Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Robert Bonfiglio interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 35

Share episode

Robert Bonfiglio shares with us the world of the concert chromatic harmonica player.
After studying composition in New York, he spent five years under the tutelage of Chinese classical player, Cham Ber Huang, and another 12 years studying with the first flute player of the New York ballet.
Robert has been playing classical harmonica concertos since 1986, and has played in some of the great venues around the world. He has performed all the major pieces composed for the harmonica, as well as releasing some more popular recordings, which saw him spend 8 weeks on the Billboard charts in the US.
Robert reveals some of the daily practise methods he has followed to attain the high level of technical expertise that has seen him flourish in the elite world of classical music.

Select the Chapter Markers tab above to jump to different sections of the podcast.

Links:
Robert's website: http://www.robertbonfiglio.com/

Cham-Ber Huang: http://www.chamberhuang.com/

Videos:
Thais Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgJy9uwxhmE

Gerswin Medley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAWiRQ39PUQ

SPAH appearance 2013: https://youtu.be/HRp3x7t2EIc

NHL October Virtual Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiUpPyYnh_A

John Sebastien Senior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eiV_XZUa1g

Roger Trobridge Harmonica Archivist site: http://www.the-archivist.co.uk/


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

Support the show

SPEAKER_00:

Robert Bonfilio joins me on episode 35 of the podcast to share with us the world of the concert chromatic harmonica player. After studying composition in New York, he spent five years under the tutelage of Chinese classical player Chamber Huang and another 12 years studying with the first flute of the New York Ballet. Robert has been playing classical harmonica concertos since 1986 and has played in some of the great venues around the world. He has performed all the major pieces composed for the harmonica, as well as releasing some more popular recordings, which saw him spend eight weeks on the Billboard charts in the US. Robert shares some of the daily practice methods he has followed to attain the high level of technical expertise that has seen him flourish in the elite world of classical music. So hello, Robert Bonfilio, and welcome to the podcast. Hi, how are you doing, Neil? Yeah, great. Thanks. So thanks so much for joining. And yeah, we'll start off all about you. You were born in Milwaukee in Wisconsin. No, no, actually, I'm from Iowa.

SPEAKER_02:

My dad was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Okay. And your dad was a surgeon. Is that right? Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

he was an

SPEAKER_02:

orthopedic surgeon.

SPEAKER_00:

What got you into playing the harmonica and the music around Iowa? I

SPEAKER_02:

started when I was a kid. I got a harmonica in my Christmas stocking or whatever and started messing around with it, could play Oh Susanna stuff. And then in high school, a couple of kids found out I played and they wanted to start a blues band. I started playing blues. Favorite players were people like Sonny Boy Williamson, Junior Wells, James Cotton, Paul Butterfield. Then in my backyard in Iowa at some point, I decided, you know, I really wanted to get serious about the instrument. I came to New York City, studied with Chamber Wong. classical music, because that's what I was really interested in. And then I went to Manus College of Music and Manhattan School of Music, where I got my master's in composition.

SPEAKER_00:

So what made you make the switch from diatonic to chromatic and the interest in classical music?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know. I just decided in my backyard that I wanted to be more serious. Here I am in the backyard in Iowa. I wanted to be serious about the instrument and I really wanted to study it and study how to be a musician. And I was already playing some Bach and stuff on chromatic a little bit. And the more I did it, the more into it I got.

SPEAKER_00:

And so you made a conscious decision to move to chromatic at this point, then, I take it. And then you weren't trying to play any of these things on diatonic, say.

SPEAKER_02:

I still played the stuff on diatonic. I mean, when I first came to New York City to study with Chamber Wong, I mean, I remember being up at Manhattan School of Music, and we were doing an analysis of a Vaughan Williams symphony. And I knew that Vaughan Williams had written a romance for harmonic and orchestra.

UNKNOWN:

. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

And we're doing this analysis of one of his symphonies. And I'm up there in the record library. And what do I see but Chicago blues today? You know, the three albums that... And I took out the album with Junior Wells on it. I said, this can't be as good as I remember it. Because, you know, I'm now sophisticated. I'm doing analysis of symphony. And I put that on with my earphones in the library at Manhattan School of Music. Then I'm listening to Messing with the Kid. And it's just like smoke coming out of my earphones. I go like... Whoa, geez, it was as hot as I remembered it. So it's been there. I love the diatonic. You know, I like the instrument. It just is that it's not my thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I know you like to play some diatonic in shows, don't you, to blues it up a little bit to a classical audience as well. That's something you like to do.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's a career move. You know, I mean, James Galway used to pull out the penny whistles. And you have to remember, you play a concerto with an orchestra, then you pull out a diatonic and you start playing a little bit of riff on Sonny Boy Williamson. And you get these people afterwards and say, wow, oh, I love that blues. I could listen to that all night. But they don't realize that what you just did was let them let their hair down. Because this has been a whole sophisticated emotional experience that you get from playing a concerto. And all of a sudden, you're getting diatonic blues and everybody can laugh and clap. And symphony audiences don't get that. So they get really riled up. But the truth is, If I started playing blues by about the second or third blues number, you go like, okay, yawn. Because there wouldn't be a concerto to set up the fact that I just let them let loose.

