Steve Lin - Classical Guitarist

http://www.hilltownfamilies.org/

I’ve been listening to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion non-stop for the past who knows how many hours. It’s repeating on its third cycle now. This is amazing music… making me forget about the world.

Working with Helmut was a pleasure. We started at 4:30 pm and spent about 1.5 hours going through every measure, taking care to understand all the notes, rhythms, sentiments, gestures, executions, etc. He was also very humorous and very patient. This man had been working all afternoon, meeting with all the musicians and groups involved in ‘zwei Gefühle…’, Musik mit Leonardo. I believe his lunch was a croissant and a tea that Yukiko Takagi (the pianist playing in the piece) brought in at around 4:45 pm. Afterwards, Steve Olsen came in and offered to get the maestro some sushi from Whole Foods. Helmut was delighted and smiled, responding, “You have sushi here?” You should have seen the cheer on his face.

Of course, now I know how everything is supposed to go… so I have a lot of work to do now. Oh boy.

There’s so much to blog about… I have pictures and thoughts from Taiwan and also from Utah, where I played with Mark Small for the Utah Classical Guitar Society. But until I have time to sort through those things, here’s the biggest story:

I’m meeting with the great composer Helmut Lachenmann today at 4:30 pm. I’m part of an ensemble directed by Stephen Drury and we’re scheduled to perform Lachenmann’s ‘zwei Gefühle…’, Musik mit Leonardo on March 5, 2008 in NEC’s Jordan Hall. Oh it’s going to be pretty wild.