Odyssey's Odyssey

Moving to Northern Virginia just before my twelfth birthday, I had to leave my German guitar teacher Greta Dollitz in Richmond. This was difficult - I had studied with her since I was seven, and had learned a great deal from her. Also, Greta had the deepest and most beautiful voice I had ever heard from a woman. Every week when my mother would drop me off in front of Mrs. Dollitz’ house for my lesson, I would stand at the front door, ring the bell, and steel myself for the voice that would greet me. Greta would open the door, and in rich, redolent tones proclaim “Hello, Andy!”. I would melt every time, constitutionally unprepared for her gorgeous contralto, almost baritone, voice. In addition, I was smitten with her daughter Erika, who was my age.

But soon after relocating from Richmond, my parents found a teacher for me in Baltimore Maryland by the name of Ray Chester, who was teaching at Peabody Institute. Ray looked at the classical guitar I had with me and told my parents I needed a better instrument. So at twelve years old, I got my 1970 Juan Orozco guitar. This guitar was to become my companion for many years - the participant in many milestones that would define my life and career, the witness to the arc of my successes, my intimate confidant when writing all my early compositions for our beloved instrument, the solo classical guitar. The powerful role this guitar played in my life later led me to name her “Odyssey”.

The drive from Dale City Virginia to Baltimore for lessons was not insignificant, and my mother would take us up in our Ford Falcon. I remember sitting with Ray Chester in an empty apartment, unadorned hardwood floors and walls lending resonance to each note during our lessons. I also remember going to an Italian restaurant after our sessions, which had a very large painting of a very naked woman on the wall - a reproduction of a famous work no doubt, done in eye-popping increase of scale. As an adolescent, I found this painting mesmerizing, needless to say, and had trouble concentrating on my pasta. But after a few more trips to Baltimore, it became apparent that my growing interest in electric guitar and rock and roll was making me less interested in the study of classical repertoire, so I stopped lessons with Ray. I had been studying classical since the age of seven, so it was time to move on into uncharted waters anyway, as has been a theme throughout my life - after reaching a high level of technical ability in a field, I would often then take my knowledge and abilities with me and move on to the next thing. I would of course, unerringly come back to classical again and again as my greatest and most enduring love.

Lost Early Songs

But my guitar, Odyssey, remained, and became the focus of all my early teenage compositions for guitar. I would blend styles, sometimes add synthesizer melodies or vocals, and use nylon string guitar for the warm basis of my compositions and recordings. I was playing in bars by the time I was fifteen (illegally) with very loud rock bands, but my alter ego still preferred writing music that was centered around acoustic guitars, both nylon and steel string, and Odyssey was the muse. I recorded much of this material on my reel to reel tape recorder, which also had the ability to do overdubs, so I could layer tracks with multiple textures. Sadly, all of this recorded music is lost and scattered to the four winds. In an attempted Buddhic moment in my early twenties to take the spiritual path of releasing attachment to my personal history, I sold my reel to reel and gave the buyer all my tapes, all my earliest recordings, and told them to feel free to erase them and re-record over the tapes. Yes. I really did that.

Lullaby

But again Odyssey remained. After high school, making the decision to pursue music instead of science, I went to James Madison University in Harrisonburg Virginia as a music major. In my room I would improvise into the night, and sometimes record the music on a hand-held portable cassette recorder. I still have boxes of these tapes with compositional ideas and sketches, most of them still not turned into pieces. One night I played an idea for a complete new piece into the recorder, and then that tape was put away and the sketch forgotten. A few years later after I moved to Los Angeles, I found that cassette one evening and decided to play it. The cassette’s label showed that it had some classical music recorded on it, and I wanted to hear it. After a while the recorded music finished, but I did not stop the cassette player; it continued to play silently, with the rest of the cassette being blank. Or so it seemed; after many minutes of silence, I suddenly heard myself playing the piece I had recorded in Virginia, several years before and thousands of miles away. I had completely forgotten about this fully formed piece, and at the end of it I stated the date - “September 29”. It was a gift to myself from the past, a complete rendition of the composition I would name “Lullaby”. “Lullaby” was later recorded by John Williams on his CD “Spirit of the Guitar - Music of the Americas”, along with “Sunburst". We never know what gems (or clunkers) lie in the archives of an artist that accrue throughout the years. So long as they aren’t given away to be erased, that is.

Flying to Toronto

But back to Virginia during my undergraduate years at James Madison University. Odyssey was my guitar when I played with the Madison Guitar Trio, which consisted of my teacher at JMU Peter Miller, fellow student Jeffrey Kerwood, and myself. The university arranged the funding for us to fly to Canada to take part in the Toronto Guitar Festival in 1979, and the three of us arrived at Dulles airport in Northern Virginia for our flight. In those days, people still dressed up to fly. We wore our three piece suits and platform shoes in proper late 1970s sartorial style. But Pete, notoriously late for lessons, also proved to be unreliable in getting us to the airport on time. Late for the flight, we ran full tilt through the airport, clutching our guitars, platform shoes clacking against the hard floor. We rushed through the metal detectors, onto the tarmac to the stairs leading up to the plane, just making the flight. Odyssey and the other two guitars were forced to fly underneath the plane to collude and collide with the suitcases. Fortunately none of our guitars were damaged. Not so for our platform shoes.