SPEAKER_00:

A little light relief. So you talked about the blues players you influence you. What about some of the chromatic players and some of the classical and chromatic players? Well, I really didn't have

SPEAKER_02:

any classical chromatic players. I mean, I studied with Chamber Wong. The two pioneers of the classical harmonica, major ones for which most of the orchestras the concertos were written are John Sebastian and Larry Adler. And I always felt it was my job to pick up where these guys left off and take the harmonica to a new level. I mean, that was what my whole career has been about. I did not particularly listen to any of their recordings in order to get inspiration as to how to play pieces. I would say my biggest inspiration probably is I coached for 12 years with the first flute of the New York City Ballet. I met him when I was at Manus College of Music. He became my coach. We worked on all the major works for harmonica. an orchestra. So when I played with an orchestra, Andrew Lolia was his name, Andy, it's a running dialogue with Andy as to how you should phrase, what's your articulation, what kind of power, all this other stuff. So my real influences are in the orchestra setting and from musicians. And

SPEAKER_00:

when you were younger, did you play any other instruments, more traditional classical instruments, or was harmonica your first?

SPEAKER_02:

No, harmonica was primarily it. I mean, when we all went to music school, I we had to play piano. And I always thought, you know, they got a two-finger typing technique. Why can't they have a two-finger piano technique? Because I can't use these fingers on the little, the pinky and the ring finger don't work on my hands. On the other hand, I could pretty much do anything with my mouth. As a matter of fact, I really think I got my master's degree in composition from Manhattan School of Music because I could play the harmonica. I'm saying this because all of us had to pass piano performance so what they would do in the test when you're getting your masters they'd have you go in front of these piano teachers and they would have you play a little set piece and of course i'd practice the hell out of that so i could play it pretty well and then they would have you play a little accompaniment and my wife plays flute so i played the bach flute a slow movement to the bach flute sonata and we had all these technical rubatos written in rubato means where you slow down and it would slow down where i had to make the leap in my left hand or whatever, but she knew where they were, so we had that all set up. We came in, nailed that, because you know, it wasn't in time. The next thing was sight reading on the piano. Well, I couldn't sight read worth it, you know, and I thought, oh God, I'm not going to be able to get my master's degree from, because I can't sight read on the piano. Well, the next person came in, who was with the orchestra, and I'd already played with the harmonica with the orchestra, and she was a violinist, and she was supposed to play her set piece, but her accompaniment piece was going to be a Mozart violin sonata and her violinist didn't show up so now she's not graduating because the person who was supposed to play with her wasn't there and she sees me and she said oh it's okay he can play it on the harmonica and these people have just saw me sight read on the piano and they go like uh I don't think so no he can play so she convinced him to let me play a Mozart sonata on the harmonica that was written for the violin And I nailed it. Didn't drop a note. And I'm walking out, and I'm thinking to myself, they're thinking, he can't sight read on the piano. He knows how to sight read, though.

SPEAKER_00:

So this was sight read, this piece, was it?

SPEAKER_02:

Sight read the piece, nailed it, all the trills and turns. And they're going like, never seen it before. And she's going like, oh, the two piano teachers just heard me try to play Mary Had a Little Lamb, you know. And I couldn't sight read. I took full typing courses. I could type 20 words a minute, you know. It's not my thing. Hand-eye coordination for fingers, that isn't.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm always amazed those piano players can do two different things with their hands. Oh, good, two, three

SPEAKER_02:

and four. They're trilling in one hand playing this and doing, and forget it.

SPEAKER_00:

So what about the whole, you know, the reception to being a harmonica player in the education institutions there? You know, what was that? Because, I mean, how was it received?

SPEAKER_02:

It really is not that big a thing when they hear you play. Sometimes before they hear you play, you can get, obviously, the classical music world is extremely snooty. And it is way beyond what Toots had to deal with in jazz. How can he play harmonica and play with the saxophones? This world thinks of the harmonica being one step above the kazoo, I guess. But that said, when you go in and play, they hear you start doing stuff and they realize, oh my gosh, how does this person play like that? So I remember my big kudos when I get them are from like the concert masters of these symphonies I play with. I was playing with the Boston Pops, great gig, John Williams conducting, Boston Symphony Hall. And we did the rehearsal and the concert master comes up to me. She says, my God, how did you learn how to phrase like that? And I said, well, I was coached 12 years by the first flute in New York City Ballet. And she said, ah, I knew it was something and walked away. In other words, it's like beforehand, I was told I had to play with a harmonica player. Now I can't believe it. So I've actually had a few concert masters to say that I was the best soloist they ever worked with, including Zuckerman and Perlman and Yo-Yo Mano. Maybe is a bit of, it's that they can't believe that you're actually getting these sounds out of this instrument.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, it's kind of a novelty fact of the harmonica. They haven't heard it before.

SPEAKER_02:

And then when you're doing stuff that, I mean, when you do something as silly as trilling chords, that to all the harmonica players, I mean, you're going like, and they're going like, yeah, Yeah, it was a yawn. But imagine a violinist thinking, I can't move my fingers back and forth that fast. On the other hand, when they're playing the Mendelssohn, they go, you think I'm going to break my teeth if I try that lick.

