Tarrega and Loeillet again

MS3 Barqoue Trio

Daniel Mester my younger brother on alt saxophon, Györgyi Papp on violincello and myself (MS3 - Sandor Mester) on classical guitar...



... I played a concert - actually the final concert in the school... My teacher, mentor and friend Mr. Ede Roth was satisfied... It was in a nice and great synagogue in Gyor... this synagogue has the best acoustics... unbelievable... I enjoyed to play, no stress just pleasure... I have been playing so much in the last five years... so I can not stress at all.. The synagogue was recently renovated...



My brother Daniel Mester played in my baroque trio (MS3 baroque trio) on at saxophon... He plays very well we have played G-major Sonata by Jean Baptiste Loeillet...

It was done on the rehersal before the concert..



My wife Ester Hajdu did the shots... and all the pictures

The Synagogue
in the city of Gyor



The acoustics perfectly fits to the sound of classical guitar.

Jean Baptiste Loeillet de Gant by MS3 Baroque Trio

Couple of pieces by Loeillet. Played by MS3 Baroque Trio at Visegrad Church. There was a great temperature - around 10 degrees... Loved to play these Loeillet pieces especially in a church. The arrangement was classical guitar, alto sax and violincello.

Jean Baptiste Loeillet was a great French baroque composer son of a great French musician family. Jean Baptiste Loeillet (1688–cca. 1720) "de Gant" since he was born in Ghent. He had a cousin Jean-Baptiste Loeillet of London (1680–1730), who was a famous and populair composer and performer living London. Jean Baptiste Loeillet de Gant was working at Munich court then in France. His works were printed in Amsterdam.

Janos Vazsonyi on alto saxophon and Györgyi Papp on violincello.

Loillet

We are playing pieces of Loillet as a barowue trio on classical guitar, alt sax and violincello.. I prefer these kind of mediterrean baroque... Easy to learn these Loillet pieces quickly and fits to the church acoustics...

Bartok on guitar

I am still practising Bartók pieces from For Children. Still on 6-strings... I still cannot switch to 8-strings..But I will.. I play on my concerts the good old Tarrega, Barrios, Villa-Lobos classical guitar pieces.I am Hungarian so I hope I can play Bartók very well. I have been playing these pieces for 4-5 years and i think I will do this 40 years later as well...

Juan Lopez Aguilarte

I think I found the brother of my guitar. Or my sister? I dont know. I call it sometimes my beauty so maybe that is she... My guitar way made by Juan Lopez Aguilarte in Granada in 1988... Lovely sound, wide range of tones and volume. I have been using it for fifteen years.

The photo of the other Juan Lopez Aguilarte guitar downloaded from the owner brother Nacho Bellido:



The brother

I started to learn using rock and pop guitar tabs since I need to know it because of my young pupils.. They download a lot from the Net.. I teach orincipally classical guitar but in the 21th you can not do that without teaching some pop music. I wanna teach a mass. When you have a mass then you can choose one or two guys to be professional classical guitar. But you need a mass first.

Great website I have found to start with tabs:
http://www.guitartabs.net/

34

I am getting older and older.. I will be 34 soon..

People usually re-think their previous years what they did or did not..

I am getting old enough to relax when I want - dont stress when I dont have to...

Do you like Anima Sound System Trubul Ek Vorba. This is a great Hungarian pop band..
I am getting ready to make a great DI song on classical guitar? I am always asked by my business partners... At present I am fully scheduled for my concerts of I am doing to get fully scheduled. And I teach a lot. I have couple of new methods how get more and more young boys and girls to play on classical guitar. They need to play pop music or learn playing chords of popular songs.. They hate learning music theory very much..

Russia

We were in Russia for almost two weeks with my wife - actually we were on honeymoon. We were in St. Petersburg as well as in Moscow. We were saw an excellent performance of the legendary Kirov Ballet in Mariinsky Theatre. St. Petersburg is an old cultural centre of Russia and has a great ambient

In Moscow we were on a concert of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in the Great Hall of (Bolsoj Zal) the Tchaikovsky Conservatory which is a
legendary place as well. Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh all the great Russian (CCCP) artists used to study there. Lots of old poster and pictures on the walls give you a feeling that time does not go by, they will train and "manufacture" the best musicians, composers for the world every time. They played Igor Stravinksy: Petruska, S.Prokofjev Violin Concerto No 1 in before the break and then Alexander Borodin: Symphony No. 2.

We haven't seen any kind of classical guitar concerts and we did not meet local guitarists at all. It is interesting when I have couple of days somewhere in the world I neve meet classical guitarists I prefer other instruments as well as other arts such as literature, paintings etc.