Belladonna

I sat in the living room with my roommates during my senior year as an undergraduate. The four of us - two trumpet players, a sax player, and me - rented a true Animal House as can only happen when a house is inhabited by twenty year old males. Our parties were legendary. But on this evening, I sat on the couch with Odyssey and improvised to the dynamics of the interpersonal skits and dramas evolving around me. Each of these little fragments I quilted together into a pastiche that became “Belladonna” for guitar trio. For my senior recital the Madison Guitar Trio played Belladonna, and I have a surviving recording of the event. Even with the low quality of the recording, the magic still effervesces from the performance and the audience audibly responds with gasps and laughter to some of the musical twists and turns. The recital hall was packed with both faculty and students curious to hear my eclectic final recital at James Madison, and the humor and spontaneous reactions of the audience still feel electric and alive ( listen to Belladonna recital premiere from 1980 ). Belladonna remained unpublished for forty-six years, but I have finally made the score available. The genesis and recital premiere of “Belladonna” is a delightful moment of my musical history, a simpler and more open time. It’s hard to imagine an audience today being so engaged and in the moment, with such joyful reciprocity.

On the Road to Los Angeles

Now cut to 1983, and the big move almost three thousand miles away to Los Angeles. Across the enormity of the continent from Virginia, and even farther away culturally. But it was where my future was and I knew it. I had a scholarship to University of Southern California to get my masters degree, and with Barbie, my wife at that time, we loaded our Beauville Chevy van up to the ceiling, an exercise in geometric interlocking of our belongings, and began the epic journey to the west coast. Everything we owned was in and on top of the van, our future ahead of us, and Odyssey in the back humming along with the van’s vibrations.

I only have photos and no recordings from this trip, though I know I did many sketches and improvisations in our different locations as we zigzagged across the States. Peak moments are Mt. Rushmore, seeing a tree burning on top from a lightning strike. Standing on the grand canyon’s north rim, witnessing a huge thunderstorm silently raging in awesome majesty on the south rim. Rainbows stretching across the great plains. The undulating low hills in western Kansas, like a great ocean of land with vast rolling waves frozen in a moment of time. Elk jumping over fences by the highway, a bear shambling across the road in Yellowstone, Old Faithful geyser when it was still erupting like clockwork, and then the long, relentless freeway reaching into Los Angeles mile after mile like a desert octopus with endless tentacles reaching across the desert into the most mythic city in America.

University of Southern California

Beginning my studies at USC, I was studying guitar in many forms, both jazz and classical, as well as lute. Jim Smith was my teacher at USC for classical guitar, and he became a close personal friend and hiking buddy. Odyssey was with me in our lessons, and Jim would bustle in, heavily caffeinated, often late, and we would begin an enthusiastic attack on the music of the week. Jim was a force of nature and I can only imagine that Odyssey remembers his energy from our weekly musical meetings. My two graduate recitals featured classic jazz pieces plus my original jazz and fusion works played on electric guitars, as well as many classical and crossover pieces on Odyssey, such as “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” by J.S. Bach (Rick Foster arrangement), “Sevilla” by Albéniz, and the iconic arrangement I did of Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy” (which can be heard on my first CD “Perfect Sky”).

Ralph Towner

Ralph Towner was a musician and composer I had admired since my early teens, and his music had influenced me deeply, particularly his solo album “Diary”. My first semester at USC, Ralph came to the school and gave a masterclass for the guitar students. I was chosen to play for him, and I played one of Towner’s compositions titled “Mevlana Etude”. It’s a complex, swirling solo guitar piece from his album “Blue Sun”, and I had transcribed it from the record since the music was not available. In the masterclass, I handed Ralph my own hand-written score of “Mevlana Etude”, and played it for him. He was quite surprised and asked how I had gotten the music since he had not published the score yet. I explained I had taken it off the record by ear, and then written it down to learn it. He was impressed and invited me to spend the following day with him. I went to his hotel with Odyssey and we spent hours playing and talking about composition. I played some of my jazz inspired works and he shared his compositional knowledge freely. Years later when I began touring, Ralph and I would cross paths once in a while at festivals. Ralph was one of my musical heroes and I felt very lucky to get to know him, and play one his pieces for him.

Nutcracker Suite

During my second year as a graduate student at USC, I was in a duo for a while and arranged the entire Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky for two guitars. It was an unlikely choice for a guitar duet, but the Nutcracker is a suite I have loved since childhood. I fully expected the arrangement to fail, but as I went through it movement by movement I was able to solve the significant problems in translating the full orchestral form to two guitars, and to my surprise it became a vibrant and lovely arrangement that was very successful. Enter my good friend Ben Verdery: Ben was a professor at Yale, a very fine artist and classical guitarist, often specializing in Bach, and writing his own very unique compositions from time to time, a man after my own heart. Ben came to USC to give a masterclass. Ben was essentially my age, perhaps a couple of years older, but had already established himself as a master teacher and performer. I played the Nutcracker suite with my duet partner for Ben, and he was excited and enthusiastic, and invited me to come to Spain the following summer, where he was teaching in Córdoba with John Williams at the Festival de la Guitarra de Córdoba. It was very rare for John Williams to be giving workshops at a guitar festival, and he would only be coaching ensembles, no private students. Ben told me he thought John would like to hear my arrangement of the Nutcracker, and said I should come to Spain and play it for John Williams in his ensemble workshop.

