new milestone, special photo

02 Jul 2007 17:25 (Edited: 02 Jul 2007 17:25)

I'm so proud of JJ. It was a privilege to once again spend time with such a truly beautiful and talented human being. No one else I know combines amazing technical skill with such feel for making the music live in and through him in everything he does, with and without his guitars. He's also such a fun, kind and caring person.
Every time we're together, the time goes way too fast, but it's priceless and I try to find locations as special as he is that fit the guitars we are photographing him with. This guitar is, like JJ, a very unique instrument. It's a Moser Spawn, one of only 30 that will ever be made in this shape. He and I fell in love with this design last year when we discovered it and it was on my gift list for him but he got one last fall before I finished saving up the money for it. That one has a flat finish on top. The opportunity came up now for him to buy this one, with a beautiful glossy top and I knew something this special needed a very dramatic backdrop. My artwork often has multiple levels of meaning in it and I looked for a location that would provide strong visual as well as conceptual ties to the guitar. I found it in downtown LA at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, one of architect Frank Ghery's most famous buildings. Like the guitar, the geometry is dramatic, curvy, pointy and beautifully powerful. The shiny black and silver surfaces echo the metal surfaces of the building's exterior and just like the guitar, the interior is made of acoustically superior woods. Ghery interprets the classical music hall in a daringly unconventional style and pulls it off with brilliant artistic integrity. Moser takes the art of guitar making to supreme levels of musical quality while creating dramatically bold works of art and JJ gives everything he plays, whether it be a top 40 club gig, his awesome metal shredding or anything else his own great touch. The multiple meanings of a "metal music building" appealed to me. As someone who had many years of classical music training and is a great fan of a wide variety of musical styles, I understand the tensions and intertwined influences the various styles have had on each other and the shared roots in music theory as well as the shared ongoing human desire to express oneself through new kinds of sound. The technical and artistic quality of the best rock and metal musicians (not necessarily the most commercial ones) requires levels of skills and knowledge every bit as advanced and steeped in music theory as the most advanced classical musicians and takes the same levels of practice. In his architecture, Ghery was not just using motifs he's used in other buildings before, but also reflecting attitudes of composers on both sides of the divide that refuse to stay bounded by neat little stylistic labels; modern "classical" composers who are feely borrowing all sorts of instruments and sounds from the electrornic world, and rockers who, having not only used, but invented many effects themselves, explore the pallettes of sound available by adding traditional instruments and scalar modes, creating something totally new. LA with its fertile mixtures of cultures and openness to new ideas is the perfect place for creativity and this was the perfect spot to celebrate in a photo all that is good about this and to celebrate another milestone by someone whose gifts shine so brightly when in this environment.

List of my blog entries

new milestone, special photo

List of my blog entries

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