SPEAKER_00:

Going back a little, you said you had 12 years lessons with a flute player. So I've heard you talking about how it's important to get a good teacher and that they've got a tradition of that with the other instruments that we don't have with classical chromatic playing. So what about that and the fact that it's fine to go and use another instrument as your teacher in that case, obviously as you did?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. My feeling is, I mean, it helps if you've got somebody who's teaching you the basics of the harmonica that really knows how to play the instrument. But in terms of music, all the people that are in orchestras, when you're a soloist with an orchestra, every single person that's in that orchestra has had a teacher. And their teacher had a teacher. And their teacher's teacher had a teacher. So the tradition of playing, let's say, a flute goes way back to Bach. And all of the techniques have been done for hundreds of years. So articulations and phrasing and everything is there from one teacher to the next teacher to the next teacher. And they constantly are adding on to the technique. We have people who say, well, I don't know anything about any of that stuff and I don't want to know anything about any of that stuff because it gets in the way of my feelings and playing. Stravinsky was right. The more you work over music, the freer it becomes. So if you can play absolutely pianissimo in the high register, that means you can grab the emotions of all of these people in an audience that wouldn't normally have their emotions grabbed. But if you're not capable of doing that, then you don't have that as one of the tools in your palette. Also, everybody in the orchestra probably had a coach. I mean, they do chamber music. And then when they go, if you're at Juilliard, you're playing in a chamber music group. There's a coach. And the coach tells you how this piece is going to be played and what the major portions of the piece and how the structure is and where you're going and what you're doing. If you go to Berklee, you know, and you're studying with a jazz saxophone player, it's going to tell you, yeah, when I blow over this, I'm thinking actually an F minor scale over a G7 chord. So when you're blowing that, then that gives you the, you know, the flat nine and gives you, I mean, all the other stuff. They don't care how you get the sound out of your instrument. What they care about is let's make some music, and that's what it's about. Nobody cares in the audience what you did to get the sound out of the instrument. If you get the sound out of the instrument, they aren't going like, well, geez, he didn't use the right technique for that. I mean, come on. They don't know, and they don't care. So you can go to somebody who's, let's say, a great jazz sax player as a harmonica player, and if you know how all your scales and arpeggios and all your chords, you know, how to get around on the instrument, this person's going to say, okay, this is how I approach this. And this is where I lay out. This is where I come in. It's the same for classical music. People think, oh, classical music, it's like you push a button like a computer and it plays the music. No, there's a groove to it. That's why jazz players don't sound really good playing classical music. That's also why classical musicians don't sound really good playing jazz. It's a groove.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, there's a groove, but certainly probably technique-wise, classical music is, you know, is a pinnacle, isn't it? And your technique has got to be fantastic. So, you know, what do you think about the challenges of the technique and the chromatic harmonica?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's no different than any other instrument. Have you ever thought about, oh yeah, I started playing violin when I was five. And by the time I went to Juilliard, I was practicing six hours a day. Does that ever ring with somebody? And I had a coach and I had a teacher and I used to take lessons once or twice a week. Does this tell you it's kind of like being an olympic athlete the purpose of teachers by the way is to help you get from point a to point b the technique it's about What techniques really work and what ones don't and how you practice them to get those techniques. It's saving the player time because the teacher has gone down the route beforehand and figured out how you get this technique or that technique doesn't

SPEAKER_00:

work. Yeah. Another comment that you said is that the harmonica is America's instrument. That's

SPEAKER_02:

an interesting thing, because when you think of the harmonica, obviously you're thinking of some cowboy out on the prairie all by himself. It gives this eerie, lonely feeling. And that's why it's so effective emotionally. As harmonica players, a lot of times got to use that. We have to use that ability to be lonely and eerie and you know chills go up when you hear a voice you know doing that kind of thing on the harmonica and it has a specific sound we are so lucky in order to be a soloist with an orchestra you've got to have a sound which sings all instruments are imitating the voice so if your instrument doesn't sing very well it has a problem playing as a soloist with an orchestra when tubas and double basses play with orchestras they try to play in the high register where they can sing. Of course, it's a lot easier for a trumpet than the tuba, so the trumpet actually can play with the orchestra much more readily, and violins much more readily than the double bass. So the harmonica has a sound which can imitate the human voice in a singular way. It is emotionally very, very satisfying. It is the closest instrument other than the voice that you play to your brain. Can you imagine if you could take your nine-foot Steinway and you could cup it with your hands so So that it was possible to go from a sound which was... And change it without doing anything by just muting the sound. And you can add vibrato and you can get tonal colours and all different kinds of stuff. This really makes it an emotional instrument.

SPEAKER_00:

Going back again a little bit to your development. So I believe you went to Trottingham in 1970. Is that where you met Chamberwine?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, I... Just after I got out of the Army, I was drafted in 68 to 70. I went and studied with Chamber Wong. And then I came back. After studying for a few years with him, I went to Manist College of Music and went to Manhattan School of Music. And, you know, then I started playing all the studio stuff. Cat food and dog food commercials, movies, everything like this. Making my living in the studio. Tina Turner came out with a song called What's Love Got to Do With It. And it had a DX7 synthesizer playing the harmonica. And right after that, we lost our gig. So in 1986, I did the world premiere of the Henry Cowell Harmonica Concerto with Brooklyn Philharmonic. Then I played it with the Milwaukee Symphony. Then I played it at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. So what ended up happening is all of a sudden, my life became what I was trained to do, which was play harmonica concertos. So was this the first time you'd performed fully with an orchestra? Well, yes. That was the first time I'd ever played a concerto with an orchestra. I had been asked to play harmonica parts, which is not the same thing. You know, sit in with the violins or whatever in an opera or something. They were more like studio gigs. But then by 1988, I got signed to RCA, and we recorded Villa Lobos Harmonica Concerto on RCA. I was signed to an eight-record deal. And then since then, I've played the Villa Lobos Concerto about 440 times with over 200 orchestras around. around the world.