Perfect Sky

After graduating from USC with my masters degree, I was ready to record my first album, “Perfect Sky”. I borrowed money to pay for the recording studio and the cassette reproductions with full color cover, and I recorded the works I had composed during my time at USC. Reflecting my eclectic studies and interests, I played eight pieces on Odyssey - five original compositions, two classical works, and my arrangement of “Linus and Lucy” by Vince Guaraldi. The other tracks consisted of one piece on steel string (I decided to record “Sunburst” on a steel string for this recording), and three pieces on electric guitar. This major project was finished just before departing for Europe. Though “Perfect Sky” would later be released on CD, in 1986 CDs were still quite expensive to make, especially when self-funding the project. But I had very good sounding and nice looking cassette duplications of “Perfect Sky” (if you are old enough, you might remember when cassettes were available alongside LPs in record stores - remember record stores?), and as we began our transition into nomadic wanderers I carried some cassettes of my first full-length recording project along with me.

Back Across the Country, in the Other Direction

I received a grant for study in Spain, but decided the trip would be much more epic than that. Barbie and I moved out of our duplex in Los Angeles, sold almost everything we owned, and put our remaining possessions into a rented storage space. Then we put Odyssey and our suitcases into our Subaru and began to drive across the country once again, this time heading back to Virginia, before taking our flight from New York to Frankfurt Germany.

During our return trip to the east coast, I made cassette recordings of composition sketches on Odyssey in different locales in the country - a ditty in Flagstaff, which I still haven’t made into a full composition, and another sketch titled “E minor Ohio” which I was working on as we stayed with Barbie’s parents in Cleveland, and this piece later became “Reflections”, which can be heard on the later re-issue of CD “Perfect Sky”.

We left our car in Virginia with my parents. I played some bluegrass for my grandmother named Skipper who was visiting. It was an energetic piece and she worried I would get too tired playing it. Then a shuttle flight up to New York city, where we met with our friend Dirk Freymuth for our flight to Germany together on LTU airlines. Dirk, who was born in Germany and came to Los Angeles as a baby with his parents, is an extremely talented guitarist and musician, and we had become good friend at USC and been involved together in numerous musical projects during our studies. Dirk’s father was the head of LTU airlines, and he set us up with a flight to Frankfurt, where Barbie and I would begin our three month European journey by staying with Dirk’s relatives in Frankfurt.

Flying to Germany

On the plane, I had Odyssey and Dirk had his classical guitar. The flight attendants were having trouble finding a place to put both guitars. But since Dirk’s father ran the airline, it was a foregone conclusion that the guitars would end up on the plane somehow, and not underneath with the luggage. Finally the Purser opened up a somewhat hidden cabinet, and there was a kind of lift that went down to the luggage area. I was impressed with this, I suppose most planes have this somewhere but you never see them. Anyway, she put both guitars in the little elevator and we were good to go.

Three Months in Europe

Odyssey was strapped to my back almost everywhere I went in Europe. The excitement of being there my first time was all consuming, and I relished everything, and turned the explorations into music as often as I could. In Frankfurt’s famous tavern Apfelwein Wagner I noticed that all the people seated on the benches of the long tables, drinking their stoneware mugs of apple wine, would sway back and forth left and right to the music, but only for pieces in 3/4 time. Interesting, but clearly it felt right in 3/4 and not in 4/4 time music. I mentioned this to the Germans I was sitting with and they got a kick out of trying to sway back and forth to the pieces in 4/4, and laughing hilariously because it just didn’t work.

From there we stayed with family friends of the Freymuth’s, Peter and Gudrun Schmidt-Eisser in Ratingen, near Dusseldorf. Peter was into fine wine (grape, not apple) and gave me some of my first real lessons into appreciating the subtleties of excellent wine, which has stayed with me ever since. My love of good wine has only grown over the years. For many years I was in touch with Peter, and he even came more than a decade later to a concert I did in Dusseldorf with LAGQ, and announced himself to us backstage with great gravitas. I was very happy to see him again and we went out for numerous Altbiers afterward, the special brew in Dusseldorf

Bells in Belgium

Spain and the festival in Córdoba was still almost two months away, with all the life-changing events that would transpire there. So Barbie and I began to explore Europe. First we trained to Oostende in Belgium, and stayed in a hotel that had angled mirrors on the ceiling that gave an excellent overview of the bed. I didn’t quite realize what kind of hotel this was until the theatrical moans of a woman in the next room began to pulse through the walls. Then I knew that we were more or less in a brothel - fortunately a rather clean one. But at that moment the bells of a nearby cathedral began to peal with stunning resonance and intensity, and it was one of the most compelling and spellbinding sounds I have ever heard. Almost never do we hear true church bells ringing in the United States. The bells’ voices flowed into our room, as if the air was filled with a luminous sonic honey that surrounded and caressed us. The mournful lingering beauty of those tones hypnotized and haunted me, and that moment stays with me still - a beautiful contradiction of the very spiritual resonance of the church bells superimposed over the moans of a prostitute. I sensed a truth there that somehow encompassed the human condition with a sweet poignancy.

Amsterdam Excess

A Volkswagen Polo was our transportation now, leased new in Amerstdam. The Polo was a car that was not available in the States, a small white sturdy hatchback, and it would see us from the top of Holland to the bottom of Spain, and back.

