A new school, a new teacher

OLGA LIVSHIN

“I love to teach,” said Daniel Bolshoy. One of the best classical guitarists in Canada, Bolshoy recently became head of the guitar department at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra School of Music in Vancouver.

The new school includes a 1,500-square-foot recital hall, 18 teaching studios, 11 computer listening stations, six individual practise rooms, two classrooms, an ensemble room, a café and a sheet music and gift shop. The vision of VSO music director Bramwell Tovey, board chair Arthur H. Willms and president and chief executive officer Jeff Alexander, it “was created to provide a modern educational institution next to the Orpheum, where members of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra could teach, and students of all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds could enjoy lifelong learning,” according to the press release for the school’s Aug. 27 open house.

Bolshoy is one of more than 50 faculty members who have been contracted to teach at the facility. He spoke with the Jewish Independent about his life as a musician and how his new position fits into his overall career.

JI: When did you know you wanted to be a musician?

DB: I didn’t like classical music as a child. When I was in Grade 1, we already lived in Israel. My mom signed me up for piano lessons, like many other Russian-Jewish kids’ [parents did]. I disliked the lessons. I guess I didn’t connect to the teacher, but I thought, at the time, that I hated music. I quit the piano.

JI: So what happened next?

DB: When I was a teenager, I studied at the Israel Arts and Science Academy in Jerusalem. It’s a school for gifted kids, and I entered it as a science student. I was good at math. Then I noticed girls: I wanted to play electric guitar, to play rock in a band to impress them. One of my friends told me that he knew a guitar teacher, but the man didn’t teach electric guitar, he taught classical guitar. I thought it would be good training anyway. I began the lessons in classical guitar and I loved the instrument and my first guitar teacher, Gregory Nisnevich.

JI: You are a very successful performer now. Why do you still teach?

DB: I’ve always liked teaching. I went to get all those fancy degrees because I wanted to teach. [He received his master’s in music in 2001, and his doctoral dissertation is currently waiting for approval.] I didn’t need them for performing. For me, teaching is not just a way to earn a living, hasn’t been for a long time. I’ve been making a good living as a performer for years, but teaching is important to me, and I hope it is fun for my students. It’s not like I’m giving them a musical bible. We’re a community, like brothers and sisters. We share our love for classical guitar. It often helps me as a performer to talk to my students.

JI: Do you have a favorite place to perform?

DB: Good acoustics are important for a musician. Your Chan Centre has great acoustics, and the new recital hall at the VSO school is excellent for chamber music. I played at the Orpheum with the VSO this spring; it was perfect. It’s a big hall, but I always use amplification when I play with the orchestra; my amplification system has been specially built for my guitar.

I also like playing outreach tours. I have played recitals in remote areas, in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, at schools and in hospitals. It’s wonderful, too. Half of the fun is getting there. I’d never visit those places otherwise. Many people there had never heard classical guitar before, but they responded. They said amazing things.

Once, I played for a bunch of nine-years-old kids. I played Bach and talked to them to make it more interesting. I said, “Let’s make a story. Listen, it’s a sunrise.” Then I changed harmonies, something only a professional would notice. I asked them, “What happened?” One boy replied, “A cloud is blocking the sun.” It felt so real to me then.... I’d like to give everyone an opportunity to hear classical music, classical guitar. Not just in big cities, but in villages and small towns, too. I’d like to inspire someone to learn the guitar.

JI: Your students can be amateurs or professionals. As a teacher, do you have a preference?

DB: I had an amazing teacher in Denver, Ricardo Iznaola. He is Cuban-American, a virtuoso guitarist and a composer. He said that there is no musical talent; [that] it’s a job of a teacher to share knowledge and to give his students tools to play music [and] those teachers who say that a student has no talent for music are lazy teachers. I agree. The greatest guitar player of all times, Andres Segovia, was rejected by teachers when he first wanted to learn music. They said that he had no talent, no sense of rhythm, so he taught himself.

Back to your question, teaching an amateur is sometimes more interesting than teaching aspiring professionals. [The latter group] are under stress, preparing for competitions or auditions, but an amateur comes to the lessons because he loves the guitar, for joy. On the other hand, when I give a master class, sometimes it helps me to solve my own problems. I’m a better performer because I teach. I can’t do one without the other.

JI: How did your parents react to your choice of profession?

DB: My parents supported my decision, although I think it might’ve been a surprise for them. But they never paid for any of my guitar lessons. I got my first teaching jobs, teaching Hebrew and guitar, when still in high school. Since then, it seems, I’ve never stopped teaching guitar. And, I won all those scholarships and prizes to pay for my schooling.

JI: What do you see as the biggest challenge for you as a musician?

DB: I think my biggest challenge was that I wasn’t born into a musical family – my father is a scientist, my mom worked with computers and as a nurse – but it gave me an advantage, too. I see myself as a bridge between everybody and the musical world, between classical guitar and electric guitar, between rock music and classical music. I want to make classical guitar accessible to everyone. It’s a challenge.

JI: Do you have a favorite piece of music or a favorite composer?

DB: Musicians often get this question. Everything I play is my favorite. We don’t play what we don’t like. We spend so much time with the piece, practising, that after all the hard work, it becomes a favorite.

JI: How many hours a day do you practise?

DB: Well, playing guitar is my job. I work like everybody else, eight hours a day. In the beginning, it was just two hours a day. I never noticed those hours: I liked it so much. Still do.

JI: Your website says that you speak Russian, Hebrew, English, French and Spanish. I understand the first four, as you’ve lived in places where those languages were spoken, but why Spanish?

DB: Spanish is like a national language for the guitar and guitarists. I’m fluent in Spanish. I started learning it my first year of university. I can read in Spanish, too, although my best two languages are Hebrew and English. French and Russian, I am good speaking both.... I was three when my family left Russia, but, when I was a boy, my parents bribed me to take Russian lessons. A year ago, I had a tour in Russia. Before the tour, I had to send and receive lots of e-mails in Russian. It improved my reading and writing in Russian hugely.

JI: You perform on several different guitars. Do you have a favorite?

DB: It keeps changing. Your guitar is like a romantic love. Each guitar lets you play in a different way, explore different directions. One of my favorites is the guitar made for me last year by Martin Blackwell. It has an amplification system installed. I played it with the VSO. Martin lives here, in B.C. He is a wonderful luthier and a friend.

JI: Do you have any free time?

DB: Of course I do, like everybody else after work, although I don’t have as much free time as I’d like. I love the outdoors. My wife and I, we just bought bicycles; we bike along the seawall in Stanley Park. I also like cooking – I baked my first challah yesterday, my wife was happy. And I read. I like novels. The most recent books I read were by Israeli writers Etgar Keret and Sayed Kashua. Kashua’s book talked about The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy, so I read that book as well, in English.

JI: Are there other guitar teachers in your department at the VSO school?

DB: The school is very new, so, at the moment, I’m the only one, but I hope it will change. I hope there will be many students who wish to learn classical guitar, so many that I have to hire other teachers. I have other plans as well: a new guitar festival, chamber music, a guitar orchestra maybe, but that is all for the future.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected]. To learn more about the VSO School of Music, including its open house, visit vsoschoolofmusic.ca. For more on Daniel Bolshoy, go to danielbolshoy.com.

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