Could you give some biographical details: where you grew up, family, thatsort of thing?

I was born in Berea, Ohio, USA, on April Fool's Day, 1964. My father was aprofessor of English, and his parents were Russia-Jewish immigrants. Mymother is also a literary person, trained in Comparative Literature andtranslation. She is German-born, living in the USA since 1947. I have anelder sister and a younger brother.

In 1966, we settled in Moorhead, Minnesota, where I grew up more or lesscontinuously (except for a number of extended sojourns in Germany) until1982, when I went to Grinnell College in Iowa, where I studied English andPhilosophy.

Is your family musical?

My father was a great lover of music, and was delighted that I turned out tobe a musician. My mother is musical too, and formerly played the viola. Sheis the most enthusiastic follower of my career.

What was your first musical instrument?

The guitar (unless you count the recorder or the shoe box that I strung withrubber bands at the age of four).

What age did you start?

I was six when my parents finally gave in to my persistent demanding and gotme a guitar.

Did you go right into classical guitar or did you play any popular stylebefore that?

Folk first, then classical. Later rock and blues alongside the classical.

What brought you to London?

I came here really because of one person: Jakob Lindberg was here, and Iwanted to study with him, as it was a recording of his, heard by chance onthe radio, which sparkd my interest and enthusiasm for the lute. So, inSeptember of 1987, I moved to London to do a postgraduate year or two ofstudy at the Royal College of Music, where Jakob teaches. Next thing I knew,I'd settled permanently in England!

What attracted you to the lute?

There are really two answers to this question. The first is that it was therepertoire that attracted me. I was familiar with some renaissance andbaroque lute and guitar music (only a tiny fraction the total repertoire, ofcourse) through guitar transcriptions. I loved this music and consideredtaking up the lute to play it. But, at that stage, I saw no advantage in thelute over the modern guitar, and stayed with the guitar. But this was purelybecause the only lute recordings I'd heard at that time were performances byguitarists, using basically guitar technique, on heavily constructedinstruments bearing far more resemblance to modern guitars than torenaissance or baroque lutes. Unsurprisingly, these lutes sounded to me liketinny guitars. My conclusion, based on insufficient evidence (as it turnedout), was that there was no advantage in playing the repertoire on a lute.So my first reason for being attracted to the lute, namely an enthusiasm forthe repertoire, was a necessary, but not a sufficient motive force fortaking it up.

Enter reason number two: the enchanting, exquisite, unique sound. One day Iwas driving a car (around 1985, I think), when some music came on the radiowhich made my stop the car to listen. I didn't know what it was -- perhaps aharp? It was my first experience of hearing a relatively accurate copy of anold lute played without nails using an historically appropriate right-handtechnique. Things fell into place: if this was what the lute should soundlike, I couldn't wait to take it up! It was a new and quite other soundworld.

So, to sum up, an enthusiasm for the repertoire, when coupled with theknowledge of what it could physically sound like, drew me to the instrument.

Who were your teachers and what did you get from them?

As mentioned already, Jakob Lindberg was my first teacher. I had what seemedlike an interminable nine-month wait between being accepted at the RCM andbeing able to take up my place there. I wrote to Jakob, asking what I shouldbe working on during that time. To his great credit, he replied with aneight-page handwritten letter consisting, in effect, of a first lesson inthumb-under technique. That letter, along with lots of listening to records(mainly Lindberg and O'Dette), lots of detailed poring over the photographsof the artists playing, and lots of hacking through repertoire and acquiringfluency in French and Italian tablature, allowed me to prepare reasonablywell for study with Jakob.

Chiefly, Jakob gave me dedication, commitment, demanding goals to worktoward, and generous use of his instruments, which enabled otherwiseimpossible opportunities.

I've also had two long lessons with Paul O'Dette, one in 1989, and one inthe early or mid 90s. Together, these two lessons gave me tons of food forthought and work, mainly in the area of technique and expanded tonalpossibilities. Paul gave me very close attention and guided me in profitabledirections for self study.

Pat O'Brien has since built on what Paul gave me, working with greatdedication on further refining my technique and expanding my tonal range.I've worked with Pat as much as possible in the last 9 or 10 years, thoughthere have been gaps of up to two years between our sessions. Pat has shownbelief in and respect for what I'm doing, and for that I'm grateful. Hisunrivalled knowledge and technical insight, not to mention his commitmentand dedication to the instrument and to its players, is a great gift to allof us.