Immediately in Amsterdam, our car was promptly broken into while we were inside an art museum taking in an exhibit of paintings by Monet. Luckily our luggage, and Odyssey, were not in the car but safe back at the hotel. The thieves only got my jacket. But they stripped the lock on the back door of the hatchback, and we couldn’t lock the car for the remaining months. No problem, we were young, in Europe, and having the adventure of a lifetime.

Dirk trained up from Germany to meet us in Amsterdam, and we met him at the train station. He barreled off the train and barked “Let’s go, let’s go!” and we almost had to trot to keep up with him. Apparently there were some strange interactions with a person on the train, and now freed from the confines of the train car Dirk was anxious to get away from there. We found a place to stay overnight on a boat docked in a canal, the bedrooms so small I had to open the door to put on my shirt.

While in Amsterdam we visited a hash bar and bought some space cakes.* Marijuana was still light years away from being legalized in the States, so the novelty of being able to buy it in a bar was intriguing and irresistible. Barbie and I each ate two, and little seemed to happen so we ate a third one. Bad idea. An hour later we were in a highly altered state, and of all places, Dirk wants to go see the torture museum. Barbie lasted about two minutes in there, I lasted about five, and we burst wide-eyed and horrified out of the museum and into the cobbled streets of a twilit Amsterdam to wait for Dirk. Many of those images haunt me still. And then Dirk rejoined us and we went in search of a middle eastern restaurant he had been to before. He unerringly led us there, though the journey through the streets in our condition was almost intolerable. I felt the cobblestone streets were another form of torture that we had just delivered ourselves from, and I was convinced my hip bones were going to rip through my flesh from lurching across the uneven surfaces of the cobbles. Such are the dark mental machinations from too many space cakes.

A bizarre sleepless night in the minuscule boat bedroom found us feeling somewhat normalized come sunrise, though not fully. I encapsulated this evening with a piece, still unpublished, titled “Dirk in Amsterdam” that I composed on Odyssey in the following days. An interesting though unknown addition to my oeuvre flowering from a very unusual and somewhat shattering experience in Amsterdam. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

London and Cambridge

After that we went to London. We stayed with a lovely young British man with an uncanny resemblance to Prince Charles (at the time) and he enjoyed our company so much he kept us for a week instead of the scheduled two days. I remember walking through London with Odyssey on my back in my Reuer case, which was quite heavy. I have a picture standing in front of Stonehenge with Odyssey in the case on my shoulder - always with me, always whispering to me, with music to explore. The guitar case itself, I should mention, was Chet Atkins’ case. It still had a sticker with his name and address pasted on the side of it. I bought the case used from the man who made them, Ray Reausner. On the phone he told me that the used case he was selling to me had belonged to Chet Atkins. I said “Yeah right”, not believing it for a minute and not caring, I just wanted a good case for traveling, and the Reuer cases were the best at the time. (Ray Reausner called his cases Reuer cases.) But when the case arrived complete with Chet’s info pasted on it, I was impressed to learn I did indeed have Chet Atkin’s guitar case, an appropriate and very honorable home for my Odyssey. I met Chet briefly years later at a guitar festival with LAGQ, and I told him I had his old guitar case. He just looked at me with an odd expression, until I said I bought it from Ray Reausner, and then he smiled briefly, but was otherwise unimpressed.

Our British host decided to take us up to Cambridge when he went to visit his girlfriend. We were walking through a park where a punk band was playing. Punk was the happening alternative style at the time, and very big in England. The band was playing a very raw song in which the lyrics were, shouted at maximum screaming volume and distortion, “Rrraaawrr Rrraaawrr Rrraaawrr RRRAAAAAAWWWRRRR!”. We enjoyed quoting the thoughtful lyrics to each other throughout the day.

In memory of this visit to Cambridge, I began to sketch a number of compositional ideas on Odyssey during the trip that I grouped under the title “Cambridge”, that never coalesced into a finished piece. Perhaps one day I will revisit all the ideas I played into my travel cassette recorder with Odyssey during this trip. My first visit to England stayed with me forever, I was and still am enchanted by this rich island landscape and culture. It would lead to renting a flat in London and relocating there for a time, but that is another story entirely.

Spain

Now we cross the English Channel and are back in Europe, and our destination is south. Many stories to relate staying with people in Germany whose hospitality was so touching, going downward into France and sneaking into a Roman excavation site that was unattended, hugging ancient unearthed columns jubilantly freed from the earth after millennia . . . and finally crossing the Pyrenees, and entering the absolutely unique clash of cultures that is Spain.

Our first night we stayed in Girona, a town in Catalonia. The language there is Catalan, which seemed almost a mixture of Spanish and French. Part of the grant I received was to try and find unpublished vihuela music from the renaissance, and I had an appointment in a library to look at their old volumes of vihuela music. Vihuela is like a small guitar, popular in Spain in the 1500s. Entering the library, the woman caretaker looked me over carefully. I handed her my letter, written in Spanish, outlining the kinds of volumes I was looking for. She pointed at a table, and as I sat she went away into the stacks and eventually returned with a large leather-bound tome, published in the 1500s, and cavalierly dropped it on my table. Old books perhaps are common enough in Spain to take them a bit for granted; I could imagine that such a volume in the States would be handled gingerly by someone wearing white gloves, turning the ancient pages for you. But she left the book with me, turned her back and was gone. I held in my hands a book well over four hundred years old, filled with wonderful music from an earlier era so exotic to me that I was in awe to even handle it, imagining the procession of musicians who must have sat before it over the centuries, looking at the same pages I was seeing now.

