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TOM SALVATORI |
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In the spirit of his other recent CDEP releases including Respite Guitar (2021) and Seven Guitar Miniatures (2022), the 2024 release of La Bella Vita finds Tom performing music written by a couple of his favorite composers, while adding in a few new originals that shed further light on his wide-ranging classical guitar background. Speaking about the new recordings on La Bella Vita, Tom explains, “5 newly recorded solo nylon string guitar pieces; in the first two I have reimagined other composers works as guitar lullabies. My arrangements stay strongly reverent to the original form and structure of the compositions, but I present the pieces in a way that I anticipate neither composer would have ever expected to hear their work. Mendelssohn, in his “Violin Concerto #1 in E minor”, excerpt from 2nd Movement and Silvestrov, in his “Serenade for Solo Violin” ... as solo nylon string guitar lullabies. I pick up the composing from there to introduce 3 new pieces that I have recently written and recorded.” Leading off the La Bella Vita CDEP, Felix Mendelssohn’s “Violin Concerto #1 in E minor (Excerpt from 2nd Movement)” was actually written in 1845 and nearly 180 years later, Tom Salvatori distills Mendelssohn’s essence in a solo guitar piece that clocks in a little over 3 minutes. On track 2, Ukrainian composer Valentyn Silvestrov is paid homage to on La Bella Vita with Tom adapting his “Serenade For Solo Violin”, turning it into a brief yet effective minor keyed classic for classical guitar. Of the new originals on La Bella Vita, the CD-closing track “Lullaby For Henry” is one of the most melodic solo classical guitar pieces Tom has put on record. Track 4, “Riposo” is a studied solo classical piece written by Tom in a mostly minor key, yet the track fits in well on La Bella Vita, while “To And Fro” is another minor key classical guitar original written by Tom. The 5-track CD-EP is a brief15 minutes in length, yet with one noteworthy musical moment after the next, it’s over way too soon. Music listeners lucky enough to have heard Tom’s Respite Guitar and Seven Guitar Miniatures will thoroughly enjoy La Bella Vita. Despite the abbreviated time, one thing is clear; La Bella Vita is a most welcome return to form by classical guitarist and composer Tom Salvatori.
mwe3.com presents a 2024 interview with
Tom Salvatori: Hitting retirement age played a factor, which certainly came upon me in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Part of looking toward retirement was looking to tackle a few of items on my ‘bucket list” – 1. to start releasing my unpublished compositions in sheet music form, 2. To write a mini-autobiography and 3. To pen a short story about turning the page and handing off my body of works to the next generation! These items that had been in mind for years were all on the top of my list. Well, to say they poured out of me so quickly that I completed all three projects in three months rather than in the timeframe of my original expectation of a much more extended time period stretched out over my retirement years. In short order, I released my 51-page Sheet Music book last year called “Tom Salvatori: A Lifetime in Music” and it begins with my short story, features 19 newly published guitar pieces from my body of work over the years, and then ends with my mini-autobiography. Completing these projects, albeit with what seemed like lightning speed, has created a sense of completion and fulfillment in me… and has been freeing in the sense that I can now turn my attention to “bonus” projects in retirement now when it comes to my love for the nylon string guitar. La Bella Vita is just that… a bonus project release. mwe3: What does La Bella Vita mean and does the title relate to the choice of music? Also, can you compare this new release with two of your other recent titles, Respite Guitar and Seven Guitar Miniatures? Do they follow a similar style in that they are each EP releases, or are they each singular and unique? Tom Salvatori: La Bella Vita is a common phrase in Italian, which means a beautiful life. It is often used to describe the legacy and abundance of the cuisine Italians are famous for; but in my case it's referring to my 50+ years of composing for the guitar. I think it’s natural for creative production to fall off a bit as we age, so what were once 15-piece releases in the early years have slowed to 8, 7 or even 5 pieces in more recent releases. When I feel like I have a collection of recorded pieces put together that has a sense of continuity, I package it and put it out there. I consider my entire body of work over the 50+ years to be an ongoing dialogue. I have used the same guitar and the same recording process on every recording I have ever produced, so even though a CD or EP has its own beginning and ending, my lifetime goal is that my work embodies a seamless connection from one album to another.