What sparked your interest in intabulation? Did you sing in a choir at onetime?

No, I never sang in a choir. Oddly enough, I've grown to love vocalpolyphony much more through playing intabulations than the other way around.The main thing that sparked my interest was the love that I have for theundeservedly neglected sides of the repertoire. There are more pages in thesixteenth-century lute books and manscripts devoted to intabulations than todances or freely-composed forms. So, in this case, we're not talking aboutsome obscure corner of the repertoire, but of a body of music quite centralto it. I wondered why intabulations were largely ignored by lute players(for more thoughts on this, see the programme notes to my CD of Josquinintabulations). It was clear that it wasn't because intabulations are eitherboring or unimportant. What's more, studying them gives valuable insight onthe fantasia and other freely-composed forms. The idea of a whole concert orCD programme devoted to Josquin intabulations appealed on many levels. Ithadn't been done. It was a new way to organize and present a programmecentered around one composer but incorporating huge stylistic variety and alarge temporal and geographical spread.

You gave up theorbo. Was that a consequence of your getting more and moreinto the very early repertoire?

Yes, partly. But chiefly I did it out of frustration with what professionaltheorbo playing did to my renaissance lute technique. After a two-week tourof theorbo-bashing with an opera company, playing the renaissance lute wellwas not readily achievable. I saw more and more that there were severallifetimes'-worth of renaissance repertoire to explore, and that doing somesort of justice to the renaissance lute and its repertoire was a full-timejob, not one to pursue between continuo gigs. This is even more true if you,like me, are (a) perversely interested in the most difficult music, and (b)a perfectionist who doesn't like to spread himself too thin. I love baroquemusic, but, like brain surgery and sky-diving, I prefer to leave it toothers. I admire those players who do both well (I mean renaissance andbaroque, not brain surgery and sky-diving!).

Here in London, all the other players (literally all of them) make theirliving as continuo players. It's funny: people sometimes call me a "narrowspecialist", as if continuo players were not! I play plectrum lute,sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century lute, renaissance guitar, cittern,bandora, vihuela, and occasionally viol. Is that more specialised thanplaying baroque lute, theorbo, archlute and baroque guitar music from twocenturies? I don't see why.

Incidentally, Trinity College of Music has done a great thing: they've nowgot two lute posts, one for renaissance lute (and lute-song), and anotherfor baroque lute (and continuo). I think it's a very good idea whose timehas come. David Miller is the baroque person at Trinity, and I'm therenaissance person.

What strings have you tried and what have you settled on for this earlyrepertoire? How often do you change them?

For solo recordings, I use gut (usually from Gamut Strings). In the area ofbass strings, I use "real guts" by George Stoppani when I can get them, andPistoys by Gamut otherwise. I sometimes use loaded gut basses for unstoppedor rarely-stopped diapasons on ten-course lute, but find tham useless asstopped strings, because they are rarely true. I'm experimenting with Gamutgimped strings at the moment. I do it not because I think that people usedthem in the sixteenth century, but because I think their sound is areasonable approximation of a good focussed true gut bass of the sort whichthey must have had. (Wound strings are not!)

For touring and performing, as opposed to recording, I use nylgut in thetreble and mid-range, down to the fifth course (though I'm experimentingwith Savarez KF strings for the fifth course at the moment), and theabove-mentioned gut basses, with nylgut octaves.

How often do I change them? When they are broken, false, or just feeling orsounding tired or thin.

What mics and placement did you and your engineer settle on for your lastsolo recording?

Always B and K 4006s, one pair, placed roughly where the ears of a personstanding six feet away from where I'm sitting would be. More specifically,I'm sitting on a very low little stool near the ground, and I think theheight of the mics (if I remember correctly) is about the ear height of aperson of average height standing before me. The diagonal line from mics tolute bridge is usally six feet or so. There are no additional ambient mics.

Do you use meantone temperament?

Most often one-sixth comma meantone.

Tastini?

Yes, on the first fret.

How do you tune? I mean do you have a method like tuning the outer stringsthen the 2nd course or something like that, or prefer to use a tuner?

More often than not, I use a multi-temperament tuner by VioLab.

