Eliot Fisk’s Notes

Dear Friends,

I want to congratulate you on the latest issue of Soundboard, which is evidence of an amazing labor of love from all concerned. I can only imagine what goes into producing such a fine publication, one which shows every evidence of a “lavish and loving care beyond a mere commercial end” (as Segovia described his recording projects in that famous little spoken postlude to the Golden Jubilee set of 33 rpms in the great 3 LP Decca series!) There is so much to praise in this and other issues of Soundboard which have recently been sent to me as part of my membership in the GFA.

However, there is one thing in all the many pages rich with information and personal input of the various Soundboard writers that puzzles me. As we are all members of a small family of people worldwide who really care about the classical guitar, I want to ask for your perspectives.

The thing that puzzles me is the description of my concert at the 2007 GFA that appears on p. 75 of Volume XXXIV, Nr.2.

Of course, any of us in the public eye has to be strong enough to withstand the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that can on occasion be shot our way by reviewers or others who don’t happen to like what we do. No one is obligated to like what we do and maybe sometimes in the heat of the moment we ourselves don’t even always like all we do. But in the little family that cares about the classical guitar there ought to be a limit to personal animus.

When your reviewer writes that he returned to the second half of my concert with the prurient curiosity of someone craning his neck to view a bad accident on the highway, I think he goes past the limits of legitimate difference of opinion and into the realm of a mean personal attack. I realize the reviewer is just trying to be witty. But I don’t think that kind of writing has any place in a publication with the goals of Soundboard. In a similar way “How do we beat the bitch?” as a question poised to John McCain about Hillary Clinton, wasn’t funny either.

Am I suggesting censorship of articles until they become a meaningless pablum of soothing platitudes? Obviously not. Am I afraid of someone else ’s strong opinions? How could I be? But it might be up to the wiser heads at Soundboard to ask a writer of such an opinion couched in such a fashion whether he really means to put that kind of a poison pill out into the world.

What upset me a lot more was the snide way the soundboard reviewer imputed to those who happen to like my playing a sort of blind enthusiasm. He describes those who liked the concert as “enthusiastic, if nothing else”. Would he describe Andres Segovia, Oscar Ghiglia, Alirio Diaz and Ralph Kirkpatrick, who were my teachers; Angel Romero, Paco Pena, Joe Pass, who have been my colleagues on stage; Luciano Berio, George Rochberg, Robert Beaser, Leonardo Balada, and Nicholas Maw, some of the composers who have written for me, as “enthusiastic if nothing else” too?

After reading this review—the ONLY truly negative review in 6 pages of coverage of the 2007 GFA —I started to ask myself how this nastiness slipped by the proof readers who do such a phenomenal job in every other aspect of the Soundboard.

Whoever is in the kitchen needs to be able to take the heat, and as your reviewer suggests, I am the last person in the world who ought to be afraid of controversy. But there is a level of meanness to this reviewer’s writing in this instance that has no place in our little guitar community.

In further regard to this last, it is interesting that most of this sort of attack on me comes from within the guitar family. The very same things aptly identified by your critic — my visceral and spontaneous way of going at the instrument—things that offend some people within our guitar community may be what help give me a lot of success outside of the guitar world, something which in a funny sort of way indirectly helps even those who may not care for my playing inside the guitar world.

As Barack Obama reminds us, we need to speak with those who disagree with us. So I think what GFA ought to do now is to organize the possibility of some sort of contact between your reviewer Mark Switzer and myself. How about having him interview me? I’m sure some interesting sparks would fly. We might even get a great Soundboard article out of it!

By the way, around 25 years ago one of the greatest contributors to the legacy of the classical guitar, my dear friend Matanya Ophee, reviewed one of my early concerts in what I was told was perhaps the most cutting review of any guitarist ever published. Some decades later we met at a festival in Mexico and he recalled the incident. “I have done unspeakable harm…” I told him, “No worries!” We gave each other a big hug and ever since have shared the affectionate greeting taught to Matanya by Rostropovich: GFYM and GFYE (loosely translated from the Russian: “Go fuck yourself, Matanya!” or “Go fuck yourself, Eliot”!)

Please let me hear back when you have the time!

Affectionately,

Eliot