by Dr. Matthew Warnock.

Rarely does an artist or ensemble come along that defies expectations and creates a genre unto itself. Guitarists Andreas Kapsalis and Goran Ivanovic recently united to form a guitar duo that does just that - tears down the walls of "genre-fication" and produces music that contains familiar influences but is beyond categorization. The music on their debut CD, Guitar Duo, is often described as "world music," but the sounds that emanate from the hands of these two virtuosic six-stringers cannot be so easily boxed. Yes, their music borrows elements from Eastern European folk music, which is a big influence in Ivanovic's playing and heritage, but never enough to be categorized as such. Their writing and performance style bridges the gap between world, jazz, blues, rock, folk and fingerstyle with enough individual personality interjected to make these labels moot.

While the music of the AKGI Duo (as they are often billed) defies specific categorization, it does not defy description. It's orchestral rather than guitaristic, or as Andreas describes it "cinematic." One of the most impressive aspects of the duo's performance, both live and on record, is the tonal and textural variations they are able to breathe into every note, chord, phrase and piece. While there are limits to what a guitar duo can accomplish sonically and musically compared to a full orchestra, the duo pushes these limits to the extreme. Using two-handed percussion, an extremely wide range of right-hand tonal variations, the full range of available dynamics and technical virtuosity, the duo is able to awash the listener with a wave of sound that leaves one thinking, "Were there really only two guitars?"

[Also: you can download the complete MP3 version of "Shadow Thief" from Guitar Duo courtesy of Andreas Kapsalis and Goran Ivanovic. Simply click this link with your right mouse button, select Save Target As..., then choose a location on your hard drive.]

With their first CD receiving strong praise from critics and fans alike and the first leg of their summer tour underway, the AKGI guitar duo's focus is on bringing their music to the people. While words like "orchestral" and "cinematic" may evoke aural images, they cannot fully describe the nature of the duo's music. It needs to be experienced to be understood.

The duo recently sat down with me during a tour stop in the city of Champaign in central Illinois.

Matthew Warnock: Since you both come from different backgrounds and play different styles of music, how did you first meet and begin playing together?

Goran Ivanovic: We met at a bar. [Laughs]

Andreas Kapsalis: It was at a place called the Hot House. Our booking agent put us on the same bill, both of our other bands, and on the set break we started talking about music and that was it.

Matt: How did that first meeting grow into the duo as it is today? Did you begin with informal jamming or did either of you have pieces in mind that you felt could be played by the two of you?

Andreas: I think we just started hanging out as friends first, not really as musical collaborators. After a while, I would bring out the guitar and we'd share ideas and play for each other. That's where the duo informally began.

Matt: With your different influences, Goran has a background in classical and Eastern European music while Andreas comes from the finger style genre, how would you describe the music that you play as a duo?

Andreas: There's an element, especially in the compositional vibe of the duo, which is very cinematic in nature. There's a strong element of storytelling to what we do. I was just thinking about this. Since we're performers we try to entertain. Instrumental guitar music isn't the easiest market to entertain people in, but we are always finding new ways to entertain ourselves as musicians and therefore if we're not bored on stage then our audience won't be. Because of this, our music has a large compositional element to it both on the record and on stage, and we try and mold that framework to connect with the listener or the live audience.

Matt: With the two distinct backgrounds, Baltic music and fingerstyle, do you find that your audiences are a reflection of this diversity? That people are there who only know Goran's music or only Andreas' and aren't sure what to expect from the duo, or does your audience tend to be people who just love guitar in general and are there for that element of the performance?

Goran: It's important for us to try and describe the music in the best possible way before the show. When people read that I play Balkan or classical music they get one mental picture. When they see the saxophone on the cover of the CD they associate that with jazz, so we try and call ourselves Baltic-classical-acoustic-jazz and that tends to sum things up. [Laughs]

Matt: Kind of like ordering "the works."