In Barcelona we found a hotel on Las Ramblas, the famous tree-lined avenue in the city. But that night in 1986 Argentina won the world cup, and Spaniards were celebrating in the streets with such enthusiasm and violence that we were afraid to go outside. The night was filled with masses of shouting and very excited people, and explosives were going off in the streets, sounding far bigger than mere firecrackers. So we opted to stay in and watch the chaos surging down Las Ramblas from our fortunately second floor window.

Busking

Times were simpler then, and we had a book called ”Europe on $25 dollars a day”. Can you imagine? But it was possible then. However, three months is a long time, and we had partially subsidized our trip, apart from my grant money, by selling Barbie’s silver flute that she was never going to play again. But even with our careful budgeting, we began to run out of money in Spain. So for the first time in my life, I decided to try busking. Busking is the British word for performing on the street for money. I carried Odyssey around through the streets of Barcelona, and near a cathedral I set up camp and opened my case, seeded it with some pesetas, and began to play. I was naive, and chose a spot that was too noisy to give passersby the ability to really hear what I was doing - not to mention classical guitar is one of the quietest instruments imaginable. Nevertheless I made some pesetas that helped us out in our continuing adventure, as we headed south and deeper into Spain.

As we worked our way down, somewhere outside of Zaragosa we stopped for a meal at a restaurant fronting the small road, and seated ourselves on the open patio. My Spanish was still rudimentary, and though I could read ‘lentil soup’ on the menu, I didn’t recognize the other ingredients listed in the dish. I asked the waiter in my then broken Spanish what else was in the soup, and he tugged on his earlobe and said “puerco”. I asked again and he repeated the gesture and word. Not sure what he meant by this, I ordered the dish. But when it arrived, I suddenly understood very well what his gesture had been so clearly describing. I saw a shallow bowl, and dead center in a sea of lentils, rising up like a scale model of Mount Everest, was a triangular pig’s ear.

In Toledo a man on the street had a very large book dating from medieval times, with illustrated music of Gregorian chants. And he was tearing out pages and selling them for not very many pesetas. They were so beautiful with vibrant gilded illuminated text, and even with the sacrilege of the destruction of such an historical artifact, I very much wish I had purchased a couple of pages to care for and cherish. In my visits to Toledo in later years, I never again saw such treasures being rudely peddled on the street like that.

Trying now to get to Córdoba. In 1986 the Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco had only been out of power for eleven years, and the roads and infrastructure had not yet been entirely upgraded. So the distance in time between cities was an order of magnitude greater than it is today. We were going down a small highway, heading south toward Córdoba, and the road became narrower and narrower, and then began to degrade into a broken up dirt track. I saw a man leading a donkey on the side of the road, and stopped the car. I asked him how I can get to Córdoba from here, which was due south. He thought, and said, “It is difficult. You can’t! This road disappears farther on.” Which was fully believable, so we had to backtrack for many miles and find an alternate route.

Córdoba

Finally, the evening before the guitar festival where John Williams and Ben Verdery were teaching, we arrived into Córdoba. Crossing the Guadalquivir river into the old part of the city, more than a thousand years old, we tried to find our lodging that had been set up beforehand. The streets of the old Judería where we were staying looked more like Morocco than Europe - indeed, the European saying “Africa begins below the Pyrenees” made a lot of sense. The Moors and their culture and building style were still very much dominant a thousand years later.

The strange, wonderful, life-changing, and sometimes disturbing experiences we had in Córdoba are too many to tell. No other place on earth has such a mythic and mystical effect on my soul. Córdoba has a forcefield around it that keeps time in flux, and from the last millennia, all times are present, and active, and impacting you. I fully believe this, because my time in Córdoba utterly changed my life, a nexus of concurrent streams that all intersected with great power to manifest unalterable changes in my destiny. And Odyssey was the conduit, like Thor’s hammer, for the energies swirling and manifesting around me.

First memory of Córdoba - we arrive at night, and I park on a narrow medieval street to figure out our location. I step out of the car and see many shapes stuck to the walls of the buildings lining the narrow streets. They are bats; and they are everywhere, hanging on the stucco and stone walls in the shadows, like miniature vampires. We seemed to have stepped into a mythic dream inside another reality, which is indeed what was happening. Then I look down on the cobblestone street, and there is a small figure awkwardly shuffling forward on the stone with great difficulty. I bend down in the twilight and see that it is an injured bat, with one wing compromised. I have the urge to help somehow, and bend closer. The bat stops its laborious forward struggle, rotates its head toward me, opens its mouth and hisses at me. That image is marvelous and theatrical, encapsulating the timeless mystery and majesty that Spain had in store for us.

