John Wunsch and the Interlochen Guitar Festival and Workshop

by Dr. Matthew Warnock.

The name Interlochen has long been synonymous with excellence in the arts and arts education, and the annual Interlochen Guitar Festival and Workshop is no exception. The Workshop is held every summer in August, this year from the 20th to the 22nd, on the storied campus of the Interlochen Center for the Arts. Widely known for having one of the world's top high school fine arts programs for younger artists, Interlochen recently began offering classes and workshops geared towards adult students through its new College of Creative Arts. When this initiative was presented by current president Jeffrey Kimpton, Academy guitar instructor John Wunsch jumped at the chance to start a weekend-long guitar festival and workshop that would be geared towards the adult student population, as well as to a variety of musical styles.

Participants at the Festival and Workshop have the chance to experience the exceptional tradition of excellence that has gained Interlochen its world wide recognition, something that had previously been reserved for high school, and younger, students. This year marks the fourth year that the workshop has been offered and the line-up of performers and teachers is world class. Students can study with classical artists such as Frank Koonse, Brad DeRoche and Andrew York, jazz players have the chance to study with Corey Christianson and Vic Juris while acoustic players can study with Laurence Juber, to name just a few of the fine artists at this years event.

With seven to eight classes offered every hour during the entire weekend, participants can design a program of study that fits their personal tastes and musical needs. With a wide variety of course offerings, world-class instructors and concerts each night, by both students and faculty, this year's Interlochen Guitar Festival and Workshop promises to make for an exciting weekend for everyone involved.

Matt Warnock: What can people expect to study at the Interlochen Guitar Festival and Workshop?

John Wunsch: They can expect the opportunity to study any style of guitar at any level that they want to or need to. It's really been tailored to be very broad based with a lot of depth across the board. For example, students can come as a raw beginner and get a beginner approach to technique, a basic repertoire and reading classical guitar class and starter folk guitar class. Then, beginning students can sit in on all of the master classes that we offer and of course attend the concert series at night. So for them, they can get a basis in technique and how to practice, initial reading skills and are exposed to classical and folk music during the weekend.

Matt: Is it the same program for the intermediate and advanced players with the level of each class increasing?

John: For the more advanced players, we offer jazz and other courses. The players that want to focus on jazz get to study with Vic Juris, Cory Christianson and Matt Van Doran, all established players with different perspectives on playing and teaching. They will be teaching classes on jazz soloing vocabulary, voicings and comping styles and other individual classes that will be tailored to their own take on jazz and improvising.

We also offer introductory classes for those students who maybe don't want to study jazz for the whole weekend but want to test the waters a little bit. For those students, we offer introductory courses in jazz, Latin grooves and walking bass lines for guitar. So the students can get a good overview and introduction to jazz without committing to it for the whole weekend.

Matt: Are there different levels of courses within each genre for students to study?

John: Absolutely. We have a tiered approach so students who want to study blues for example, they can take the Blues I class, then move onto the Blues II and Blues III classes. And students can take a mixed bag approach to these classes if they want to. We cover blues, rock, jazz, acoustic finger-style, classical and folk music, so people can mix and match classes from different styles or just stick with one style for the entire workshop.

Matt: You mentioned the jazz faculty earlier. If students want to come and study classical guitar, who do you have on faculty this year for them to study with?

John: Probably the most widely known teacher we have coming this year in the classical department is Andrew York. His music kind of crosses the boundaries of classical and acoustic finger-style, songs like "Sunburst" for example, but of course he's highly regarded as a classical soloist and for his work with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. Andrew will be teaching and performing this year and the classical guitar ensemble will be playing one of his pieces arranged for five guitars, which should be a lot of fun as well.

We also have Denis Azabagic coming this year who's a top level performer, world-class teacher and a great person and we are lucky to have him on board. Frank Koonse will also be on faculty this summer who's really at the top of heap with his interpretation of Bach and other Baroque composers. He'll be giving master classes as well as a class on Baroque ornamentation and his "Left-Hand Bag of Tricks" class, where he discusses how to translate pieces written for harpsichord and other instruments onto the guitar.

For the technique classes, we have the two Interlochen classical guitar teachers, myself and Brad DeRoche. Between the two of us, we are teaching seven different technique classes. We are both classical teachers and performers but we have backgrounds in rock, finger-style and jazz music, so we like to apply the universal fundamentals of guitar technique to students of any genre, not just classical. This way any student can take advantage of our years of teaching experience and apply it to the genre of music that they love to play the most.