Goran: Right. I can remember occasions where people would come to our shows and expect Balkan folk dancing. We do play some traditional tunes but we change them up so they aren't really the same stock arrangement that people are used to. We're never going to please everyone with our music, especially if they have expectations of what we should sound like, but I think it's important to bring our own voices to these styles and make the music our own. The audience changes as well. There's the core audience but others come and go as their tastes change. We're always finding new groups of listeners to connect to and so far they've kept coming back to our shows.

Matt: I can see how someone who came to your show expecting a classical or fingerstyle guitar concert would go home having enjoyed the show. Even though they didn't know that these other styles were going to be a part of the set. They're all so intertwined that there's something for everyone to enjoy.

Andreas: That's true. We get classical fans, flamenco fans, jazz fans, rock fans. The guitar is a popular instrument and that helps out as well. We pretty much give equal attention to all of our different influences so we don't do enough flamenco to be labeled a flamenco band. We don't even do enough world music to be labeled a world music band, though we often are. We draw on those styles as influences but we don't particularly quote those styles in every tune. We do a lot of genre bending and borrowing as far as moving and displacing things and borrowing from cultures, not to just quote those styles, but to take elements from each of our influences and meld them together as part of our music.

Our music is very mood based. We often think about what we would want to see and hear, if we were in the audience at one of our shows. What would we be bored by, what would be "the same old thing?" We're very critical of our music, in a good way, and I think that helps us put on a better show, by thinking about our music and how we present it to the audience. There are a lot of guitar duos out there so we're always trying to find ways to make ourselves different, to make our music stand out in the crowd.

Matt: That's one thing that I noticed when I first heard your CD. When I saw that it was titled Guitar Duo I had a very different idea of what the music was going to be compared to what it was. Your music is very compositional, very orchestral in nature. Guitar fans are going to find something to enjoy on the album as well as people who just like music in general. Was this something that you were conscious of during the writing process?

Goran: It was, but in the sense that we were aware of both the guitar and orchestral elements. We both like a lot of orchestral classical music which we bring to our guitar playing, both in the sound and with the techniques we use. People tend to write very guitaristic music where certain chords sound nice under certain melodies, or certain voicings sound good with two guitars. But we're trying to get away from that while still keeping our music fun for fans of the guitar. We try to have long melodic lines, dramatic lines, and base a lot of our music off of great film composers or great orchestral composers.

To be honest, there are way too many people playing Piazzolla or two-guitar Latin music. I surely like these styles and they work, but what's the point?

Andreas: You're right. No one needs another interpretation of another piece. These are pieces we wrote with the pure intention of let's do this project, and write all of these tunes, but let's be true to the nature of the duo. We're very melodic-based players. I'd also say we're modern in the sense that we have elements of dissonance and musical cacophony, but the focus is always on the melody. We put the energy and the mood first. While we do have elements of acrobatic guitar playing the melody always has first priority in our music. With some guitar duos there is a high ego factor involved, it's just the nature of the instrument and the genre, but with us there's no ego involved at all. We're so different as guitar players. He can do things that I can't do and vice versa. So we use our little "musical superpowers" to help each other out, to fight musical crime in a sense. [Laughs]

Matt: There's a quote for the records. [Laughs]

Matt: Turning to the tunes on the album for a bit. At first listen, there is a high level of compositional intent that comes forward with the pieces, but there is also a strong element of improvisation as well. Did the tunes you choose for the record come about as pure compositions that you then collaborated on, or did they develop organically out of jams that the two of you had?

Goran: I think for the most part they developed from ideas that we had stored somewhere but had never used on previous projects. There were also ideas that were inspired from each other's playing.

Andreas: There was a lot of free association happening between the two of us. Goran would play an idea and I would play something back and vice versa. Then, if the idea was going somewhere, it would continue to develop into a longer melody and maybe into a tune or section of a tune on the record. If we were going into the studio we would have the tunes coming together but not totally finished. So, when we got down to recording, there would be an element of surprise or even danger when we laid down the tracks. Of course we wouldn't bring in a tune that would sound bad, but we both thrive off of the spontaneity of the moment. A lot of the music that was recorded for this album was done when we were in that heightened state of awareness that one reaches when they let themselves get lost in the music and it came across on the tape. The music feels very in the moment, even on the CD.