We were in Dostojevski museum but it was not that great. It was good to see his manuscripts, plans and drawings of his characters. He was a very talented draughtsman as well. I have read a lot of his works and planned to go through all the Fjodor Mihajlovic's books.

sandormester.com in Russian

When I was young we had to learn Russian in the school. Everyone had to. I liked it very much when I was 12-13 years old but I did not learn it at all later because it was a must... Must is not the best motivation for a teenager espacially how I was thinking at that time... Anyway I still love Russian literature, music, painters and I will fly to Russia soon with my Ester.

And my website has a Russian version as well!

Strings

I have been practising on my 8-strings guitar made by Tihamer Romanek in the last three days. Mr. Romanek, he is a Hungarian harpsichord, guitar, lute and lute-harpsichord maker. It's much better to play scales, plucking or arpeggio exercises on this guitar than on a normal classical 6-string guitar. Practising on 8-strings is a serious physical work for the left hand since the neck is wider. Playing chords takes a long a time to learn on it but then it is so nice like on a piano! You 8 notes at the same time.

And it trains your technic much more. The instrument is more heavy than a normal 6-string classical guitar.

Doing lute, piano or cello transciptions is easier on 8-string classical guitar because you have more strings more range of sound. You can tune it on many ways. I tune it as normal guitar tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E) plus A (bass) underneath and another A at the top. Others normally tune it as a lute or a normal classical guitar plus two more bass strings.

This is not my 8-string guitar but I have exactly the same type - I got this picture from Romanek's website.

Updates on sandormester.com

Finally we could integrate the concert videos from Sibiu (Romania) to my main site sandormester.com

Neil O'Grady and MS3 play classical guitar duo improvisation together

MS3: Lullaby for Sarah

Neil O'Grady and MS3 improvise in Sibiu

And finally you can watch the videos about our intercultural improvisation with Neil in Sibiu at Astra Park.

Nik did a nice work shooting this video.

Tarrega and Villa-Lobos

A little Francisco Tarrega and more Heitor Villa-Lobos from Sibiu by ms3.. My Romanian friend Nik shot this as well..

Lullaby for Sarah from Sibiu

Nice Lullaby for Sarah - for my beauty. I played it in Sibiu at Astra Park during the European Capital of Culture. I love my daughter. I hope you can hear and feel it on this video. I told her that "I always think on you my sweetheart when I play this pieces"... "Dont think on me dad I am hear with you now" - she says.

My Romanian friend Nik shot all the videos on my concerts.

MS3 Tarrega Live from Sibiu

So here are the videos from Sibiu! Francisco Tarrega and Agustin Mangore Barrios by Sandor Mester MS3 from Sibiu, Romania - European Capital of Culture.

Thanks to WebMa team

Sting and Dowland

As everybody knows Sting released an album last year called Labyrinth. He sings John Dowland's songs on this album playing with a guy called Edin Karamazov - a lutist from Bosnia. I have never heard this name before but I like the family name 'Karamazov' anyway since my favorite writer is Dostojevskij. I have read majority of his works and when I was young I have read Karamazov Brothers and have fallen in love with Fjodor Mihajlovic's works...

I really like Sting's previous works and think that he is an intellectual pop-star singing basically rock and roll, plays on bass and double-bass very well... not that much on classical guitar...

... Spreading classical or renaissance music is important...

... But I had some disapproval with the fact that a popstar sings Dowlands works... Sting is fantastic. I checked listened to these songs on youtube this night and I can say that Sting is a sensible artist who can do anything he wants. If he cannot do that he does not do that. He did this Dowland album on a very natural way that every classical singers should do.

What do I think about Karamazov? He is a professional lute player did his job, nothing special.

My favorite Dowland video by me: Downland's Air.

What do I think about my performance...? Well, I dont think that I am the best person to ask about that but I think I did my job at least...

I started to miss Downland's pieces...

Leaving Sibiu

So I leave Sibiu tomorrow early morning. I stayed one more day to be with my Ester. My daughter is still in Greece and my next concert will be only tomorrow so there was no reason to rusg at all..

Bye-bye Sibiu and Cisnadioara!!!