Our lodging turns out to be so rudimentary that we can’t stay there. The toilet bowl has no seat or cover, and is not pleasant to behold. There are no locks on the door, and the vibes fill us with an overpowering urge to leave. My wife begs me to find another place, so I search out other lodging in the Judería and find a spot that is perfect for us. A family rents rooms to boarders, and the home is tidy and ancient, evocative of Andalucian culture. Behind the massive wooden door guarding the residence from the narrow street, a short tunnel brings you to a castle-like iron grate - through that, the living room is a lovely colorful tiled space with many potted plants, open to the sky above with a canvas cloth that can be pulled closed with ropes. Our room is clean and has a sink in the room, with a tall barred window looking out into the street, perfect for us. The matriarch likes me, and even with my broken Spanish, she chooses me as her interpreter for the other internationals staying there. I felt very close to her as if I had known her before, perhaps a very long time ago. Such experiences and perceptions seem to arise very naturally in Córdoba.

Blues and Ben and Cervantes

The festival begins. The first day, after the introductory meetings, the students gather in the evening around the Potro fountain, the famous square in Córdoba that is mentioned in Cervante’s book “Don Quijote”. Ben Verdery is there too, and it turns out he plays a very mean blues harmonica. I have Odyssey with me of course, and Ben and I sit around the fountain in the Spanish twilight, me laying out an insistent blues groove on Odyssey, and Ben gyrating and blowing his harp into the night, belting out fierce and eloquent blues lines, a stylistic anomaly in this land of flamenco. We jammed on as the light drained from the sky, with festival students and local Spaniards listening while sitting on the flagstones and leaning against the buildings - one of the crowning and most beautiful memories of my entire European sojourn.

A friend, Marc Lamdin, flew to Spain to join me in playing my Nutcracker arrangement for John Williams in the ensemble masterclasses. Our turn to play came, and upon learning that he was about to hear the Nutcracker arranged for two guitars, Williams said skeptically “I can’t quite imagine that”, and rightly so. That was my attitude as I was arranging it, as I mentioned. I didn’t expect it to succeed, but ultimately it worked beautifully. (In fact, I later turned the arrangement into a four guitar version for the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, which we recorded for Delos Records on our CD From Renaissance to Nutcracker.) But once we played a movement or two of the duet arrangement for John Williams, he said “fantastic!” and we began to work on ideas for improving the performance. I was quite taken with John, and found his comments and demeanor delightful. The other members of the class, many of whom I was in touch with for years afterward, were from Greece, Germany, England, and America, as well as many participants from Spain. Language was an issue, and ad hoc translation was at times frustrating and humorous, but the course managed to move forward as we all played, interacted and got to know each other.

Sunburst

During this time, I was sitting around between classes with Odyssey, and playing "Sunburst", which was still a new piece for me, having just written it only months before. Ben Verdery walked by, stopped when he heard me playing "Sunburst" and became very excited. “You have to play that for John!” he shouted, and he put me in the afternoon concert the following day to play it.

Coffee with John Williams

This was a shining experience for me. The concert was held in a large airy light-filled room in the festival building, and I played “Muir Woods” first. During my performance I saw John Williams standing in the doorway to the room where the recital was taking place, next to the leader of the fantastic Chilean group Inti Illimani, that I would become a great fan of later on. John didn’t like Muir Woods too much I later learned, he thought it “went on a bit”. It’s a modal and subtly jazzy piece, which I think is very successful, but it wasn’t his cup of tea, fair enough. But then I played "Sunburst" on Odyssey, and John’s interest piqued and he listened intently. Afterward he came up to me and invited me to go with him for a cup of coffee. We walked down the streets of Córdoba to a little cafe, and stood at the bar while the barista brought us small steaming cups of café solo, and we talked. John asked me for the score to "Sunburst", and I replied that I hadn’t yet written it out, but I would upon returning to the States. This was a moment that was to change my life as a composer and musician, and I’m grateful to both Ben and John for the opportunity to share my music with the greatest guitarist in the world at that time, and have him buy me a coffee and ask for the score.

After the festival was over, Barbie and I went to Granada and stayed in the Albaycín at a home owned by the mother of one of the festival participants. We sat on the patio under a grapevine heavy with fruit, overlooking the Alhambra. It could have been any century from the last thousand years and it probably wouldn’t have looked much different. After that, we drove up the coast of Spain heading north. We stopped in the town of Benicarló on the Mediterranean Coast, and the two men at the hotel desk wanted to see our IDs. After reviewing our passports, they looked at our drivers licenses and when they saw the city and state, and the first man looked up and exclaimed “Los Angeles!” and the other said dreamily with a huge smile, “California!”. I realized then the mythic quality that California has around the world. I had felt it growing up in Virginia, and it was a magnetic attraction to me as well, finally pulling me there to study at USC, all of which culminated in the moment I was then experiencing.

The Drive to Paris

Northward, northward. We had Marc in our car, and because we were told that the following day would be the beginning of the holiday period in France and the traffic would be horrendously heavy, we opted to drive straight through to Paris, our next destination. It took eighteen hours, but we did it non-stop except for necessities like food and toilet. We arrived into Paris quite exhausted. I was behind the wheel as I found myself flung into the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe - a swirling vortex of laneless insanity. I strove to make my exit from this infernal river of vehicles as we went around and around, but the honking, choking chaos of cars blocked my attempts at egress. Marc was in the back literally shouting in alarm from the close encounters with other cars as I tried to veer out of this madness, and we were finally ejected forcibly from the Arc de Triomphe into the relative calm of the streets leading deeper into Paris.

