What beautiful sound, every note touches the heart, evokes an emotional response like none other the guitar itself! This beings back memories form 1972 where I attended his master class in Queens College NYC, in the dead of snow storm I rushed off to the near-by Sam Goodies and brought back several LPs to be signed by Chris..❤
At Rutgers University I took performance guitar with Ramon Ybarra, half of my classmates ordered through Ramirez and Contreras the other half, I order both, the guitars still stay with me now. I still play and teach with them regularly, they are the best sounding guitars.
00:00 GUIDE 0:21 Anonymous - Spanish Romance in Em - Arr. Jack Marshall 2:27 (Brief history of C. Parking) 3:51 Albéniz - Rumores de la Caleta in E 7:20 (Next-piece info) 7:54 Mudarra - Fantasía No 10 9:32 (Next-piece info) 9:48 J. S. Bach - Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring in C - Arr. Rick Foster 12:58 Joaquín Rodrigo - Fantasía, para un gentil hombre 20:33 (Next-piece info) 20:52 Weiss - Preludio in E 22:55 Villalobos - Etude No 1 25:32 J. S. Bach - Prelude No 1 (in D) - Was Cut
The lesson I learned from attending his 2003 master class is that there are hundreds of players - many with strengths in their own niches. So it's useless to pin any single performer as the worlds best. Parkening does perform with a lot of volume. And strength in his hands. More vibrato than most other players. Come to think of it though. I told Parkening (when he was evaluating students at the beginning of a Master Class) that he was certainly world class but that there are other performers who as good as he is. He was sitting with his friends. They all looked around like: WHAT? Parkening shrugged and looked around too. Incidentally. My playing that day was terrible. Like listening to chalkboard scratch. If I could go back in time I would not say anything like that to Mr. Parkening. What I said was out of place.
I have a friend that took a master class with Christopher at Juilliard. Christopher opened up with "the truth", and intimated that, the reason he got so good at a young age was because his father forced him to get up at 4:00am in the morning *every day* before school, from the age of 6 onwards (not 11 years old as is commonly put out by the media), to practice his classical guitar for 3 hours. His father was very rigid about it and never let up; he drove his son to become a young virtuoso by shear force. Not to downplay Christopher's obvious aptitude and talent, but if you train a child from that young, 3 hours every morning, playing an instrument, they're going to get really good really quick. LoL!
The story in Parkening's book is that he wanted to practice early in the morning. And that his father told him - he'd have to be one of the worlds best performers if he wanted to have a career playing classical guitar. Based upon my conversations with a several players - veterans of multiple Boseman master classes, In the early 90s Parkening could be intense. By the time I participated in a class in 2003 he was said to be equanimous. Intensity is good. It adds drama to the others sitting in on the Master Class. And it gives the performer a lifetime memory too. Parkening drew a big penciled circle on a Sarabande I played for him where he scolded me that I played a F instead of a C. Then to the class he went into how one shouldn't give up on READING the music to quickly after memorizing it. People communicate in different ways. Ultimately Parkening wants his students to love practicing classical guitar. And he'll encourage them as best he can. He told me I could be a solid performer. But that I need to change my environment so I practice more. Encouraging...