Rafi Pitts

My greatest pleasure being here in Sibiu at this workshop is that I met a guy called Rafi Pitts. He is a forty year old half-English and half-Iranian film-maker working and staying mainly in Paris. He is an editor and director and basically he is not doing documentaries. As far as I know he did one documentary only that's why he is here in Sibiu at Aristotles Workshop... He is such a nice guy! I watched that doc by Rafi about 'Abel Ferrara' - who is a film director too. It is an amazing New York-movie like Cassavettes (Faces and Shadows of New York etc.) about a daily life of a film director in New York. I am so happy that I have met this guy. He is a very warm-heart person, a guy who is good to have fun with as well as the best story-teller. He is kind and knows a lot almost everything about movies and can give advises to young film-makers without being scolastic... He can get their respect, he is focused like hell and has the freedom of thinking. He has an incredible background and life-story not the easiest one I have ever heard...



I will really miss him when I'll be back to my country... Rafi Pitts is an amazing rock and roll man... I wish I could play the guitar on the same level how he makes films...

. . .

www.sandormester.com

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Documentary Film Workshop in Sibiu

My Ester is taking part at a documentary film workshop in Sibiu as a director. I have been being very much interested in other artistical areas for a long a time especially in filming... I learnt a lot about film-making here in Sibiu even I wanted to or not... I met Jennifer Fox documentary film director from New York and have seen four parts of her film called 'Flying'. There are editors from a French television 'Arte' as well as couple of people from the Romanian television, Greeks, Croats etc. There is a Romanian-American actor called 'Dan' who is the leader of the workshop. He is the best host... The most loud students are the Serbian girls... They are very tough and funny..

Classical Guitar Duo Improvisation in Sibiu

Bob Bales, founder and leader of European House of Art in Romania, introduced me Neil O'Grady a brilliant classical guitarist from the UK. He is a nice man and a great guitarist. Bob wanted us to play together but we did not have time and possibilty to arrange to play some nice classical guitar duo that was written by the good old composers like Mauro Guilliani... It was on Tuesday 21th Aug...

I met Neil at 6pm during the sound check and we improvised on stage around 10... He played first in solo pieces of Villa-Lobos as well as one his own pieces and an English folk song arranged by him for classical guitar. He was singing the song and acompany himself on guitar. It was excellent. I played afterwards in solo pieces of Fransisco Tarrega, Agustin Mangore Barrios and Heitor Villa-Lobos. Then two of my pieces: Bagatelle and Lullaby. I wrote Lullaby for my beautyfull daughter Sarah who I am missing her so much since I did not see her for a long time... My Romanian friend called NIC recorded a lot last night...

We could not really reherse with Neil before the concert and it went very well!! We did an encore another improvisation. Audience liked it, we liked it so it was such a great concert. Neil told me that he knew my name but he did not remember why, when and where...

I have such a nice time in Sibiu in European Capital of Culture!

I will miss this place very much!

Good to be in Sibiu, Nagyszeben

I am enjoying being in Sibiu with such an international company like I have here.. I am doing my concerts with the help of The Art of Culture and/or European House of Arts running by Bob Bales who is a great musician, painter and somehow the representative of European culture... He has Romanian and Greek collegues and invites artists all around from the EU. Romanians are very nice to me, they help and support me more than it is I ever could imagine... and of course the local Hungarians help me a lot but there are not so many... I stay at the same hotel than all the other film-maker students and teachers.

Concerts in Sibiu

I play a lot in Sibiu.. I found a cultural online news from Romania where I could see Neil a classical guitarist from the UK who I will play with next week..

I am planning to play pieces by Dowland, Bartok and me.. English and Hungarian music that would fit to our nationality..

Sibiu

I have done three concerts in Sibiu (Romania, Capital of Europena Culture) in the last three days. People are nice and very much open-minded. I like to play here.

A film teacher has made lots of videos on my concerts but we had couple of problems to get it ready to upload to youtube and then link it to this blog.

Bob Bales our Irish friend he is very-very professional cultural program organizer as well as musician and painter.

Sibiu

We arrived to Sibiu last night... I had to drive more then ten hours continiously. I was extremely tired when I woke up Today - around noon..

I wll have lots of classical guitar concerts here in Sibiu. Nice city. As the slogan says:

city of culture. city of cultures.

Sibiu is the Cultural Capital of Europe this year. I will write more but others are waiting for Internet access well...

Barrios

I trained myself in the biography of Agustin Mangoré Barrios, one of the most important classical giutar players and composers of the twentieth century. He had long periods in depression and after these hard times he composed and practised a lot. He was very sensitive.

I like his pieces very much, I am learning Cathedral and I play Madrigale Gavotte a lot.

Read more about Barrios

Cancellation

I had to cancel ten concerts because my left rwing finger was broken in a little accident on my wedding... I will see the doctor tommorrow morning when we can figure out how to restart practicing.. Until then I am holding my breath..

I need to play and I feel my finger well hopefully I dont have to cancel my concert on next weekend...