Coopers’ Late Night Session: Festival Finale – Adelaide International Guitar Festival Review

Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, Sun Jul 20

This Finale was a fantastic opportunity to catch artists that you may have missed during the festival, and a magnificent celebration of guitar music. MC for the evening was Artistic Director, Slava Grigoryan – a calm, gracious, and warm host.

Up first came the second and first place getters from the 15 Minutes of Fame sessions that had been running throughout the festival. Both acts were great but the winner, Christian from Italy, was more interesting for the fact that he played an acoustic steel string. I hadn’t seen anything of this style of guitar in other events on the program so it filled a bit of a gap for me. Choosing to play Australian guitar legend Tommy Emmanuel’s Mombasa was a nice touch, and he did it so well. A fitting winner.

Blues guitar legends Phil Manning and Chris Finnen, supported by jazz player Ben Hauptmann. Manning and Finnen made light of the fact that they were not in the same league as Hauptmann, who knew “all the other chords”, but compensated more than adequately with the showmanship gathered from years of experience as they belted out foot stomping blues standards.

The tone shifted down a few decibels with the Nathan Slater Ensemble’s mix of jazz and flamenco – more great music. Nathan Slater’s playing was really impressive – but the night was still young. Slava came back to the MC mic, said “I don’t believe this is happening”, and welcomed Pepe Romero to the stage. The class that comes from a lifetime of learning your craft was in abundant evidence in a delightful version of his father’s Cuban Fantasy. But the best was yet to come. Yamendu Costa and Slava himself joined Romero and cellist for some heartbreakingly beautiful pieces.

A guest at previous guitar festivals, Doug de Vries (not mentioned in the program so check him out at www.dougdevries.com) then joined Costa for an astounding recital of three Brazilian pieces – a samba, a choro, and a waltz. Costa’s playing is simply brilliant. Speed, fluency, feel, melody – and all as if he is in a trance. It was, as they say, just awesome. Quite possibly the best guitar playing I’ve ever seen. Stochelo Rosenberg and Sebastien Giniaux provide the next canvas for Costa to work his magic on – the world of gypsy jazz, but Giniaux himself offered some golden moments of his own.

The electric guitars made their way to the stage to send out the evening. Guthrie Govan and Cam Blokland had their guitars talking to each other in a good natured duel similar to the kind of symbiosis shared between tabla and vocalist in Indian classical music.

It had been a very special night and the perfect end of a musically rich festival. Plaudits go to Slava Grigoryan for his artistic direction program; for having the courage and vision to bring together these vastly different elements of the guitar playing world in such a finale.

If I ever had any doubts about the value of focusing a festival just on the guitar they have evaporated into the glow of appreciation of an instrument that spans several centuries, cuts across outrageously different musical styles, and welcomes anyone who plays this instrument that must, as Chris Finnen says, be played close to the heart.

by Michael Coghlan