SPEAKER_00:

And this was written for harmonica. This was written for the harmonica. as was the Henry Cowell one that you mentioned. Yes, it was written for the harmonica. So the Henry Cowell one was written for John Sebastian Senior originally, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. Unfortunately, he died before he had a chance to do the piece. And it was interesting because Cowell was not able to... He died before the piece was premiered. And when I premiered it, Sidney Cowell came, Henry Cowell's wife. But also there was Ming Cherpman, who was Alexander Cherpman's wife. And I... you know, play the Cherpnin Harmonica Concerto. Those are the major works for harmonica and concerto. Villa Lobos, Cherpnin, the Arthur Benjamin Concerto, which I've played several times, the Mio Suite. I have a nice connection to Mio. There was a Mio scholarship. Mio died in 74. In 1975, when I was at Manus College of Music, I won the first Mio scholarship to study composition with Aaron Copland at Aspen. So Aaron Copland, a famous composer, was one of my composition teachers. Also the Henry Cowell we mentioned and the Vaughn Williams. Probably those are the pieces. These are the major works for harmonic and orchestra. All the rest are not by monster big composers and therefore they don't get asked

SPEAKER_00:

for. So were you selected as a harmonica player to play on these, you know, these harmonica concertos, or was it the other way around? Did you learn them and then get the, you know, the sort of gig to play with an orchestra?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, I was selected to play. I already knew them. I'd gone over how to play with harmonica, all the harmonica concerti with Andrew Lillian. I was first asked to do the Cowell concerto, looked at it and said, I can perform it. Then after that, they started started asking me for, after I recorded the Villa Lobos, they would just ask for pieces. I started to do several performances of harmonica concertos a year.

SPEAKER_00:

And so what about, you know, these are written specifically for the harmonica. What is it about these pieces that, you know, suit the harmonic?

SPEAKER_02:

In classical

SPEAKER_00:

music,

SPEAKER_02:

they are interested in pieces that are written for your instrument. That's what I'm talking about it being snooty. You can play, let's say, Flight of the Bumblebee on the harmonica and everybody's going to, that's like shtick to classical musicians. They want to hear the piece that was written for your instrument because that's the repertoire. The only people who get away with other stuff are people who have so goddamn many concertos, it doesn't make any difference. Like violinists can play whatever he wants because they already know that there's, you know, 5,000 violin concertos and 5,000 piano concertos. But even then, if you look at, let's say, Yo-Yo Ma's a cellist, they're going to say, okay, Dvorak concerto would be the number one piece that this person would play, because that's the number one cello concerto. So for me, Villa Lobos is Brazil's number one composer. So

SPEAKER_00:

would you recommend people who are interested in playing classical harmonica then to seek out these pieces which are written from a harmonica? Because a lot of people will try and play flute pieces or violin pieces.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it depends on where your level is. Everybody plays Bach. I actually have a Bach gig. Bach is kind of like how music is put together, even for jazz. I mean, you said technique, classical. I mean, you listen to some of these jazz pianists. That's a Bach lick. Okay, that's a Bach lick. It's the diddle diddle of classical music. That's Bach. And it's very sophisticated and harmonically very interesting, great music. You're going to take one composer to an island. It'll be Bach. But after that, you know, you play duets, right? I played a lot of Telemann duets. I teach a lot of Telemann duets. It's not what you're going to be playing for your gig. My gigs are all classical harmonica concerti, except if I'm trying to get something that just gets me in with the symphony. Then there's pops. Gershwin. I have an Elvis medley, but those are only to get me to the point to where I can play. That would be like the second date. I'll play the Villa Lobos with somebody and then they'll say, come back and play the Elvis with us. Oh, the audience loved you, you know, and then you do the same thing. And those things are basically just to get you the gigs. So that's what I use the blues harmonica for. So yeah, it's okay to play flute duets. It's okay to play transcribed pieces. Transcription is a noble art. I did the Thais meditation, and I think it sounds as good as the violin. Part of it is because the harmonica can play in a high register. Beautiful high notes that are pure and just singular, you know, in a way that even the violin can't with harmonics. But everybody did transcriptions. Bach transcribed so much Vivaldi, I don't know whether you could call transcribing, probably stealing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, great. So, yeah, you've done concertos all around the world. You've been to so many countries, yeah, and so well received. And so, you know, how do you get these gigs? You got yourself a name as the number one classical player and that follows. Does it get in the gigs with these orchestras and these great composers you've worked with?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's that and then it's networking. Just before I was on, I was on the phone with a conductor from Florida in the Punta Gorda Symphony. It's one guy recommends you, somebody else recommends you. It's the fact that you have recordings in RCA. Somebody hears it on the recording. I run a music festival at the Grand Canyon. I have some of the finest soloists in the world come in and make chamber music. So it's part of a classical music business. It has very, very little to do, actually, with the harmonica. It has to do with this music business. And then sometimes it just happens. I got called to do this Cherpinin concerto with the Atlanta Ballet We did it just before the pandemic, and I'm hoping that we get to do it again. And it's a gorgeous piece, and I played it before, and then all of a sudden I get the call, and next thing you know, we're playing this for six different concerts in a row. I tell you, the Wednesday matinee in the afternoon and the evening, God, that's a hard Sunday. It's hard to do matinee and play a concerto twice.