Goran: We're both quite critical about our playing as well. I can remember that we would write and rewrite pieces so that they were where we wanted them to be before we went into the studio. Sometimes we would work all night on a piece because something was missing, a middle section, a slow section, a hook. If either of us didn’t like something we would sleep on it and try to come back with a fresh perspective. There's a good mixture of improvisation and patience in our writing that allowed us to keep the energy we wanted but kept us from recording a piece that wasn't up to our high personal standards.

Andreas: There's a tune on our CD called "Improvisation for Satie" that was totally improvised, and we had thought about doing a series of improvisations on the record. We usually do a few improvised pieces during out live shows, often with some audience participation. On those tunes you can really see the compositional process as it happens. How we react to each other, how the roles get swapped here and there. That's the best evidence of how our compositional process works. The improvisations really document how we shape and contour a melody within the larger framework of a tune. I find that I'm often influenced by other instruments than the guitar and when we both play, we play with a compositional mindset more than a guitar mindset. We're both musicians that happen to play guitar and that's how we approach the music.

Matt: Do you find that your pieces are growing and changing now that you are taking them out on tour and playing them every night, or do they tend to stay close to your original conception?

Goran: Some tunes are more open than others, so those tunes that have long sections of improvisation tend to be different every time we perform them. We also do other songs that are pretty much composed throughout and we end up playing them as written, more or less. Everything depends on the crowd, the room and our moods. A lot can happen within a set and we like to keep our minds and ears open to new possibilities.

Matt: In regards to the music you both play, it is very technically challenging from a guitar standpoint, though there are never any moments where the technical aspects of a tune surpass the melodic aspects - it never sounds forced. Did you have to have extended rehearsals before going into the studio to nail those challenging sections, or was this again something that was spontaneous in nature?

Andreas: There was a very spontaneous energy all around. To be honest, we kind of cranked it out really fast, which is something that I'm not used to doing. Normally, I take a long time with recordings and it's an arduous process, but for this album we were both in the same room and since there wasn't much time to edit things we pretty much had to nail it or it wasn't going to happen. We ended up nailing a lot of first takes so we went with those, as well as a few later takes that we felt had a better energy to them.

Matt: Now that you've released your first album, and it has been receiving great reviews, do you have plans to record a second album and to continue the duo past your current tour?

Andreas: We'll be touring a lot and promoting this album for quite some time. Our live show is our best asset so we'll be using that avenue to help get our music out there. We're still working on new tunes all the time, but we'll probably be on tour a bit before we go in and lay down a second record. It's a challenge since our music and audiences are so diverse. In Chicago, where we're from, we'll hear our music on an NPR world music show, or a jazz station or even some rock stations. This means that we're getting a lot of exposure but it also means that we have a lot of different arenas where we can perform our music. One night we can do a concert hall performance and the next we're in a small bar, but that's the beauty of it, always doing something new and different.

Matt: It seems that the more people hear your music, the more they stop calling it world music, or guitar music, they just call it the AKGI Duo. Is that what you're hoping for, that eventually people will drop the labels and just associate your music with the duo?

Andreas: I hope so. Describing our music to people is very difficult, but once people hear it they get a much better idea of what we're all about. That's why we're out on the road so much lately, we're trying to get our music to the people. Word of mouth is always the best marketing tool a band can ever have. If we tried to call our music "indescribable" we'll turn a lot of people off, but if we call it strictly world or jazz or classical music than we'll turn some people off as well. So for now we're just focusing on the music and we'll let the people decide what they want to call it. I guess it's kind of a blessing and a curse at the same time.

Links:
The AKGI Duo
The AKGI Duo on MySpace
The Guitar Duo CD on Amazon.com