.

I never thought of that. Great idea. You know, that's like, that's, that was, that's genius. You know, I, I slowed down the music of a CD and wrote it out and try to work out what they were doing. And you actually did get to study with them. One of the, you know, we, we've talked about, uh, too many, too many diabetes. Am I saying it right? Diabate. Diabate. That sounds much better because I've never heard his name pronounced. Diabate. Diabate. Beautiful. I mean, yeah.

He's sort of the living father of the Korra. Is that fair to say? Past. So you got to work with him? He died a few months ago. Did he really? Oh, that's... I didn't know that. Yeah, he died. Yeah, sort of

maybe August last year, if I remember correctly. - Ah, that's too bad. That should have been in the times, you know? - So there was a little bit around, but yeah, not as much. The great master now is of course, Balake Sisoko. - Right, who you recorded with. - Yeah, I'm actually on tour with him as starting next week, we're doing a West Coast tour and we did that record together.

So I didn't study with anybody. I haven't studied with any choral player. I've just played with them, which is, I suppose, as good as it gets if you want to study. So I learned the style as a transcriber, you know, like you learned Bach, you know. You didn't hang out with Bach and you didn't learn to play the harpsichord or the violin. You know, you learned from transcription. So I used...

the tools that I have at my disposal as a classical musician. I can read and write music and as a guitarist and as a transcriber. And I thought, you know, OK, if I want to understand this music, I need to use the tools that I have and see what happens. So that's what I did. And the first time I ever saw a Cora live was on stage with me at the Globe Theatre the night before

John and I played together. I did a concert in the same venue with a kora player from England called Tunde Jegeda. He's a classical cellist who learned kora with Lucy Duran that I mentioned earlier and then traveled to the Gambia and studied with Lucy's teacher who's Tumani's uncle and you know really developed a beautiful kora style of his own. So we did a duo

together and playing the traditional repertoire, you know, that what I knew, he obviously knew much more of us, you know, he spent a lot of time by that point in the Gambia. And it was only after the concert we were chatting that I kind of realized that that was my first time hearing the choir was during the concert. So yeah, to circle, to go back to, you know, where we started, no, you're not closer in South Africa at all.

Yeah, and then you not only do you work, I mean, would you say the core is sort of the central element of your work at this point? I mean, we're talking about, you've got Molly and Oak, which if people haven't heard you before, I think that that would be a pretty good place to start. I mean, it's a great album, just in and of itself, just from a sonic standpoint, it's just a good album to have on.

Yeah, I would say One Night on Earth would be the starting. People ask me, you know, I give them One Night on Earth, which is the first transcriptions of the Korra. And I feel like I got a sound there that was, you know, I was really happy with kind of sonically what we did. It's a very special album. There's beautiful crickets in the background as well. That's the album that John Williams heard and what made him invite me to come and play with him.

I think that's a good starting point, especially if you're a guitarist and you're interested in the solo element of it, the sort of counterpoint of a solo instrument. Yeah. That would be a good place. Yeah, Marley & Oak is the one with Tunde. So that's the album that came out. That's the album where you actually heard the thing.

that's the album yeah that that was a year later so we did the we did the concert together and then a year later john invited me back to do a full duo concert with him he said let's you know that time we'd done only one or two pieces and i played solo and he played with john etheridge so a year later we came back and i arranged with a friend of mine risa kota i arranged two guitar versions of the choral music and gave a kind of standard tuned

more normal guitar parts to John. And we did that together. And Tunde and I did another duo performance together and then made a recording in that venue. How much of it is improvised?

