Guitar Scientist: Forastiere’s From 1 to 8

Pino Forastiere Gives a Guitar class From 1 to 8 with Echoes February CD of the Month

Hear Forastiere‘s  From 1 to 8  featured on Echoes Monday February 6

Most instrumental  musicians name their songs after they’re written, but on his new CD, From 1 to 8, Italian guitarist Pino Forastiere skips that exercise entirely. The compositions’ names are simply “Studio n.1,” through “Studio n.8.” But you won’t need the names to tell them apart.  Each composition is a unique journey of impeccable technique and melodic invention.

Pino Forastiere is a scientist of the guitar, but a scientist with soul. Even though he gives his compositions generic names, the music itself is full of melodic exploration and emotional turns.

“Studio n.1” is a delicate pastoral reverie, a walk through trellised gardens and dappled shadows as Forastiere does his finger dance on the guitar. While there’s no doubt that Forastiere is influenced by American finger-style guitarists from John Fahey to Michael Hedges, his sound is also deeply embedded in his own Italian heritage.  There is a signature lilt and passionate depth to his music, as heard on introspective songs like “Studio n. 2.” It deserves a far more evocative title, it could be a song of loss or just reflection.

Forastiere’s playing isn’t all pretty filigree. He whips it out on tracks like “Studio n.3,” aggressively tapping his instrument, creating  percussive effects and rhythmic accents on this road song.  Then he explores his classical side on the multi-themed “Studio n.5,” although there are few nods to jazz as well, as the tune romps like a gazelle.   On the third movement of his mini-epic, “Studio n.8” he creates a kinetic, circular theme that’s rooted in the repetition of minimalism, but with playful melodies spinning like gyroscopes, perfectly balanced but just on the edge of spinning out of control. .

Having watched Forastiere perform in the Echoes living room a few times, it’s easy for me to imagine him hunched over his guitar, bending into notes, arching his thick Groucho Marx eyebrows as if the music was bouncing them on a trampoline.

There are many great acoustic guitar players these days, but Pino Forastiere is one of the few who can match impeccable technique with evocative compositions.   From 1 to 8 is a study in guitar invention.

~© 2012 John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Hear Forastiere’s  From 1 to 8  featured on Echoes Monday February 6

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International Guitar Night Lands

It’s only the first month of the year, but already this has to be THE tour for finger-style guitar enthusiasts.  International Guitar Night is in it’s 11th year and tomorrow they launch their US tour at Crossroads Music in Philadelphia.

This is a monster show of finger-style guitarists that we’ve featured for the last 4 years on Echoes.  It’s  worth catching if only for the guitar wizardry of Pino Forastiere who does amazing and melodic things with an acoustic guitar, calling up comparisons to Michael Hedges for his intricate two handed, orchestral approach.

The other guys aren’t bad either, including Brian Gore, who created the tour, English guitarist Clive Carroll and Alexandre Gismonti, son of famed Brazilian guitarist/pianist/composer Egberto Gismonti.   Philadelphia is the first stop on a North American tour that takes them to Echoes cities like Owings Mills, Maryland and Flushing, NY.

Each year, International Guitar Night has a different set of musicians with only Brian Gore, the ringmaster, as a stable center.  Be sure to catch this unique formation, which includes solos, duos, trios and quartets of these master players. It will only happen this year.  Tour dates and info can be found on the International Guitar Night website.

If we don’t get snowed out, IGN will be recording on Echoes Wednesday.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Guitar Republic-New Dimensions for Acoustic Guitar

Three Italian Guitarists Turn Finger-style Guitar On Its Ear.

Last Stop, The Monkey in NYC

If there’s one type of CD that crosses the Echoes transom most frequently, it’s finger-style guitar.  And at this point, it’s rare to find something new in that world.  Tommy Emmanuel is a virtuoso with frightening technique.   But his music is based on tradition.  Michael Hedges was the last truly big explosion, taking the guitar into uncharted directions.  Guitar groups have been springing up all over, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, the California Guitar Trio and International Guitar Night.   Great bands all, but mainly they amplify the effect of one guitar with another couple more guitars.

But Guitar Republic from Italy is a different beast. Individually, Pino Forastiere, Stefano Barone and Sergio Altamura almost sound like three guitarists when they play solo.  Technique is not an issue with these musicians.  But what they do together explodes the guitar ensemble concept.  Each musician is an adept of post-Michael Hedges two-handed guitar tapping as well as guitar as a percussion instrument.  Their instruments are testament to those effects with dings, scratches and lacquer scrapped down to the wood.   Barone’s guitar is literally held together with duct tape.  But they are sacrificed for a good cause, an orchestral approach to the guitar ensemble that has global percussion breakouts, cello etudes, avant-garde sound effects and blue slides, all from 3 guitars.