Tom Salvatori: Mendelssohn’s 2nd Movement from his Violin Concerto #1 in E minor has been a beloved piece of music in the world of Classical Symphony Concert performances for years. When a melody like this resonates with me, I like to consider it through the lens of its playability as a lullaby on the guitar. Most classical music that I love is too complicated to distill down to a guitar lullaby, but when I worked on this one, it came together beautifully. The way I look at it… many people in the world may never attend a Classical Symphony concert. I think to extract this beautiful excerpt and introduce it to a new audience as a nylon string guitar solo is a win for Mendelssohn. To my ears, it works beautifully as a guitar lullaby. I just hope when I meet Mendelssohn someday in “Music Heaven” that he doesn’t come up to me and kick me in the shins for taking such liberties with his work. (lol) mwe3: Also, tell us about your recording a track written by Ukrainian composer Valentyn Silvestrov. Interesting to learn he is still alive and that he has recorded ten albums for the ECM Records label. How did you pick his track and what interests you about it and the composer as well? Tom Salvatori: Last year my brother Mike and I attended a CSO concert at Symphony Center in Chicago. We enjoyed the 3 French impressionist pieces (Debussy's “La Mer” and Ravel's “La Valse” and “Menuet Antique”). These pieces were paired with Shostakovich's much darker / more manic “First Violin Concerto”. That night, the featured violin soloist, Vadim Gluzman treated an appreciative audience with a short but stunning encore piece for solo violin called “Serenade” by Ukrainian composer Valentyn Silvestrov. It became immediately evident that this “Serenade” would be a perfect piece for solo nylon string guitar. After doing some research online, I found several performances of the piece but soon came to realize that Gluzman's arrangement was especially emotive and uniquely delicate, so I wound up using it exclusively as inspiration. I went on to visualize the piece as a late-night dialogue in a small Parlour-style setting. I played through my arrangement just a touch slower than Gluzman.
Tom Salvatori: There are many touchpoints in life that can spark a creative idea, but one of the most emotional ones for me is in the loss of a child. Inasmuch as most of us have difficulty processing such a devastating loss, especially when it comes to even the simple task of providing words of comfort… I find that music can communicate emotively when words fail. In this case, my dear lifelong friends lost a grandchild recently, and while trying to find the words to support and comfort them and their family, I composed this piece for all to have in memory of Henry. To me, simply stated…music heals when words fail. mwe3: The other two original tracks “Riposo” and “To And Fro” are very short pieces. Can you offer some additional information on composing and recording those pieces? It’s an old habit of mine to commit my pieces to memory by creating lyrics for the melody because I don’t rely on sheet music. This habit has made for some strange titles of pieces over the years, but isn’t it a strange tradition to try to create titles for instrumental music anyway? I suppose that is another topic for another day. (Lol) mwe3: What guitars are you playing on La Bella Vita and what strings do you use on your guitar and were any special techniques employed during the recording process? Tom Salvatori: I have recorded my entire catalog on the same classical guitar that my brother Mike bought in 1973. He purchased it at Sherry-Brener in downtown Chicago to have on hand for the quieter interludes he composed, and I played, for our Apocalypse band performances. When I went away to college in 1977 and Apocalypse disbanded, I traded Mike my Fender Bassman amp for the classical guitar so I could bring it with me to school. Mike himself will tell you that I got the better end of that deal! The guitar is a 1972 Hernandis Grade #1 Classical, with a soundboard made of Spanish Pine and the back and sides made of Indian Rosewood, assembled in Japan. When I was away at college, I fell in love with the warmth and intimacy of the nylon string guitar, and I have never looked back. My guitar has literally been the center of my life for 50+ years now and I couldn’t be more pleased with my lifetime of creating peaceful works on it that brings the nylon string guitar more so to the common man rather than the pedigreed classical scholarly types. Production has always been painfully simple over the years, a microphone in front of my guitar while I try to communicate the vision I have for each piece. I must admit the guitar does produce a wolf tone at the open string low A note, which is fixed with a simple EQ adjustment in mastering process.
Tom Salvatori: Not at all… I am perfectly happy in my own corner of the guitar world trying to bring the lofty reputation of the classical guitar down to the level of reaching the 'Common Man'. I have invested the better part of my life trying to bring simple moments of beauty and ease to my composing. I have focused on the space between the notes and the strands of quiet beauty that exist in a peaceful and more direct, open string approach to a simple chord-and-melody style of composition. I employ keys, themes and motifs that fall easily under the fingers and, in my opinion, sound more pleasant to the ear than all the speed, tremolo, scales, runs, barre-chorded, finger-twisting complexities that keep leading the pedagogy students toward more and more advanced levels of their traditional classical guitar studies. And frankly, every word that I just laid out in the above paragraph falls on deaf ears in the Classical Music / Classical Guitar world… I suppose just to go ahead and say it out loud, once I start decomposing, I would be blessed beyond measure if my compositions would be remembered as ‘Down to Earth’ and for the Common Man… not Classical. And truth be told… I believe there is more room for peace in open space than in a room full of clutter. mwe3: Tell us about your brother Michael, what he’s doing these days, and short of reunion of Apocalypse, what are you looking forward to as the year winds down and 2025 comes into view?
Moving forward, I suppose I will always plan to record the compositions that are happily produced by my guitar… as they take shape and form into their own realities. I am also always on the lookout for pieces from any genre and any time that I think could be reimagined and reintroduced to the world as a nylon string guitar lullaby. To me, that’s a fun and rewarding experience.
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Starting out in the 1970s as a founding member of the embryonic Chicago-based prog-rock band Apocalypse, co-founded with his brother Michael, Tom Salvatori has evolved into a guitarist and composer of the highest order. While he’s released a number of solo classical guitar-based albums over the past 30 years, Tom has been especially prolific in recent years and, late in 2024 he released a new 5-track CDEP called La Bella Vita.
mwe3: I’m glad you got back into recording as you mentioned you might be slowing down, yet La Bella Vita is one of your best solo releases. What changed your mind enough get back to recording and release this new one?