Marc took his leave and Barbie and I found a hostel, whose proprietress was a magnificently obese woman who offered us café au lait in large steaming bowls, which impressed me greatly. She saw me toting my case with Odyssey in it, and asked if it was a guitar. I answered yes, imagining she was interested, but instead she said casually, “if you play it I will call the police.” It was so absurd I didn’t even take offense, I just told her not to worry, she wouldn’t hear a note. Not the only bizarre disenchantment I was to experience in France.

Andecy

But there was an extremely positive event to counter this ridiculous exchange. After leaving Paris with some relief, we went to the Champagne district. The detailed map we had with us showed an ancient monument nearby, a group of Celtic standing stones like Stonehenge but not nearly as grand. The stones eluded us, but we did happen upon a tiny village called Andecy, which name may be familiar to those who know my music. We never really found a village center, just a sign to say we were in Andecy. But in the declining evening light, I pulled the car off the country road to the edge of a forest that beckoned us. We sat, opened a bottle of wine and prepared a nice cheese, and I opened my guitar case. The wine, the evening, the location, resulted in an improvisation that became my piece "Andecy" (click for video). It was rather complete, and in my mind, the groove had a genetic relation to the song by the Police “Wrapped Around Your Finger” which was then on the charts. I found that song magical and it would run through my mind; though quite different, "Andecy" has an emotional connection to this Police song in its genesis. Later when I got to know Andy Summers, the guitarist for the Police, I told him this story and played him a bit of "Andecy". He listened and said he heard a connection with the groove. When I improvised "Andecy" decades before, the idea that I’d one day play it for Andy never entered my mind as a possibility.

So "Andecy" became possibly my most famous piece. "Sunburst" reached myriad people, thanks to John Williams; but "Andecy" I recorded for Windham Hill Records, and Windham Hill sold exponentially more records than any classical label could hope to do. The inclusion of "Andecy" in the Windham Hill Guitar Sampler Album generated so much feedback over the years, that I became heavily known in both the steel string and new age worlds, at the same time that the classical world became familiar with my music through John William’s recording of "Sunburst" and the recordings I did with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. However, the classical guitar world, though having many lovely and curious souls, is also inhabited by some who are quite closed-minded and not by nature open-hearted, and assess music in an unthinking, prejudicial and censorious manner. My visibility in the steel string world distressed and angered many of these provincial epigoni, causing repercussions that linger to this day. It’s irrational when music is not judged on its own merits, but instead for its arena of popularity or by an antiquated ‘rule-book’ for protection of the status quo. True assessment of a work of art requires the ability to think for oneself, and to feel emotions honestly, without imposing mindlessly inherited beliefs about what is ‘allowed’. Such myopia is not limited to the guitar world of course - all disciplines must face such unpleasant shortsightedness. But it saddens me to see a sizeable cadre within the classical guitar milieu still circumscribed by self-limiting dogmatism, to its detriment and not insignificant damage to the status of the guitar in the culture. And many guitarists have contacted me in quiet agreement.

Windham Hill Records

After returning from Europe, Barbie and I stayed for a while with my parents in Virginia, deciding what we would now do with ourselves. Return to L.A.? Settle somewhere else? We didn’t know. In the meantime, I heard from a friend of mine, Mark Valenti, about an interesting development. Mark was working at Steven Spielberg’s Studio Amblin Entertainment and was given the task of giving a visitor a tour of the studio. That visitor was Dawn Atkinson, the director of Artists and Repertoire at Windham Hill Records. During his tour, Mark generously told Dawn all about me and my music, compellingly enough that she was intrigued and requested that I send her some recordings. Thanks to Mark, I was able to send my first recording “Perfect Sky” directly into the upper echelons of Windham Hill, right to the person who makes the decisions about which artists they will record.

When Dawn and the owner of the label Will Ackerman heard “Perfect Sky”, they liked what I was doing and asked me to submit more music. I had just finished giving "Andecy" the final tweaks, and after recording a demo of it upon returning to Los Angeles, I sent it to them. The response was immediate. They had one more track available on the upcoming Guitar Sampler album, and Will confided in me later that he was starting to despair about finding something that he liked enough to include. So I was lucky with the timeline; Will felt that "Andecy" was the piece he was looking for. They flew me up to San Francisco, and with Odyssey I arrived at Different Fur Studios, where artists like Herbie Hancock, the Doobie Brothers, Neil Young and the Grateful Dead had all recorded - and they brought me in and sat me down in a chair in the recording room to prepare for sound check. I opened my guitar case, pulled Odyssey out, and began to tune up and play. Suddenly I looked down and saw the back of a very blond head, the left ear almost touching the soundboard of Odyssey. The man was crouched over on his knees, listening intently to my guitar without a word to me, only inches in front of my crotch. Bemused, I said, “So, read any good books lately?” The man stood up, looked me in the eye and said without hesitation, “Yes. The River Why by David James Duncan”. Then he introduced himself as Will Ackerman, the owner of Windham Hill Records, of course. He was producing the session and wanted to know where to place the microphones. I had always admired the exceptional and groundbreaking audiophile sound quality of Windham Hill’s recordings of both piano and acoustic guitar, and I was witnessing the secrets of the inner sanctum first hand. Will was such a beautiful cat, and the sound he and the engineer got with "Andecy" blew my mind. This was another milestone, pivotal moment with Odyssey that would shape my career from that moment on. And Will was right about the book too, The River Why became one of my favorites.