You've used an A lute in the past, but you didn't use one on the concertthis time. Don't you like the short string length for zipping up and downthe neck?

Oh, yes -- it's a fun and zippy string-length. And the best A-lutes I'vetried (by Michael Lowe, Grant Tomlinson, Stephen Gottlieb and MartinHaycock) have some variety of tonal colour. But I much prefer longerstring-lengths, which have much more tonal variety and dynamic possibility,for most music.

How do you practice? How long? How often do you rest when practicing? Whatdo you do to prepare for a concert?

This is an area that has changed beyond recognition in the last couple ofyears, largely because my ideas about playing have changed in tandem with myincreasing involvement with the Alexander Technique. Also, because I'm muchbusier than usual at the moment (spending about 25 hours a week training asan Alexander Technique teacher, and fitting the music into the remainingtime), I've had to learn to be more efficient.

These days, even when I'm preparing for a solo recital or recording, Irarely manage more than two and a half hours of quality practice in a day.But when I say quality practice, I mean something like this: first, a fewminutes lying on the floor in "semi-supine", then about half an hour'spractice, then getting up and doing something different for a little while,then repeating the whole sequence four more times. So typically it will takeme four hours to do two and a half hours of good practice. But I reckon Iget more done this way than I used to accomplish in four hours of continualplay. Also, I'm much more likely to rethink a fingering or an approachrather than relying on repetition or "brute force". Finally, I use a methodof slow practising (instead of working at performance speed from thebeginning) which helps me to avoid building tension into the performance byrepeating tense situations in the practising. Altogether, it's what youmight call "intelligent practice". In Alexander terms, it's non-end-gainingpractice, i.e., it's attending to the means rather than rushing headlongtowards ends or intended results. It takes more time, but it's worth it.

How have you incorporated Alexander technique into your own playing?

Really, my answer to the previous question goes some way toward explaininghow I apply "Alexander thinking" to my practising. (Although much of it, ofcourse, is simply common sense.)

There are other obvious ways in which I apply the AT to my playing. One isthe matter of holding the instrument. I sit more upright and more in balancethan formerly, and it's important to me to minimize unnecessary physicaltension. A great deal of what we need to do to ourselves to play (or thinkwe need to do) is unnecessary habitual stuff. I'm interested in exploringall of that. And of course it quickly becomes evident, when you startlooking into these things, that mental habits and physical ones areinseparably and indistinguishably intertwined.

In the short amount of time I was able to observe your class, I noticed thatyou were helping the student with posture and tension, so I guess you arealready using Alexander technique in your teaching. Do you find lute playershave certain things they do with their bodies that are unhealthy?

Typical contortions include slumping (thereby straining the back andsquashing abdomen and thorax, not giving the vital organs their due space),or "wrapping" oneself around the instrument. Another common one is pullingthe left shoulder down, and the right shoulder forward and down (sometimesclamping it onto the instrument to hold it in place). I think most of usfall into these if we're not careful.

Of course some players say: "I know that I do these things, but I want toplay like that, and I don't care if the consequence is an occasionalbackache. I can't stand this sitting up straight stuff." I can't reply tothis in any detail now, but here are a few observations: Firstly the AT isnot about "sitting up straight". It's more about allowing our inbuiltpostural mechanisms to do the work for us. Secondly, is it not a bit of ashame to work in a way which does not allow for full realisation of ourpotential? Thirdly, look at the paintings and read the treatises: "gracefulbearing" is, without doubt, part of playing the lute. Of course, none ofthese points is meant to suggest that I'm trying to dictate anything toanybody. I'm talking about my own experience.

Could you say a bit about your playing position? Your lute is relativelyhorizontal and your left hand seems farther extended then many players.

See above. I like to let the weight of the lute rest in my lap, and it seemsto end up in horizontal position (which seems to have been a favoured anglefor much of the sixteenth century). I admit that this is not always helpfulto the left hand.

You use a chamois or something too, right?

Yes, it's on my lap under the lute, and also behind it, against my front,and this prevents the lute from slipping around too much.

The left hand fingerings in these pieces you played from the Sienamanuscript are particularly difficult. Any hints? You mentioned using littlepressure with the LH thumb.