SPEAKER_00:

It's interesting, isn't it, how classical music concerts, you know, they're very well attended, aren't they? Well,

SPEAKER_02:

it has to do with something else. First of all, they build their audiences. So if you are looking at a classical music concert, you might have, let's say you have a 1500 to 2800 seat hall. And if they come pretty close to filling it because they have subscription series, you're playing for a lot of people. You have to compare it to something that's established where lots of people are. come on a regular basis. And it's been developed. The audience development has happened. It's also live music classically is really much more exciting than listening to something on a recording.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Big sound of that orchestra, don't

SPEAKER_02:

you? Yes. You're in the hall. You can't believe that people can play that loud and play that fast. And you're going like,

SPEAKER_00:

wow. So as well as playing classical music, which is your main thing, you've touched on that you play a bit of pop. a bit of Elvis, a bit of Gershwin. You've made some recordings which are a bit more mainstream. I think, as you've told me yourself, to pay the bills a little bit. I know you made up this Bonfilio group, this Through the Raindrops album that you came up with, which did very well. It was eight weeks on the Billboard charts in America there. So...

UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

I was signed to RCA. I had a personal manager, got me signed to RCA. I recorded the Villa Lobos, and I had done this recording called the Romances, which included all these romantic classical pieces that were real pretty, including the Vaughn Williams Romance, which is what I really wanted to record. The idea was to cross over into pop. I was working with this guy named Tommy West, who had produced all of Jim Croce's records. And after Croce died, he went down and ran Mary Tyler Moore's record company down in Nashville. And so he worked with all these Nashville artists, all these country guys. And one of these violists named Kristen Wilkinson had a song called Through the Raindrops on her answering machine. And Tommy heard it and said, geez, would you be upset if I introduced this to the harmonica? You where it happened. I put it down. The next thing you know, we started getting airtime. And at the same time, RCA blew up. Basically, they closed the Victor division. The place where I recorded the romances recording and the Villa Lobos, which is Studio A, RCA, where nobody famous had recorded like Ella Fitzgerald or Elvis or, you know, all Sinatra, you name it, had been in this room. And they just sold the building. And high end real estate and closed shop that's when we put out Through the Raindrop and it caught on you know so we started being on the billboard charts and you know somebody said geez you're down in Austin and you're one ahead of Michael Bolton and one behind Whitney Houston it was what it was as a small record company and we had stuff it paid the bills and we then went on QVC and sold a whole bunch of recordings doing everything from Christmas recordings to songs that every song you ever wanted to fall asleep to. You know, what we were doing is adding the sound of classical harmonica to these pretty sound

SPEAKER_00:

and easy to recognize melodies. You made this comparison, didn't you, with Toots Tillmans and saying that some of his albums are the same, you know, the kind of popular music, which brought him some income so he could carry on being a gigging jazz player.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. I mean, I met with Toots, you know, and he did a lot of stuff like that. I mean, he was doing studio music, everything. I mean, I went up to his place once and he said, bring all your classical stuff up. I said, why? I got to play at the Belgian Symphony. So he goes up, you know, and I'm going to play. And he puts a recording on. It's him playing with the symphony orchestra. And he said, hey, you know, you're the classical cat. I mean, this ain't happening, you know. And I said, well, Toots, the problem is you kind of got a Frank Sinatra sound. In order to play classical music, you really need a Pavarotti sound. And he said, oh, yeah, you could teach me. And I said, yeah, and you could show me how to play jazz. And we both need another lifetime. I said, they don't want to hear that. Go to the symphony. Play your foray piece or whatever they want you to play and start improvising on it and blow it like you're Frank Sinatra playing this. How would Frank sing Puccini? You know, do it that way. And Toots did it. He had Polidori. He had like, it's like Muzak almost, you know, stuff. But I knew, he knew, everybody knew that, knew him. So

SPEAKER_00:

what about improvising? Obviously, Toots is, you know, the master of the jazz improvisation. You know, can you improvise yourself in the chromatic or with classical, obviously reading more? Is that something you don't do? so much? Depends on what you mean by improvising.

SPEAKER_02:

We have classical improvising. In Baroque music, you do it all the time. You know, it has to do with all your trills and turns and ornaments and stuff. That's improvisation. You can either have them or not have them. And I'm very good at that. As far as improvising in a chromatic piece, sometimes I will add something. I just finished playing the recording, the Hovanis Greek folk dances. I added some chordal and octave stuff to it, and the second to the last movement. But I actually had done that while Hovhannes was alive. I did an orchestration of it using kind of like the Bartok Romanian folk dances. I did a folk dance orchestration for that with string orchestra, and he okayed it, said it was great. When I say improvisation, it's the same kind of notes, except all of a sudden we have chords. That kind of sound.

SPEAKER_00:

This seems to be kind of two fields of chromatic playing, doesn't it? There's classical and then jazz. That seems to be the two main genres the instrument's used for, isn't it? Would you agree with that? And, you know, what's the advantage and various strengths of those two genres on the chromatic?