Is any of it improvised? I mean, especially One Night on Earth. I think my friend Rupert Boyd played a couple of things from that album. I know that a lot of it is published, but how much of the chorus stuff is improvised? Let's say just on Molly and Oak, which is the album I'm most familiar with. So there's a continuum in music from reciting to...

you know, to making it up as you go along, let's say. And on that continuum, I'd say that the Chora players and the Chora repertoire is beautifully in the center.

in that it's not making it up as you go along, but it's not reciting. And I suppose the most simple way to think about it is it's actually a form of modular improvisation. So you have a lot of blocks that work in any order and you can move them around. And then you can take it to another level and there's a block in the base and a block in the top and you can mix it around.

you know right yeah so that's and then and then it goes it can go further you know so you you can get so i would say you know there's there's casals on the left hand side you move your way up through into uh into tumani you know um in the middle where you're kind of not reciting but you are but you're also you know and then with larger groups yeah yeah yeah you're doing it with smaller groups mixing them up and then

But of course with Casals there's still improvisation of nuance and time and weight and all that. And then you shift yourself all the way to, if you believe him, Keith Jarrett doing solo concerts where he's coming with a blank slate. And for that kind of concept of improvisation to exist, there also has to be a certain individualism. There also has to be an individualism which there isn't in Casals.

traditionally in music, but you know, in, in African music, certainly not. It's a shared resource, you know? And so there's not a concept, there's not a concept that you need to arrive at,

and do something different. It's communal, you know, so it's about collective memory. It's about the fallibility of collective memory. It's about the creativity of collective memory. But it's collect, it's, it's, and, and, you know, we don't want to say like no one composed the music and no one composes. No, but it's, it's not this neurosis for individuality and for originality, you know, which largely came about due to the, you know, the modern copyright system where,

You know, you're going to get more money if whatever you did has never been done before. Right. You know, that's going to work better. And so I think that would have happened slowly over time, you know, that like composition became about like reinventing the wheel. And then through jazz, you know, improvisation becomes so...

And that does take us to your cello album. Well, there's a little bit of that background noise. I know Alex Degrassi does it. There's like a drone. Okay, so there's a few things. So there's a drone all the way through, which is around hearing Bach monotically. So understanding, and I really love that because you really, you know,

If you think from the terms of now and you look back at Bach, you see modulation, you see going to different chord places. But if you're coming from the kind of more intervallic compositions, that compositional style that Bach would have been trained in,

you know, then actually you realize that there's a kind of he's in one key all the time. You know, he's exploring the logical possibilities of a single mode and its different areas. Yeah. So if you put a drone in, you see how actually he'll take a phrase and when he reaches what we would think of as the subdominant,

the final note is still going to be the tonic. So he flips it around, but there's the tonic at the top of the chord. You see it all the time. It's like you laugh. You think you're going somewhere, but no, he just keeps taking you back home all the time. So the drone really allows that. So both of those cellos have an improvisation in the beginning as the first track, as sort of a prelude to the prelude.

which is really a modal, just improvisation, just getting into the feel, especially the first one which I called "Lost Time" explores Bach from the point of view of like Proust, you know, this kind of extreme detail, this extreme presence

in the moment, you know, being really involved in the details. So not having a kind of clock time ticking away, keeping, you know, but really just, just being happy to find those notes and as they relate, it relates to the, to the drone. The second one, which I just did recently is the second shallow suite. That one is from another, another book. Actually, they sort of this, these connections to books, uh,

called it's um the beauty and everyday things i think is the title it's a japanese book translated and i actually always forget the author's name so i'm sorry for that

But, you know, that's more the idea of getting away from the grandiosity that we have in relation to Bach and getting back to just the simplicity of like unplugging a string and another string and, you know, and not trying to do anything fancy or trying to be, you know. So the improvisations could get you into that mood as a player where you realize that you can create

a very nice track out of absolutely nothing. So that by the time I arrive at the prelude, I myself personally am aware that I don't need Bach, I don't need any complex piece of music, I don't need to play it in any particular way. It's just that there's a list of wonderful suggestions that I can move through, but I don't have to do anything to it and he doesn't have to do anything to me. We can just enjoy each other for a bit of time.

I like that. Yeah, you guys are having a direct dialogue with him by freeing yourself up with the interpretation. And, you know, especially when you're talking about a prelude, because a prelude is, by its definition, is an improvisatory sort of, it's supposed to sound improvised. It's not a, it's one thing throughout. There's not an ABA form. There's no binary to it. So, you know, and I can understand how,

the two things, the West African core of music and Bach would sort of draw you to it. And then some of the inner movements of the suites, you would probably have to reconcile because there's going to be more counterpoint. There's going to be more straight, formal composition. And with him, we're not even in sonata form or anything else so that you can actually reconcile that with the rest of your canon. You know, I think like Bach fits into what you're doing really well.