Guitar Republic at Echoes

Think Hedges meets Fred Frith and Tommy Emmanuel and you have an inkling of Guitar Republic’s approach. Forastiere is the melodicist of the group, lacing together lyrical journeys using his two-handed tapping. Barone has a more rhythmic attack, spinning melodies while slamming beats with the heal of his picking hand.  Altamura is the experimentalist in the group.  He might caress his strings with some weird electronic device, giving it the sound of a hammered dulcimer.  Or he might inserts bolts and CDs between the strings to create vibrations like African mbiras or a doussn’gouni.  Then he tucks it between his leg like a cello and bows it. (see video below)

All these approaches converge into some kind of 21st century chamber orchestra of sound.  On a tune like “Luna Park Republic,” (all their songs have republic or GR in the titles), they execute intricate overlapping finger-tapped lines out of which each artist emerges for a solo that seems to grow out of the fabric of sound.  “Ghetto Republic ” has raging blues slides played on lap steel by Altamura, while on another they take you into a haunting house of pings, squeeks and scrapes.

None of their songs have conventional structure.  These aren’t verse-chorus-verse in search of a singer.  Instead  Guitar Republic takes you on a trip into their imaginary world, created on guitars.

Guitar Republic performed a great Echoes Living Room Concert yesterday that will air next month.  That focused on the more melodic side of their sound.  But their performance at the Tin Angel in Philadelphia was a different universe as they dug into a deeper percussive groove and wider dynamic range.  The handful of devout audience members saw a one of a kind performance.  As one of them  enthused to Pino Forastiere, “I have never seen anything like this!”

New Yorkers’ get a chance to hear this amazing trio on the final stop of their US tour playing at The Monkey,  Sunday, April 25 at 7:00 PM.

Their debut album is called Guitar Republic on Candyrat Records.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Apr 25 2010 7:00P

The Monkey

New York City, New York

Forastiere, Antoine Dufour and Craig D’Andrea: An Invasion of CandyRats Guitarists

Forastiere at Echoes 2006

It was an international guitar morning here at Echoes as three virtuoso guitarists played live on the show.  Echoes has always been a home to finger-style guitarists.  Michael Hedges, Will Ackerman, Alex De Grassi, Kaki King and Preston Reed are among those who have graced the Echoes Living Room.  Today we had three players from three points in the world, Pino Forastiere from Italy, Antoine Dufour from Quebec and Craig D’Andrea from Connecticut.  They’re all on  Candy Rat Records, which, though you might not suspect it from the name, is the home to many of the best young finger-style musicians around.  Along with the Tompkins Square label, they’re leading the charge in new music for acoustic guitar.

The musicians are all post-Michael Hedges players, musicians who tap the bang their instruments as often as they pluck them.  But they all integrate this technique into intricate and evocative  music.  Forastiere’s compositions, heard on his new CD, Live, are woven journeys that sound like he’s having a five way conversation with his guitar. We play a lot of musicians who employ digital looping in their performance, often setting up grooves and ostinatos, but Forastiere does it without electronic enhancements, weaving circuitous, contrapuntal melodies simultaneously over ostinato patterns.  You can see how he does it on the accompanying DVD to Live, or in this YouTube video.

Forastiere has grown a Lincolnesque goattee since this was shot.

Antoine Dufour likes to play percussion and melody simultaneously, often rapping rhythms with his finger nails and fist on the guitar’s body while executing finger-ballets on the strings.  You can hear his music on his latest CD, Existence, but he’s another guitarist you have to see to believe.

BTW, the bandana isn’t a fashion statement. He uses it to dampen resonance on the headstock and to wipe his sweaty palms.

Craig D’Andrea is the youngest of the three artists.  A scant 24 years old, technical expertise seems to ratchet up exponentially with each succeeding generation.  I kept trying to hear the Emo influences he mentioned but he seemed to be pure bred Hedges-influenced to me.  His new album, Getting Used to Isolation is a step forward in his development as a composer.

I recently got an email from a listener who, after insulting me, requested “ “less motonotous [sic] guitar show-off finger work.”

This listener wanted more electronic music, but I think they’re not hearing the elements that these players and electronic music share. Finger- style guitar has evolved immensely in the last 30 years.  Leo Kottke was the leading edge of the old school if you will, but players like Michael Hedges and Don Ross (who Dufour and D’Andrea both cite extensively) altered the paradigm with their tapping approach.  They are the second wave of acoustic guitarists who are post-electronic music and you can hear that influence spinning through acoustic guitarists  more and more each year.  No one in this crew cited electronic music, but I think its influence in terms of cycling patterns and interwoven melody lines is there nevertheless.

These three guitarists are currently touring together with gigs in Philadelphia at the Tin Angel, Wednesday March 11 as as well as performances in New York, Cambridge, MA and  Bridgeport, CT.

Forastiere’s Echoes’ concert is already scheduled to air on Echoes March 24.  Antoine Dufour and Craig D’Andrea will soon follow.

John Diliberto (((echoes)))