SPEAKER_02:

No, no, not really. Same as the diatonic. Most everybody thinks of diatonic than they think of blues, but blues isn't the only music you could play on a diatonic or on a chromatic, for that matter. The nice thing about the harmonica is it basically fits into just about every genre of music. depends on what you want to use it for. As a solo instrument, maybe then, well, I don't know if you would consider in blues whether the harmonica is a solo instrument or not, because most all blues harmonica playing, you know, there's a few pieces that are just harmonica plus as a soloist, but most of them involve singing. And same with chromatic, if you added singing to it, I mean, I've played on lots of recordings, pop stars, you know, the singing stuff. I remember when we did Bernadette Peters and I did Shenandoah with just harmonica and voice at Lincoln Center, you know, at Avery Fisher Hall. And it was just the two of us, you know, and I was to accompany her. So yeah, you put it into those settings, the harmonica. Basically, there are harmonica solos in tons of records, and they aren't all jazz. I mean, I'm talking about kind of pop stuff. And then you have a whole other genre of harmonica playing. There was a hit called Peg of My Heart which was this whole harmonica trio stuff or groups. They came out of vaudeville. Yeah, I think it fits into rock. I think it fits into jazz. I think it fits into classical music. I think it fits into pop. I mean, what do you call Stevie Wonder? Not everything is funky that Stevie plays. I remember I had to play on Chaka Khan's first solo album. And Harif Martin says to me, OK, what I want you to do is I want you to play like Stevie Wonder. I said, I looked at him. I said, if you want Stevie Wonder, hire him. And of course, he did come in and play on her next album. I think he played on Feel For You. And he just, it's Stevie. You know, every time somebody says, yeah, well, it only fits into this, you know, I don't think it's as funky as the diatonic, the chromatic. And I go, well, what about Stevie? Oh, well, that's different. Then you go, is there only one funky saxophone player in the world? Come on, why? Lots of people play funk sax, so there can be a lot of people that play funk harmonica. So yeah, I can't think of a genre that the harmonica doesn't fit into.

SPEAKER_00:

And so you play in lots of great venues in the Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Ball, Lincoln Center. So have you got a favorite venue in all these places? The recording from the Gavandhaus.

SPEAKER_02:

That's me playing with a 60-piece orchestra, no amplification. You know, I came out and I get on stage and I tried, you know, just to see what the acoustics were. It's only a 1500 seat hall, but still it just... gorgeous acoustics. A little freaky to be playing at the Gavon house because, you know, you look on the wall and there's a program and it said, Schumann will play a Brahms concerto this afternoon. And there's a program and you go, uh-oh, the history of who's played there. I played in Carnegie Hall before they fixed it and the sound quality was amazing.

SPEAKER_00:

You have played in a Grammy, you've received a Grammy for the Ragtime musical.

SPEAKER_02:

That was a studio gig. I came in, they had, you know, Ragtime, they had the sound We'll see you next time. never got the gig, I just, but I got the Grammy when the soundtrack album went

SPEAKER_00:

up. And you appeared, so Spar's obviously the main harmonica festival in the US there, and is that something you've appeared at numerous times, yeah? Yeah. Initially, Spar was really a kind of chromatic festival, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, it was based, really was based on the harmonic cats, you know, I mean, Jerry Murad and his

SPEAKER_00:

group, those guys can play. So what about other chromatic players who are around today, you know, who you're rating as good chromatic players i know you met philip asheel who's a uk player when he was younger in 2003 in dallas

SPEAKER_02:

i saw him play on the tv with the proms he sounded great i thought that was going to be enough to get him out and playing with orchestras one of the problems that happened i mean you have to understand i was signed to rca we recorded some stuff it came out i was on every single talk show and all of a sudden the whole record business went south there was was no more RCA. He told my manager, classical music, I don't want to hear about it. So it was not only classical music, it was jazz, it was everything that was music other than pop, but everything else just went the way of the dinosaur. And I think that that's one of the problems of Philip Head, that he came in at a time where he should have skyrocketed, but the music business was, you know, it was a circle. The basic circle was this. You did recordings, the recordings got you press, the press put butts in the seat, you know, at the symphony, and then you did more recordings, and then you went around. And all of a sudden, one portion of that circle was missing. And without the cachet of, you know, RCA having recorded this piece for you, you know, doing one recording, it should have led to a classical recording contract form. You asked about other players. The thing that's missing from most classical playing that I hear is power. And when I say that, I'm talking about it's the sound. It's the separation between somebody who's like an amateur player or an orchestral player and somebody who's a soloist. The soloists have power. They have sound. Now, people look at me because I'm playing a CBH 2016 Hohner, and that's a discontinued harmonica, but it's the only one that I know of that responds to power. I'm going to play something here for you. This is the opening to the Villa Lobos. Generally, when I hear it, people are like... It sounds like that. Now you will hear me crank... That's the opening to the Villa Lobos. It's a concerto. You're the soloist. And I just don't hear it. I don't hear it in the playing. First of all, there's a whole bunch of articulation that's not being presented. A whole bunch of knowledge of where you are, how you play, what the first note's supposed to sound like. Classically, I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about Toots. Toots, he had a sound. And it's a jazz sound. This is not a jazz sound. You don't want to sound like this when you're playing jazz. You sound like this when you're playing jazz. It's whale over the top. It's not meant to be. And toots has a specific sound which matches the genre. So how do you do this? If you practice your scales and arpeggios and keep getting louder and faster over a period of about 10 years, your sound will start to open up. You will start to get more and more power. What you do is you bring the note just up to the point where it's going to balk and then you back off. And it's like going up a ladder. You get louder and louder and louder. Every time you get louder, the sound gets diffuse. It spreads out like shouting. So then you learn how to focus that top sound, that the new louder sound. Now you have that sound focused and then you get louder again. It's unfocused. And then you learn how to focus that sound so that it carries to the back of the hall. And so the whole object is trying to get louder and focused and louder and focused up the ladder. And it's not an easy process. If you really do the work, it will happen.

