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INFORMATION FOR ADVERTISERS Send inquiries to 21ST-CENTURY MUSIC, P.O. Box 2842, San Anselmo, CA 94960. e-mail: [email protected]. 21ST CENTURY MUSIC March 2010 Volume 17, Number 3 TOM MOORE Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez Interview 1 A.J. CHURCHILL Andrew Shapiro, Solo Piano 7 CHRONICLE Of January 2010 8 ILLUSTRATIONS i, iv. Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez 7. Andrew Shapiro Editorial Staff Mark Alburger EDITOR-PUBLISHER Harriet March Page ASSOCIATE EDITOR Patti Noel Deuter ASSISTANT EDITOR Erling Wold WEBMASTER Alexis Alrich Katherine Buono Ken Bullock A.J. Churchill David Cleary Jeff Dunn Phillip George Elliot Harmon Brian Holmes Jeff Kaliss John Lane Michael McDonagh Tom Moore William Rowland Andrew Shapiro CORRESPONDENTS Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez Interview TOM MOORE Composer Carlos Sanchez- Gutierrez is a native of Mexico, I was always doing my own little silly music, so the bands that who has been living and working in the United States for the I had were all progressive-rock bands, where I would compose last 20 years. He studied composition at Peabody and the band would play. That is what contributed to things Conservatory, Yale, and Princeton, and is presently on the evolving the way they did. I have always been a composer. At faculty at the Eastman School. We spoke by Skype on the time, I was doing rock-and-roll. Now I am doing this thing December 1, 2009 while he was in residence at the Bogliasco that I am doing, but it’s the same. I haven’t changed. What I Foundation’s center in Liguria, Italy. do is emerging from the same source. MOORE: Was there music in your family when you were MOORE: Let’s rewind. Where were you born? growing up? SANCHEZ-GUTIERREZ: In Mexico City, but I moved to SANCHEZ-GUTIERREZ: There was no professional music Guadalajara when I was five. until my older brother became a songwriter. My father was a music-lover, but never had the opportunity to cultivate his MOORE: What was the musical environment like in talent. He was given a piano when he was a child, but his Guadalajara? What was the musical soundscape? parents never arranged for lessons. They were interested in having a wonderful piece of furniture in the living room. That SANCHEZ-GUTIERREZ: It depended on who you hung out piano eventually made it into my home after tremendous with. In my case, I grew up in a suburban area of Guadalajara, negotiations between my father and his parents. My older in a middle-class family. Most of the music my friends and I brother began taking lessons; and watching him, I was listened to was American or English music. I had a couple of intrigued and interested. I started taking lessons when I was friends who were well-off and had access to records from the about eight years old, on and off. I was not a very good States. They would make pilgrimages to San Francisco or Los student. Instead of playing what I was supposed to play, I was Angeles and come back with records of the latest rock stuff -- more interested in making my own little tunes. My brother obscure things, so I had access to more sophisticated music then joined a rock band. I followed suit, always thinking that than what the radio was playing. There were a bunch of rock music would just be a hobby. At the time, I was thinking of bands in the city as well. There was, of course, a symphony becoming an architect, which I never became. I was a orchestra, which has always been a terrible orchestra, cartoonist, and was hanging out with a lot of cartoonists, doing suffering from neglect, and labor problems, lack of funding things with local newspapers, left-wing publications that I was and all of that. Even now there’s almost no chamber music. associated with. This was in Guadalajara in the early 80's. I There was an opera company when I was growing up, that did was playing in rock bands, and it got to the point where I was the usual repertoire. Now it is defunct. Music in Guadalajara frustrated because I was taking it seriously and my bandmates was a mix between what you would expect in a kind of weren’t. They were there because they wanted to get chicks, suburban environment with the kind of music that a provincial and I wasn’t getting chicks, so I figured I should be more city with a dignified past would have. And of course there was serious about it. I was going to music school at the same time, mariachi, but I was not interested in that at all. Being from and it got to the point where I had to make a decision, whether Mexico City, and the son of immigrants from Spain, we to move to Mexico City, or to go elsewhere. On a whim I shunned mariachi: “Oh, mariachi, that’s not serious music.” I applied to schools in the States, got a grant, and went to was not fond of mariachi, per se. It was just not my thing. Peabody, and the rest I guess is the answer to the next question. MOORE: How far is it from Guadalajara to Mexico City? MOORE: What kind of rock-and-roll were you doing in SANCHEZ-GUTIERREZ: About five hundred kilometers, a Mexico? six-hour car ride. It’s a city that is mainly a merchant’s town -- a distribution point for goods -- and that mercantile mentality SANCHEZ-GUTIERREZ: My kind. permeates everything, including the arts. The music that the city is interested in is music that you can get quickly, that MOORE: Was it in English? doesn’t make you think too much, and from which you can then move on to something else with the same ease that you SANCHEZ-GUTIERREZ: Mostly instrumental. I never had originally welcomed it. But the art scene is very rich, learned how to play Delta blues properly, or any of the rock- actually. There’s a tremendous amount going on in the city, and-roll breaks properly. I wasn’t into doing covers, or and there always has been, but it tends to be rather superficial, anything like that. My brother was. My brother could grab the really; another reason that it got to a point where I couldn’t guitar and play you every Rolling Stones tune possible, imitate deal with it anymore. every style from Jeff Beck to you-name-it. I could never do that. MOORE: Were you listening to music from Cuba or other parts of Latin America? SANCHEZ-GUTIERREZ: Oh, yes. I was in a group with my I didn’t make it into the masters program until the second brother. We started out singing Nueva Trova Cubana, and a lot year. It was all very peculiar. I was supposed to return to of protest songs from Latin America. We actually got into that Mexico after two years, but things had been going well, and I mainly for political reasons. This was shortly after the events worked hard, and I decided to go to Yale. I came into contact in Chile, and the many other things that happened in Latin with Jacob Druckman, and he liked what I was doing, and so America in the late 70's and early 80's. So it was because of he was instrumental in my going to Yale. our political involvement with the left that we started doing that kind of music. We would sing Violeta Parra, Chilean MOORE: Please say a little more about Peabody. protest-song writers – not so much Brazilian music. From there we started doing our own music, particularly my brother, SANCHEZ-GUTIERREZ: One of the reasons that I did well who was a songwriter.