Matt: Outside of the classes you've mentioned, what ensembles are you offering for students this summer?

John: We have four ensembles this summer. There is the classical and acoustic ensemble, which is going to be playing the York composition. We have a flamenco ensemble, which is taught by two very fine instructors Peter Baime and Interlochen alumni Gohar Vardanyan, who is finishing her Master's degree right now at Julliard. There is also the blues and rock bands, which are taught by Jeff Bihlman and John DeFaria respectively, who are just great players and teachers.

Matt: Do you include a rhythm section for the rock and blues bands or is it strictly a guitar only ensemble?

John: They both have rhythm sections. That's most of the point for those two ensembles, to give guitarists who don't often play with a live rhythm section, if ever, the chance to work with bass and drums in an ensemble. For all of these bands we send out the parts ahead of time to each participant. Those who have already registered have gotten their parts for these, and the other, ensembles. If people sign up late, we will get their parts to them right away. This way everyone has a chance to at least look over and work out some of the music before coming to the workshop and we can all dive right in and begin making music right away.

Matt: There is also a concert series, do these events happen every night of the Festival?

John: Thursday is going to be a lot of fun because we're opening up with the Chapman Stick concert featuring Emmett Chapman and Greg Howard, both master stick players. Then, after their sets we'll feature Vic Juris, Corey Christianson and Matt Von Doran who will play in various combinations with a rhythm section, including a three guitar jam which should be a ton of fun for the audience.

Friday night we're opening with Gohar Vardanyan followed by Peter Baime doing a set of Flamenco tunes. The Friday concert will close with Denis Azabagic performing classical guitar as only he can, which should also be a lot of fun. On Saturday we have Laurence Juber performing, who's a great acoustic player as well as a composer and arranger. People may know from his time spent in Paul McCartney's band Wings where he was the lead guitarist. That night will finish with Andrew York doing a set of his unique take on classical music, which will be a nice compliment to Juber's acoustic set.

Matt: Speaking of the Chapman Stick, why did you choose to feature that instrument in particular at this year's festival?

John: This year is the 40th anniversary of the invention of the Chapman Stick. For those people who aren't familiar with the stick, it basically combines three instruments in one, guitar, bass and the two-handed approach of the piano. Most people are familiar with the tapping techniques of guys like Michael Hedges, or more recently Andy McKee, but the stick was ahead of the curve with this kind of technique. It was designed to exploit the tapping technique and in a way it's still ahead of its time as far as that element is concerned.

The two stick players we have at the festival will be giving workshops for the stick artists who want to focus on the instrument all weekend, in a similar manner to the jazz and classical classes we talked about earlier. They are also offering, which I would love to check out, an introductory class that will lay out the basics of the stick for anyone to check out, stick players or not. If people want to test out a stick, we'll have some extra instruments at those classes for people to use.

Matt: Aside from the classes, ensembles and concerts, you also offer some "extra-curricular" courses for guitarists that are designed to deal with non-guitar specific, though highly important subjects.

John: Right. While style and technique is what 90% of the drive is for people to come to a festival like this, there are classes that people can take outside of the workshops and guitar courses to maximize the full range of topics that we feel are important to any guitarist. We offer a recording class that will take place in Interlochen's world-renowned radio station recording studio. We discuss mic set up, what mics are best for different guitars, how to do a basic guitar mix and similar topics.

There will also be a class called Tai-Chi for Guitarists. The ability to use the core of our bodies to help our guitar playing is something that many guitarists are not aware of. This class will help expose people to the concept of core-activation and increase their ability to center themselves mentally when they are rehearsing or performing. There is also a class on anxiety management that will deal with anxiety issues as they relate to performances and career development.

We approach things with a bit of an outside the box attitude by offering these classes, but we feel that these are important items that guitarists should know about. While 90% of the classes are hands on, digging into the guitar, we do offer these extra classes that can enhance the participant's experience at the Interlochen workshop in a different way.

Matt: As well as being the Artistic Director of the Interlochen Guitar Festival and Workshop, you are also the guitar instructor at the Interlochen Arts Academy. Can you talk about what age groups of students study with you at the Academy.

John: The Academy is a fine arts boarding school with students run from ninth grade to twelfth grade. We also have a "grade thirteen" a post-graduate year that allows students to develop their skills before attending college or a conservatory. For the high school program, ninth through twelfth grades, most of the students are between 14 and 18 years of age, though I had a student here this year who started at 13 and some students do turn 19 before they graduate. The role we play at the Academy, and that I play as the guitar instructor, is that we are a finishing school for the arts, and in my case, for guitar.