Ambassador Auditorium

When John Williams came to Los Angeles to play two concerts at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, one of the finest halls in the U.S., we spent the day before his concert together. Earlier I had given John the score to my piece “Lullaby” that I mentioned earlier. John played both "Sunburst" and “Lullaby” in his two concerts at Ambassador, part of a fantastic program including the Bach Chaconne, the most thrilling performance of this masterwork that I have ever heard. John’s sense of form was so sophisticated that the energy rose and fell with an almost unendurable intensity. I’ve never heard any other guitarist perform this piece on such a high musical level. I was very honored when John asked from the stage for me to stand in the audience after he played my pieces.

Sadly, the Ambassador Auditorium ceased offering concerts not many years after, and sits idle and silent, devoid of the powerful music that great artists once expressed from its stage for many thousands of people, a great loss.

Evening Dance and Christopher Parkening

I met Christopher Parkening in 1988, and he told me he was preparing to make a duet record with David Brandon for Angel Records. He asked if I had written any duets, and I told him I would compose one for him and David. In just a few days I created “Evening Dance”, a continuous variation on an E minor theme. When I finished it, he invited me to his home to take a look at the score together. Chris only lived about ten minutes from my apartment, so I drove to his condo in Burbank with Odyssey and the newly printed score for “Evening Dance”. Together we read through the piece, and Chris was very happy with it, except for the ending. I had ended the piece by dissolving the theme and the harmony, thinning the texture and rhythm and moving to intervals like fourths and fifths to give an open, plaintive sound. Chris asked if I wouldn’t mind writing an ending that was more energetic, and ended with some excitement. I wasn’t fully receptive to making such a change - but later at home I thought about it, and sat down to write a contrasting, more ‘up’ ending. The next day I called Chris, and again I came to his place and we read through it, me on Odyssey and Chris on one of his Ramirez guitars. He liked this ending very much and seemed satisfied. However, I wasn’t. I found the new ending a bit too intense and thick in contrapuntal texture. I told Chris I needed one more day to make a third ending, and I wrote this one with dramatic chords echoing each other in tight syncopation, followed by insistent and soaring arpeggiated lines that close the piece. Next evening, once again, we read through it, and both of us were happy with the the final rendition. Chris and David Brandon recorded “Evening Dance” on their CD “Virtuoso Duets” for Angel Records, and it is a masterful interpretation and performance. By virtue of meeting Christopher Parkening and having a chance to compose for him and David, yet another piece I created on Odyssey tracked a high-profile trajectory, reaching many people through their wonderful recording and their subsequent concerts.

There is a further connection with Parkening, however, that arose from "Andecy". Some years later, Chris began dating a wonderful lady named Theresa. Later in their relationship, Theresa told Chris that her favorite piece was "Andecy" by Andrew York, and asked, “Have you heard of him?” Chris was amazed at this and told Theresa that he knew me. My phone rang and Chris related this story excitedly, and asked me to fax him the score to "Andecy" right away. Christopher had decided to propose to Theresa, and he wanted to first play "Andecy" for her before he proposed. This amazing coincidence of "Andecy" being such an important piece for Chris and Theresa was a wonder to me, and I was moved by the magical tendrils that were moving through time and connecting us all through my music. Chris and Theresa further honored me by asking me to play "Andecy" for them at their wedding. Again that simple improvisation on Odyssey in France in 1986 was reaching forward in time and intertwining itself in the minds and hearts of people I had not yet met, and who would become very important to me.

Loss of Return of Odyssey

After I began acquiring other guitars in 1990, Odyssey was no longer played much, and sat quietly in its case, nestled in among my other instruments. Then around 2004, I took Odyssey to the east coast and left it there as a guitar I could practice on during my frequent trips to the east, without having to travel with a guitar while flying, which I assure you is no fun at all. Well, life changes happen and the guitar disappeared. I believed I would never see Odyssey again. But twenty years later the guitar resurfaced, and in 2025 Odyssey and I were reunited.

Having this guitar back, with all the milestones and music we created together, and the amazing adventures we shared, was like coming full circle from my youth to my later years, connecting events in a beautiful way through my entire life. This seems magical to me.

Now, I’ve re-recorded “Andecy” with my old friend Odyssey. And she continues to inspire me - as of this writing, my latest piece composed on Odyssey is a culminating work in my life, “Lachrimae” (click for video). In this composition, I drew from the experiences of an entire lifetime, attempting to distill the sweetness, joy and sorrow that befalls us during our time on this earth. Again a feeling of full circle - Odyssey finds me again when I am ready, and it is time for me to make a mature artistic statement through “Lachrimae”. And now, with Annie, my wife and muse, we are filming, composing, and painting - living together as artists, still following our shared dreams of creation and beauty. For all the events in my life involving Odyssey, and all the wonderful people that have supported me in my quest for beauty and meaning in life and music, I can only feel awe, thankfulness, and great gratitude.

Andrew York

written by a human (me), not by AI

Notes

* Space cakes were small chocolate balls made with hashish, and sold in the hash bars in Amsterdam at that time. My telling of the event is an autobiographical, truthful account of my past experience, and I am in no way endorsing the use of drugs.

An Odyssey is never only one journey — its arc carries onward.