SPEAKER_00:

I've read about it. Are you being very keen on not using microphones to play with the harmonica linked to the subject? Nobody else is

SPEAKER_02:

playing the harmonica. They're playing the amplified harmonica. You give me a mic and I turn that sucker up and then I EQ the thing and I put in an echo and everything. I can sound loud as hell and I'm only playing like... this. And you go like, I can barely hear that. Yeah, of course you can barely hear that. But when I turn that up to 11, I'm going to get some massive sound. As a matter of fact, mics don't like my sound. Pavarotti had the sound. You ask him to sing loud, he can sing enough to bury an orchestra. But you mic him, and it's going to sound really strained. Because that sound has to be brought down in volume to the point where the mic can hear it without distorting. Especially if you close mic it. So then in order to mic that really sounds like Pavarotti, you got to mic him from far away. And when you mic somebody from far away, it sounds like they're singing in a closet far away. So they had to learn a micing technique that was close mic, but had a specific sound to it. And Pavarotti had to learn that type of singing for the studio. It's not the same as the opera. Same as me. You know, I mean, you get a lot of extraneous sounds when you're playing in a studio that you don't hear outside. Grunts and sniffs and and air and all kinds of stuff. When I played the Villa Lobos and recorded it, I had to learn how to play down a little bit some places. So we wouldn't be hearing breath regulation.

SPEAKER_00:

So a question I ask each time, Robert, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_02:

10 minutes? I practiced maybe two to three hours for the last 40, 50 years. I don't know, 40 years. At some point, I was practicing 12 hours a day. So what would it do? This is classical, okay? I set my practice times up this way with student. You're going to practice one quarter of your time on scales and arpeggios. Then you're going to practice to some kind of etude. An etude might be something like if I'm using a biting technique as an articulation. So biting is where you bring the mouth down. It gives you a definite percussive sound when you start a note and is using the air from the diaphragm to give you that support. But it doesn't really require support. It's Just means that you're going to force that air out.

SPEAKER_01:

All

SPEAKER_02:

right, so there's a bite sound. What I might do for the second thing would be some kind of etude.

SPEAKER_01:

All

SPEAKER_00:

right, so that's a bite etude. So an etude, to explain, is a piece of music to practice a particular technique.

SPEAKER_02:

Technique. So if it's a tonguing etude, you're tonguing for the one quarter of the tongue. So there are corner switch etudes. There are etudes which involve biting. There are etudes which involve some kind of octave etude or octave leap etude. You know what I mean by an octave leap. It's where you would go... That's an octave leap. And what you're doing is corner switching. And it might be the whole, you know, you might play scales in octave leaps. All right, that's an A2. So it's just involving one technique and beating it to death. That's the second thing. First, scales, arpeggios. Second thing, some kind of technical A2. Third thing, duet. A duet is a piece that you're going to play with another live musician, not with your computer. You're going to play with another live musician because live musicians, if they're really good, they use time. as a way of emotion. So they speed things up and slow it down and you have to be able to follow them and then they have to follow you and you speed up and slow down. So duets give you the ability to play with another person. And then the fourth thing you're going to do is work on a piece. So you split your things up into scales and arpeggios, technical, etude, duet of some kind or another, so you're playing with somebody, and fourth thing is a piece. Let's say that's a harmonica concerto or a Bach piece or whatever, something that's going to require you to practice a long time, but the satisfaction will be at the end of it, you'll be playing something that you can actually play for other people. Those are the way I split four things up.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll talk a little bit about gear now. So you mentioned the chromatic, your choice. CBH 2016. So you say that harmonica isn't available anymore?

SPEAKER_02:

No. I mean, basically what happened was this chromatic was designed so that all the air went into each chamber. If you play other chromatics, you can look at them and about a quarter of the hole is is where the air goes into the slide. So you get resistance at the mouthpiece, and that means the mouthpiece leaks. This actually is where the mouthpiece gives you full bore into each chamber. And then there are also, each chamber is separated from the other chambers. So what you end up with is an instrument that if you cup it in the high register, you don't have air leakage down in the low register. And if you cup it in the low register, you don't have air leakage in the high register. So you can actually play cup to open and close muted and use hand vibrato any place you want without losing the hand vibrato. And the reason I also play 2016 is the only instrument that has power and where I can really crank it, especially in the low register. If I'm a... You play these notes on a regular... They're not going to come out. You know?

SPEAKER_01:

It's

SPEAKER_02:

just the power that you can get. So a lot of times when I hear the regular harmonicas, they sound like... You know, like this, when you want to hear

SPEAKER_00:

that. So how do you get these harmonicas now they're not available? Have you got lots of them or are you getting them repaired? I have the bodies and

SPEAKER_02:

then they're just screwing in our plates and they're now going to discontinue the plate. So I bought a bunch of them. I don't know whether they'll last the rest of my life. If they don't, then I start replacing reeds on. I have maybe two, three hundred sets of plates. I break reeds a lot because I play the hell out of the instrument. And so you break reeds.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And these are all 16 holes that you're playing?

SPEAKER_02:

16 hole because in the Villa Lobos you have this... And then it

SPEAKER_01:

goes...

SPEAKER_02:

Well, you had to play that run down to the whole end of that cadenza. Into the low C.

SPEAKER_00:

What about embouchure? I think you use a few different types of embouchure, don't you, to get your different sounds? This whole discussion of,

SPEAKER_02:

do you play pucker or do you play tongue block? It's like saying, well, do you play pizzicato or can you play full bow on a violin? If you play in pucker position, then your tongue is free behind your teeth to say tuh. You know, you can't do that, well I can, in tongue block. I've actually developed a way to... tongue out of both sides of my mouth. If you play in pucker position, especially if you're playing a chord, you can use ta or a whole bunch of other syllables to get articulations. On the other hand, you can't switch corners. That's going left-right, so the switch corner thing is not available. And how are you going to play passages which have octaves or octaves with a third?