And then sadly, back works fits into what everybody's doing very well. That's I think that's, I think that's good. Yeah, it's just so good. You can't you can't miss you can't miss. You can't mess him up. You know, it's so well, it's such a master. It's so well constructed, that it it can handle any

It's a little bit like what we're talking about with the Hauser. You can just bash it around and it's going to make a great sound. And Bach, you can bash him around and he still makes a great sound. You can get grandiose and over the top about it. You can get folky and relaxed. You can get pedantic. And it still comes out as beautiful music.

Well, that's, you know, and then we kind of have something, I would say, relatively new happening with you in your latest album, Meeting in Lucerne, right? This is, this stuff does sound a little bit like a, and I say this with all due respect to, you know, Maestro Demiola and

Maestro John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia, but there is a sort of an evolved Friday night in San Francisco sort of thing going on here. That's cool. Where there's a little more of like a compositional element. There's, I think, going on in this album, but it is more or less sort of sounding like you guys are really having a lot of fun. What's going on there? The genesis of the album, we're sort of coming to the end. Okay.

but i wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about your latest project so just to correct you it's not the latest project um the latest project is the bala kesi soko and derrick gripper album that we we did just uh that's the last recording well the last recording is the cello the second channel suite but people should know this is all happening in the same year this is all this is the last year the lucerne project actually happened straight after covert

where a guy called Dimitar got hold of me who had been interested in what I was doing. That had taken him into the music of Egberto Gismonti because in those years, whenever he discovered my music, I was playing a lot of Gismonti. I was influenced by Gismonti, the Brazilian guitar pianist, incredible composer. So Dimitar had got involved with Gismonti and got to know

Cismonti's son, who's a more traditional classical guitarist, Alessandre, and he had this idea

that the three of us would come together and play Gismonti's music. And he did these arrangements where he deconstructed Gismonti's solo guitar music and put it onto three guitars. And I had been in South Africa for two years, hadn't been allowed to leave. The borders had just opened and I went to Switzerland. Alessandro came from Brazil and Dimitar was there and he had a beautiful place that he got, you know,

next to the lake Luzon and we we and his idea was to play this music so now of course I hadn't learned the music when I got there and Alessandra hadn't learned the music either um I just came you know I was like let's see what happens

So then we started to play it and it was really difficult. And especially because something that was a natural gesture on a solo guitar now became this really crazy polyrhythm on three guitars. And then one night I heard Dimitar playing, he plays a 10 string guitar, playing his arrangements of Gismonti's music and it was just incredible.

he played so amazingly these pieces as a solo and i said to him no man you're what you're doing you're playing this music solo that's my whole interest you know if you can do it by yourself do it by yourself

So I said to him, first of all, I don't see what the point is. Alessandra has recorded this music with his staff. Yeah, the original stuff. Yeah. They made a record together. You can play this solo and should absolutely make a record of this solo because it's so wonderful. And if you want to have a guitarist to learn a score that you've written,

you know, an arrangement that you've made, I'm not the person you're going to call. I'm the last person you're going to call. You know, I'm not going to sit and practice for three months learning some arrangement and then go and play it. You know, I would be a bad choice.

So now having made that bad choice, what are we going to do? And I think that the thing we have to do is we have to just see what happens. So he wasn't, you know, like everybody who has a plan, he wasn't so happy, you know, because you've got a plan and then some guy comes along and messes up your plan. That's not so great. And, you know, I felt bad at the time.

at the time but i pushed through and so what we did is we just we hung out together we messed around and every night then this guy came with incredible microphones and everything he set them up and what we would do is we'd press record and we'd play

And then we'd stop and then we'd go about our thing again and then we'd come back again the next day or a few hours later and we'd press record and we'd play again. And those are those pieces they completely, I don't know what we were doing, I don't know, you know, some of them were, you know, some cool things happened. And yeah, and so it just evolved like that and then it sat, you know, for a long time and then Dimitar came back and he created these, you know, these versions.

