It’s hard to believe guitar virtuoso Scott Tennant when he
says he once performed onstage wearing a garbage bag, especially
when he says it so frankly.
“Twenty years ago, when we did our first big tour in
Mexico, we went out to the backcountry and played for communities
that normally couldn’t have music,” explained
Tennant.
“It started raining like crazy, so I had to make a poncho
out of a garbage bag. The weird thing is that nobody seemed to
think it was weird. They were used to extreme
informality.”
Twenty years, nine albums and a Grammy nomination later, Tennant
and his group, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, will perform at
UCLA’s Freud Playhouse on Saturday with the same sense of
informality, although not to the same degree.
“We haven’t played in tuxedos or suits for 15
years,” Tennant said. “We’re not your
traditional, stuffy,
get-up-and-keep-to-yourself-and-not-communicate-with-the-audience
type of group.
We like to involve the audience and educate them a lot, and talk
and just make it an informal evening in a formal
setting.”
The LAGQ has consciously avoided the negative connotation of
classicism, the formal aspect of classical music performance that
deters many from classical music and even disenchants some of its
musicians.
“It’s always been like that,” Tennant said.
“None of us can stand that stuffy, old maestro type of
thing.”
The LAGQ first formed and trained in the late ’70s at USC
under renowned flamenco guitarist Pepe Romero, a member of the
original guitar quartet, The Romeros. Early on, the group knew it
would be different from its predecessors.
“We wanted to try to set ourselves apart,” LAGQ
member John Dearman said. “We started experimenting with
different types of repertory, mainly just more contemporary music,
20th-century music, like Philip Glass.
“When Andy York joined the group in 1989, we thought,
“˜Well let’s really just go nuts, and really open it up
and create our own repertory and our own identity as a classical
music group.'”
This eclecticism can be attributed to the classically trained
members’ earliest influences. For Dearman, it was country
artist Chet Atkins. For Bill Kanengiser it was art-rock band Yes.
Tennant played flamenco in high school, while York played country,
bluegrass and folk.
“Like a lot of American classical musicians, we
didn’t grow up playing classical music when we were
kids,” Dearman said. “Our roots are seeing the Beatles
on Ed Sullivan and buying records by the Doors and the Beach
Boys.”
In its long career, LAGQ has performed for the prince of
Luxembourg and John Cleese of Monty Python. It has opened for Barry
Manilow at the Hollywood Bowl and performed with the Boston Pops on
television, and both Sting and Andy Summers are fans.
“They have evolved into consummate entertainers,”
UCLA Schoenberg School of Music Interim Chair Ian Krouse said.
Krouse and the quarter first met as guitar students at USC. Over
the years, Krouse has composed several scores for the group and has
paid witness to the members’ progression as performers.
“They’re fun to watch,” Krouse added.
“These are four of the greatest guitarists in the world
today. They all have amazing techniques both musically and
technically speaking.
The diversity of colors that they use, the expansion of the
guitar palate, the ensemble, the musicianship, the beauty of the
tone color ““ all of those things, they’ve set a new
benchmark.”
Although they will be performing for a cross-town college rival
audience, the USC alumni aren’t too worried.
“Uh oh!” Tennant said. “No, we don’t
think about that anymore. No, unless they go and, you know, toilet
paper Tommy Trojan, or something.”
The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet plays the Freud Playhouse on
Saturday. Go to http://www.uclalive.org. for more
information.