Classical Guitarist Flutters Out of Apprenticeship Nest

Classical guitarist Alexander Dunn is a musician in search of an identity. With his colleague Randy Pile, Dunn has just completed a six-year apprenticeship with noted performer Pepe Romero.

“Pepe is trying to push us out of the nest,” said Dunn, his voice reflecting equal parts self-deprecating humor and respect for his mentor. Dunn explained that Romero’s style of teaching follows the Old World model, in which a student is absorbed into both the professional and personal life of the master teacher.

“After the initial period of intensive training and discipline, the student performs with his teacher in duos and quartets. Randy and I also spent a lot of time with the Romero family, going out to dinner and to the movies together. Our relationship to Pepe has been more like a father-son relationship.”

Although Dunn has enjoyed working in the Romero spotlight--during the Romero family’s 1988 concert tour he even took the ailing Angel Romero’s place on short notice--he has no desire to be a Romero clone. This is one of the reasons he does not program much of the traditional Spanish guitar literature associated not only with the Romeros, but with the great 20th-Century guitar champion, Andres Segovia.

“In spite of the popular view of classical guitar music, the Spanish repertory is not the most important. The Viennese and Italian traditions are very strong, as is the early 20th-Century French school, which includes many composers who wrote especially for Segovia. And, over the last 25 years, there has been a strong American contribution. I don’t see the guitar as simply a showcase for flashy, nationalistic Spanish pieces.”

Dunn’s Saturday evening program at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Recital Hall will reflect his stylistic predilections. In addition to a hefty selection of J. S. Bach transcriptions, he will play Joan Tower’s 1983 “Snow Dreams” (with UCSD flutist John Fonville) and four of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s “Caprichos de Goya.”

“Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s ‘Caprichos’ were written shortly after he escaped from Mussolini’s Italy and settled in Southern California. Based on a series of copper engravings depicting insanity and suffering that Goya made in 1799, the music is appropriately dark and somewhat chaotic. The ‘Caprichos’ are seldom performed in concert because of their extreme difficulty. I think he composed them at the piano--they’re not very idiomatic--so guitarists have to make certain modifications for the sake of performance.”

Like many classical guitarists, Dunn’s initial impression is that of a soft-spoken introvert, but the 34-year-old San Diego native also cultivates a sharp wit. When asked if he and Pile had found a name for their guitar duo, he dredged up an encounter the two had with a New York City street person.

“Randy and I had just come out of a Manhattan restaurant when this panhandler approached. Noting Randy’s blond surfer hair and my attire, he dubbed us ‘Malibu and G.Q.’ ”

Trombone triumph. Heather Buchman, San Diego Symphony principal trombone, took third prize ($3,500) among 77 trombonists in the recently completed Munich International Music Competition. This year’s competition, sponsored by West German broadcasting companies, was open to young performers on piano, viola, trombone, guitar and wind quintet.

During the competition, she played the Henri Tomasi Trombone Concerto with the Bavarian State Radio Orchestra, and she performed a solo work, “Dance the Orange,” Saturday in a winners’ concert. “Dance the Orange” was composed for Buchman by Catherine Alexander.

The La Jolla connection. Last week’s annual meeting of the San Diego Symphony heralded a new relationship between the UC San Diego musical community and the orchestra. Cecil Lytle, provost of UCSD’s Third College and former chairman of the UCSD music department, was elected to the symphony board of directors. On the orchestra’s all-Gershwin SummerPops program two months ago, Lytle was the featured piano soloist.

Symphony executive director Wesley Brustad announced that works by UCSD resident composer Roger Reynolds will be featured in the orchestra’s Feb. 15 Mandeville Auditorium concert. Reynolds, whose composition “Whispers Out of Time,” won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize, was not one of the three composers originally scheduled for the symphony’s new “Pulitzer Prize Series,” announced earlier this year (only days before Reynolds won his prize). At the urging of music director designate Yoav Talmi, the symphony decided to drop New England composer Ned Rorem from the series and add Reynolds.

The symphony’s financial picture at the close of this fiscal year is one of those good news-bad news revelations. Brustad reported that, for the second season in a row, the orchestra balanced its books and ended in the black. The orchestra’s capital debt, however, remains at $4.1 million, a figure executive director Wesley Brustad termed “manageable.” The orchestra’s 1988-89 ticket income of $2,695,000 was up 15.8% over the previous season, while contributed income of $2.5 million--including $260,000 from the Symphony Towers Gala held earlier this month--increased only 8%. Brustad said that ticket sales for the upcoming 1989-90 season were just under $900,000, significantly ahead of advance sales at this time last year.

The lunch bunch. San Diego Mini-Concerts, the admirable downtown series that provides free lunchtime concerts in the Omni Hotel’s City Colors Room, has announced its fall schedule. Like most of the local arts groups this fall, Mini-Concerts has its Soviet offering, a duo recital featuring pianist Nina Kogan and cellist Vagram Saradjian on Nov. 6. (Nina Kogan’s brother, Pavel Kogan, is slated to conduct the San Diego Symphony in a pair of concerts the previous weekend.)

Mini-Concerts opens Oct. 9 with a trio of local musicians--clarinetist Robert Zelickman, cellist Michael Staehle, and pianist Stephani Walens. A new local ensemble, the Chinese and American String Quartet, will perform Oct. 23, and San Diego’s best-known woodwind group, the Arioso Wind Quintet, will play Nov. 20. The San Diego Master Chorale Chamber Singers, a select ensemble from the chorale directed by Joel Fernatt, will serenade the lunchtime audience Dec. 4.