Afterwards, so it's really a collective improvisation. Was it a surprise when it came out? Were you like, oh, oh, it's coming out?

because that was um well I knew that it was coming out but uh yeah it was you know I kind of forgotten about it and then Dementor was like hey let's let's let's put this out so I said cool and then he he did it you know he got it he got it going and that and so you're right it is the most reason I mean technically but like you're saying that your project right now is a Balake Sissoko and we got to be very clear about that and you are also doing um

And again, that's you in a Cora master. It's me. And if you want to talk about the Cora in terms of classical guitar, when I was growing up as a classical guitarist, you had Bream and Williams. And if you were into things being a little bit pristine and clear, and if you really got off on the fact that someone could just play with beautiful cleanliness and amazing, you didn't go to Bream. You went to Williams. And if you wanted a little bit of like, you know, if you want a little bit of...

uh pencil uh grit on the page and a bit of smudging and you know and a bit of the sounds and you know and at different times in my life i i went in in the one and the other direction i have this like i'm a little bit bipolar like that you know yeah she's monty she's monty is like julian bream on lsd you know it's like even further down the road you know yeah and and and

Yeah, and there's Paul Galbraith, who was a teacher of mine and a big influence of mine 20 years ago.

He's like Julian Bream. He's like John Williams on steroids. I would say so. Exactly. So you've got, you know, so I, and for many years, my two guitarists that I listened to was Gismonti and Paul Galbraith. You know, so really like, I mean, you know, I've got problems. And trying to resolve, you know, that contradiction. Yeah, because Galbraith's also a very gentle player. I saw him years ago. I mean, it must have been 30 years ago now.

now but i saw him um and it was amazing because he was using his bach guitar with his you know which is just a it has a little box that's used from the brahms guitar the brahms guitar not the black guitar the brahms guitar the brahms guitar that he uses to play and he was still a little it was still a little just like normal volume level like he's a very light player

I was actually quite messed up by that because I heard the first album, the Sonatas and Portitas, and that was my go-to album. And it sounds like he's bloody playing hard. So I worked a lot like that. And I got Luthier to work and I made this guitar that you could really hit hard. And I really played like big. And then I finally went to meet up with him in South America. And he played a concert the first night.

and it was the most gentle introverted guitar playing i've ever heard and i was like what the hell's going on you know i've totally you know and so that's you've got to be really careful with recordings you know like i mean you know it's it's not you know you can do a lot with like a gentle play and you just put a harsh mic on it and you like you know ramp up the

Well, compression and put out a huge volume and you think you're listening to a Steinway, but you're actually listening to Bob Dylan strumming his guitar lightly at a dinner party. I heard it's a good movie, the Doan movie. But I have to I have to leave in about three minutes to go teach America's youth.

- Pass the candle. - Pass the candle of my knowledge to a brighter future, maybe? I don't know. We're in a kind of a dumpster fire here. Well, I want to thank you for your contribution to our repertoire and to what we're, you know, sort of opening the minds of guitarists who are coming out of the conservatory system. You know, you definitely are going to be sort of, I think of you as a shining light for those kids who kind of go like, "What do I do now? I've studied all this music."

all you need to do is go look at what Derek's doing and then think about, you know, what you like and where you're from and, you know, what you can, what you can do that would be a little bit different. And, you know, I appreciate it. You've got to think about what you like and,

you've got to think about what you like that's not guitar music because what you like as a guitarist is because of your personal interests slash neuroses slash issues ego what you like what you ego all that stuff insecurities all that it's great um but but the real stuff that you like when you're just like i'm going to listen to music that's the key into what you're actually interested in and if you can find a way to translate that and and talk about that on the guitar

without being awful, that's great. That does it for my time with Derek Ripper. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you go to guitarinthebigbend.com. That's guitarinthebigbend.com if you can't make it.

on February 7th or you can't make it on February 8th make sure you look out and keep an eye out for the series and where it goes I feel like this is going to be a fun thing for us that's guitarinthebigben.com and Savage Classical right down there in Florida savageclassical.com thanks for the years go to savageclassical.com and check out a guitar he could ship it to you still you don't have to be down in Florida you don't have to go down into that thing and I'll see you guys next time thanks for listening