BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Studies aren’t just for practising your technique, or so Paul Ballam-Cross’ new EP shows us. Enjoyable for the sake of listening, and fun for the sake of playing, Paul’s tasteful arrangements of Fernando Sor help elevate these 19th-Century classical guitar studies into 21st-Century performance pieces for electric bass.
The Australian composer, guitarist, and educator talks us through his new release, which features his interpretation of these delightful old works on his modern instrument — with just a pinch of historically informed performance practice.
Paul, thanks for the chat about your new EP! Let’s talk about the source material, so to speak — your publication Fernando Sor: Selected Studies Arranged for Electric Bass. How rare is it to have the chance to perform 19th-Century music on an electronic instrument?
It’s pretty rare, I think! Of course, there’s the precedent of incredible musicians like Wendy Carlos playing Bach on synth back in the late ‘60s, but it’s definitely not common for plucked instruments. There’s a pretty sizeable repertoire of classical music for electric guitar, and the electric bass does show up from time to time in ensembles, like in Reich or Glass, but solo? Not often enough.
As an artist who specialises in this comparatively modern instrument, what draws you to looking back into classical music?
Well, it was out of necessity, really. I teach both classical guitar and electric bass, and there’s a real gap in the bass repertoire – classical guitarists get all kinds of nice short pieces where you can feel pretty accomplished at the end of it, but there’s not much of the same kind of thing for bass when it comes to learning to read music; plenty of rock to play, but that’s a different matter! So, I figured I’d do what I knew best, and transfer some of Fernando Sor’s music over.
So what were some of the things you needed to consider when you arranged and edited these works for bass?
Squeezing music for the guitar’s six strings onto the four strings of the bass definitely took some tinkering keys-wise in some cases, but by and large it was fairly seamless. The pieces that didn’t fit on a single bass became duets, since I thought they were too lovely to leave unfinished.
Now you’ve released the recording, I’m interested in how you approach the idea of historically informed performance practice. You certainly aren’t fusing classical and modern styles in this solo release, despite the fact that your instrument is rarely used to perform solo music this old. Are you trying to play with a HIP-inspired approach, or just taking what Fernando Sor wrote and doing your own thing with it?
Very loosely HIP-inspired, I think! I’ve performed the music of Sor on a 19th-Century romantic guitar before, so I’m certainly familiar with how his music sits, feels, and sings in its original format. But the process of reworking it for bass certainly does bring out some rather different qualities in it.
I thought the most important thing in playing it was to try to bring some of the lightness of Sor’s melodies to the bass, an instrument not usually known for its grace.
In the album’s description, you’ve said you wanted to “capture some of the charm and ease of Sor’s music”. Having listened, I believe those words so accurately describe the feeling! How do you feel about the idea of listening to or playing “studies” and “lessons” for the sake of pure enjoyment?
It’s absolutely so important that studies are actually fun to play for the performer, and interesting to listen to as well. If they’re not melodically interesting, then it can all get rather too close to dry technical exercises.
At the end of the day, what do you hope to get out of releasing this EP?
It was partially a fun project, but I’m also hoping that it might open some ears to what the solo electric bass can do. There’s some fabulous double bass music that transfers terrifically well to the electric bass, so there’s a whole world of repertoire just waiting to be explored!
Hear and purchase Paul Ballam Cross’ EP Fernando Sor – Works for Bass on Bandcamp, and explore his book Fernando Sor: Selected Studies Arranged for Electric Bass on Mel Bay Publications.
You can hear Paul live in performance at Maleny Anglican Church this 25 September, and expect more work to come later in the year.
Images supplied.