UNKNOWN:

...

SPEAKER_02:

So there's a whole bunch of tongue block things that are necessary. Of course, any kind of vamping. The cherp and you come down and... All right. So right there, I've gone from playing a tongue block with a vamp. And then when I play... That's just pucker position with chords, and I'm actually using a bite or tongue to do that. So you have to be able to play pucker, and you have to be able to play. You get different sounds. Pucker is a more pinch sound. When you play the harmonica, whatever sound your face makes is what comes out of the instrument. If I say hello, hello comes out of the instrument. So when you're playing in pucker position, just like if you talked in pucker position, all of a sudden that's the tonal color.

UNKNOWN:

Hello.

SPEAKER_02:

If you go O and play in tongue... So you get a different sound between the two. And the further up the register... the more pinched that the pucker position is going to sound. But if that's the sound you want, toots use it the whole time. So if you're playing jazz, I would not suggest using tongue block. And then you have the tongue free to go, you know, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta or ta-ka-ta-ka-ta-ka or whatever. So that is pucker. Some people play in U-block. It's not one I would teach. I teach right away how to play right side, then left side. That said, I can play it. The problem is if you use a U-block, you can hear just drawing in, you get a very pinch sound. It can sound really great if that's the sound you want. I think it's kind of what Stevie Wonder does. He plays puckered or you...

SPEAKER_00:

Using the embouchures to suit what sound you get.

SPEAKER_02:

And to suit what kind of music you gotta play. It's the same as chromatic and diatonic. Use the axe, it works. I can't believe when these people try to play classical music on a diatonic bending note. It's out of tune. And intonation, you know, you listen to a Toots concert, the whole concert, there's not one stinking note out of the harmonica. that's out of tune.

SPEAKER_00:

Final question then, let's talk about the future plans. Hopefully things are opening up now and you're able to get out doing concerts. So have you got anything lined up?

SPEAKER_02:

We're all starting. I have a sneaking suspicion. There are a lot of summer festival things. I might be doing stuff outdoors. Do you want to know the truth? Nobody knows. Are we going to be playing? How far apart are we going to have to? I will say I'm on the other side of the fence now. I've had both my vaccine. So I'm done too. COVID upended the whole world. All I can say is that I think, I hope that we do that concerto harmonica, which was with the Atlanta Ballet, the Cherpinin Concerto. I love that piece. I love playing that piece. That would be great. And it's danced. It's a work of art. Yeah, that's my job. When somebody says, well, what do you do in the harmonica? It's art music. That's what the audience wants. But I will say this. I really love doing it. I still love practicing and playing the harmonica every

SPEAKER_00:

day. Great to hear you've still got that passion to practice hours every day.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's who I am. So

SPEAKER_00:

have you been using the time over the last year during the lockdowns to, you know, you've been working on anything particular or practicing lots?

SPEAKER_02:

A lot of practice, thousands of hours on the Cherpnin Harmonica Concerto. Then I did record the Hovhannes Harmonica Concerto and I did record Hovhannes folk dances and I recorded a Natalie song and dance. We have to add the strings to that. It's the first time I've ever done anything isolated. It was a bit of a challenge, but it turned out great.

SPEAKER_00:

You You've got a home studio there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I knocked out a couple of closets in an apartment in New York City.

SPEAKER_00:

So what microphone are you using to record yourself?

SPEAKER_02:

I have a Neumann TLM-103 to record. The best recording mics for classical harmonica, if you ask me, are still the U87. When I did all of those recordings, we did a stereo, a pair of U87s. That's what they recorded me at the Gewandhaus with. Neumann U87. If you get a good microphone, it's unbelievable. I am now recording just so I can, an Apogee Duet USB interface. But if you want a great mic, the Blue SETI is a USB mic that plugs right into your computer. It's a great sound and you can probably get one for about$100,$110. When I am playing out, anytime, like if we do any trio gigs or where I play any kind of, Greg Hoyman built me a Shure Sure 58, which is small. He has one which has a volume pedal. Outdoors, you know, Sure 58 or 57, you can't beat them. And I know there are some imitations of them. They probably work just as well. I can't remember which ones there are, but that Sure 58 from him is just fantastic. It sounds like you're in the studio and you're outdoors, you know, so that's a great mic. On the blue side, when on the Elvis, I have a Valco Supra amp, I think 1951. I have two of them. One is is actually a six-volt Jensen speaker DC. But the other one is the Bantham. It has three tubes, weighs about five pounds. Great just to bring and then use a mic to mic the amp because you can put it in the overhead on a plane and you can carry it with your little finger. I have a bullet mic that's handmade and it has a volume pedal on it. Great sound.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much, Robert Bonfilio, for speaking to us today and giving a great insight into the world of classical music on the harmonica as well as other forms of music, of course. So thank you. Thanks very much.

SPEAKER_02:

You're more than welcome. It was a blast.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks, Neil. That's it for episode 35, everybody. Thanks so much to Robert Bonfilio for giving us a fascinating insight into the world of classical chromatic harmonica. And thanks once again to Roger Trowbridge helping me out with some of the research material for the episode. Doing a great job out there still, Roger. Thank you. Robert, play us out with those beautiful sounds.

UNKNOWN:

. Thank you.