The students who study with me usually fit into two categories. The first would be students who discovered their passion for music later on, maybe in their junior or senior year, and they don't have a lot of time to prepare for college auditions. These students will often come into our post-graduate program, which is non-college credit, but it gives them a chance to really refine their playing and perfect their audition material before going off to college. This extra year can often be the difference between getting into the program of their choice, or sometimes it can allow students to figure out if they really want to do music for a living.

When students come to Interlochen they step into the experience of being a professional musician in terms of the performance expectations, living with other talented artists and in terms of experiencing the daily life of a performing musician. The program can prepare students for the next step in their musical careers as well as provide them the experience of being a professional musician at a young age.

The second group of students, who make up the bulk of my studio, are high school students who know that they want to pursue music as a career and who want to experience a concentrated music education before they go off to college or to pursue their professional careers.

Matt: The Academy offers a very high-level musical education, it is very different from the usual music classes being offered at a public, or even non-arts private school. Can you talk about the classes that your guitarists take every week outside of the standard math, science and English courses that are found at other schools?

John: Academy students get at least an hour of private guitar lessons every week and participate in ensembles which is four hours of rehearsal per week. Then there is a weekly studio class where the guitar students perform for each other. So the students spend a lot of time with their guitars, both in and outside of class, since these students are expected to maintain a consistent practice schedule in order to progress at the level that is expected of an Interlochen student.

We also offer classes for jazz guitarists, which mostly focus on developing a solid understanding of the jazz guitar tradition. Students work on their ii-V-I approach, especially from the bebop era, Freddie Green and modern style comping as well as exploring the music of the greats including Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass and Pat Metheny. Jazz guitar students can also participate in improv classes and the Academy Big Band and small jazz combo, both run by Bill Sears who is a world-class jazz performer and educator. Since there are only two jazz ensembles that the guitarists can participate in, the competition is a little higher for those spots in my studio.

But these classes are almost just the framework of the core experience that students receive at Interlochen. Most students' high school experience is defined by their peers and the institution in which they surround themselves. At Interlochen, guitar students have access to world-class faculty, guest artists and most importantly a peer group of students who are totally dedicated to the arts and are a constant source of inspiration for each other.

Matt: Since the program is highly selective and students have to audition in order to be accepted, what do you look for when students are auditioning as far as the difference between someone being accepted as a guitar student or not?

John: Every faculty is different in this regard but I can talk about what I look for in a guitar student. I look at the students' age, their amount of experience, where they are technically, the amount of repertoire they can play, but the most important factor is the amount of heart they have for music, the amount of passion they have for the guitar.

So, I'm testing their musical skills but also the potential they show to be a professional musician and do they have the drive to reach that goal. I also look at their academic history because being strong academically is often indicative of being strong in the arts. Not always, but it's a good indicator. The older a student is then the more important their current repertoire and level of training becomes a factor since a junior or senior will spend less time developing in the program than a freshman or sophomore will.

Students always surprise me. Auditions are never an exact science. I have had students come in as freshmen with little training and experience but go on to be accepted into some of the best music programs in the world. I've even had seniors that came in with a low-level of experience but that really dug in during their year at Interlochen and absolutely excelled in college and beyond. There is usually a je ne sais quois that a successful student will possess, and hopefully I can pick up on that during an audition even if they are not at the highest level of development at that particular moment in their lives.

Matt: What advice would you have for a high school jazz or classical guitar student who is planning on auditioning for the Interlochen Academy guitar program?

John: I want to see the basics, that they have had some training. So they should have their scales together to start with, minor and major, with a couple fingerings for each. It's also wonderful to see that a student has a good grip on the tradition of the music. For jazz students, I look for a chord melody, or even solo, version of a jazz standard, and for the classical students I want to hear at least one piece from a composer like Carcassi, Giuliani, Sor, Villa-Lobos or other similar traditional classical guitar composers.

The most important factor though, for students as well as professionals, is how they take a piece of music and present it to an audience. In an audition, I'm the audience and so I want to see how they present the piece in that setting. I want to hear a piece that the student is comfortable with and that they can express themselves through. I don't want to hear a tough tune that they stumble through, I would much rather hear an easier piece that is performed exceptionally well.

Related Links
Interlochen Guitar Festival and Workshop
Interlochen Arts Camp
Dr. Brad DeRoche Talks about the Interlochen Arts Camp

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