Interview with Pablo Montagne
Hello Pablo, if I remember well our last interview dates back to 2014, then we talked about for my book “Visionary Guitars Chatting with Guitarists”. We talked about your guitar and delay’s compositions Mirrors … what did you do next? Have I missed something?
After the release of the two Mirrors’ volumes, I spent a long time devoting myself to writing compositions for both electric guitar for classical guitar.
In this period I will soon release ““12 studi, legato e tecniche non convenzionali”” for classical guitar with cd attached (Ed. Symphony) and others solo guitar works: “Electric Pages” (dedicated to Maurizio Grandinetti), “20” a quartet for electric guitars, “Kaleidoscope suite” for two classical guitars with two of the three movements for writing panels and not completely defined (Ed. Glissato nuovi linguaggi).
Recently Maurizio Grandinetti played of your music for electric guitar in New York, what can you tell us of these compositions?
Yes, last year “20” was played by the electric guitars quartet Guitar Project Daedalus formed by Maurizio Grandinetti, Domenico Caliri, Roberto Cecchetto and Marco Cappelli,
but this year Maurizio played two Mirrors for electric guitar and delay with a single repetition. About the”20″ passage I still haven’t a good recording, while the 10 Mirrors are loaded on youtube.
Then there is the new work in duo with Adolfo La Volpe, you two are practically brothers now, how did the idea of this work start? It seems that you often feel the need to join yourselves and play a new project….
Adolfo and I are practically in daily contact with a constant exchange of ideas and proposals abouty musical materials, from the first work done together 10 years ago…
What’s unique is that we are two guitarists who have very different basic ways of playing, deriving from different studies an different approachs to the instrument, however, we are united by the same passion for discovery different expressive procedures of making music, both for improvisation than composition, but especially in mixing these two attitudes.
We are perfectly “in tune”on everything to do with the creative part of making music.
What are the differences between A little less and 15 Improvisations?
For 15 Improvisations we met, put a microphone in front of us … ..rec …… .and let’s go.
Instead A little less reflects, in my opinion, our whole way of living the music and especially making music together: there are both improvisations (in 15 Improvisations style ) like the tracks titled Fragment, but also completely written compositions as Carillon and many other compositions thant range between these two worlds.
Listening to him I noticed something different than your previous collaborations: there is a wider use of melody, dissonances, as your textures, sound more like a colors ….
Fragments remain in the more concrete and less melodic textures, in my opinion rather than melody my opinion, there is a search of vocality applied on free improvisation or at least not on pre-defined chords. As it happens in 99.9% of Jazz music, Rock etc.
Improvisation and composition … it seems that in the end these are always two primary elements of your playing and composing music, isn’t it?
Yes, improvisation is the indispensable means for me to go deep into the guitar and get the most of its rich sounds and expressive potentials. Composition rather helps me to reflect on the musical ideas and to secure them with formal writing (pentagram) and not (graphic scores sketches, drawings, doodles thoughts numerical sequences).
Only with improvisation all these things would be lost.
I often listen to contemporary compositions for guitar and I think that if they were written in another way or if they were improvised even partially… it would be much better.
The pentagram can be a cage for music.
Nevertheless, this way of playing in certain musical circles gives a safe and professional aspect, reliability and security … .. although it objectively sucks.
Your CHAQUE OBJECT project continues or is it for now on stand by?
Me and Adolfo are the hard core, along with us have worked over time several friends with whom we shared making music together. As for now we are not using more, the ideas are the same and always evolve, changing the form but not the substance.
Do you think you will realize more records with Amirani Records and Setola di Maiale?
If I still have the strength to do something at these levels, yes.
At the end of our interview in 2011, you said: “The musician, apart from some more cases in accordance with the system, it’s definitely a socially isolated figure. The music was, is and will be like an ice-breaker for social evolution. ” Do you still think the same? Do you still think that music can generate social evolution in our context?
Removed a large part of all the music that they make us listen, I think that a “good / honest” music brings a new way of perceiving, feeling, and hides a thought that is vital and necessary for humans.
The human being nedds to feel good (in all senses) and not rot inside, needs the truth in any form … also in the music.
If we only eats snacks and chips the body is sick.
As well as our eyes can not be feeded by the reality show, the slums or violence even our ears need to sustain themselves with a quality “sound material” or pure silence.
What are your next projects? What are you working on?
Adolfo and I are thinking about making an electric version of A little less, we would like to call it … A little more…we are spending a lot of time to decide such things!
I also have various compositions that I always have to be completed for both electric and classical guitar.
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