It's hard to give hints in the abstract. But here are a couple ofprinciples: really think the fingerings through, and be ingenious with them.Be willing to try unconventional things. There are usually more ways tofinger a given passage than we tend to think. And yes, when we're playing"fistfuls of chords", excessive squeezing with the LH thumb doesn't help.

That was a very demanding program. You don't get any pain in your hands?

None to speak of. My left wrist got a little tired because I was playing formore hours than I'm used to.

To what extent do you finger each piece? Do you write in fingering? Do youmap out what each finger in each hand is doing?

I plan the fingerings fairly carefully if the piece is intricate. I write ina lot of them. I don't map everything, but quite a lot.

Have you done much research? Do you have a musicologist's personality? Youmust, to some extent, because you know the vocal versions of intabulations.

I wouldn't say that I have a musicologist's personality; I haven't everaccessed anything that required any significant degree of digging. The vocaloriginals aren't hard to find in libraries. It's more a case of my beinginterested in exploring and presenting music which, though available, is notoften heard.

Who are your first and second favorite composers?

This is hard to answer. But I'm going to say Josquin and Bach, in noparticular order. Next week I might answer it differently.

How close do you think we (lute world collectively) and you (personally) areto recreating the Renaissance music the way it was actually performed?

I don't know. In some respects, perhaps closer than we used to be. Inothers, perhaps further away. But when you say "the way it was actuallyperformed", remember that there was never one way in which anything wasdone. How could there have been?

How do you determine tempo? How much leeway do you think there is?

Mainly by instinct -- by what seems to work. This is, I hope, based not onwhim but on some degree of stylistic understanding, which comes from havingimmersed myself in the repertoire for some time. Leeway? Yes, lots.

I've never seen slurs written in Renaissance tab. Does that mean that theydidn't do it? Was it just a case of them not writing them in. In the Baroquelute and guitar tabs, they are all over the place.

I think that the only place for slurring in renaissance lute music is withinthe small ornaments: trills, mordents, slides and appoggiaturas.

I find it frustrating that in Renaissance tabs they never wrote in left handfingers, but they slavishly wrote in dots (especially single dots) for theright hand fingering. How about you?

There are instances, both in printed and manuscript sources, of left-handfingerings. But I, too, wish there were more.

What are the ratios of intabulations to dances and fantasias? I think it ishard for many of us to really get into the head of these lutenists that didso many intabulations. Why were intabulations so common? Where these tunesreally so popular that they had to have lute arrangements of them?

See above, and see also the notes to my Josquin CD.

Why did intabulation die out and dance music become prevalent?

I don't know. I think it may be closely bound up with social and politicalhistory.

Was Vincenzo Galilei's Fronimo pretty much the last big intabulationadventure?

Just off the top of my head, I know there are lots intabulations inAdriaenssen. I believe his second book is later than Fronimo. And there'sTerzi, and Molinaro.

Why do you think classical guitarists and pianists usually memorize theirmaterial but most lutenists don't?

I don't know the answer to that one. Memorizing is an entrenched traditionin those repertoires, for better or for worse. I think we should be doingmore improvising (we renaissance lute players). It was obviously anessential part of a player's skill. But when playing pieces composed byother people, I think it doesn't matter whether one plays from memory ornot.

Who are your current muscal collaborators? What projects are you working on?

I still work with the singer Catherine King, though it's been a while. Iplay once in a while with Musica Antiqua of London, with Fretwork, with theDufay Collective, the Rose Consort of Viols. . . . Lately I've been doingsome concerts with Michael Chance and the Brisk Recorder Quartet ofAmsterdam. On the solo front, I'm working on the Siena Lute Book, and I havebeen for some time.

What do you listen to for your own entertainment?

I listen to all manner of things. To name half a dozen: Franco-Flemishpolyphony, jazz, Hungarian folk music, Sufi music, Robert Fripp and KingCrimson, Fred Frith. . . .

What's next for you?

When I finish my Siena Lute Book CD (in December 2003), I'll take a littlebreak from new solo projects, and consolidate a bit the repertoire which isalready "under the fingers". Also, I'll be focussing on completing my ATteacher training course, and getting a teaching practice going. Future soloprojects? I've got lots of ideas. We'll see. . . .

interview by Ed Durbrow (http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/), Summer 2003

for the Japanese Lute Society (http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/)