JUAMPY JUAREZ’S CAPRICIOUS MISTRESS!(1)

By likemindblog

Juampy c-IMG_5170

 

JUAMPY as he is called, was born Juan Pablo Juarez,  started playing when he was 13 years old, “but actually, says he,  I played guitar a little before that with my cousin’s guitar.  I’ve always been in love with music, and playing guitar was my dream, and this dream  has never left.

My first guitar was a nylon stringed,  it was a gift from my mother, when I was 13, and I began to play by ear.  Two  years later I took lessons first with my aunt Irma, she was a classical trained teacher in piano and guitar, and voice also.   Six months later I took lessons with my first jazz teacher, Marcelo Mayor, a fantastic, gifted player that showed me jazz and I immediately fell in love with it.

My first band was with some friends when I was in my teens , and we played Beatles covers, some Talking heads, and some originals.   I had a fusion band by the time I was  19, started to teach myself and did live gigs, so I began to feel the necessity and responsibility to continue  my studies, so I began to study with another teacher called Armando Alonso,  He was my ex-teacher’s teacher.    But he was a little expensive at the time for me, so I took a two year break in my lessons.  After this gap I took lessons again  for three years in a row with Carlos Campos, another fantastic player and teacher that thought  me many rhythm lessons that changed my life forever. 

At the same time I started playing in my rock band Cerebros Vacios, playing alternative rockJuampy baritona juampy for ten years, experimenting with drum machines, loops, heavy distorted sounds, many modern ideas for our time,  living in Argentina. We had a  ten years career with 2 cds and one videoclip on MTV rotation for 7 months in a row.   We played ska, reggae, hardcore, punk, trash, funk, many styles rolled into one,  Hendrix covers also, and I became good playing those styles.

Parallel with that, at 23, I began to play jazz in my trio, Powerjazz trio, and it lasted for many years, changing musicians but not the spirit of playing jazz as a group, researching and getting better for many years without stopping, the definitive group formation was with Chino Piazza on drums and Eduardo Muñoz on bass, two really talented musicians, and together we have 2 cds and one dvd, alongside many important gigs in jazz clubs or festivals.

At 25 or 26  I found my best teacher ever, Pino Marrone, a monster teacher and player, with a long career by himself both nationally and in The States. He, like me, was a rock player before  converting to a jazz, so we share a common feeling from the first lesson.  Now we are friends, and I’m very proud of this.

In 2000 year I started to visit USA, and I took lessons there with many masters and stars, including Pat Martino,  Jack Wilkins, Paul Myers, Bruce Arnold, Barry Harris, Gene Bertoncini, Sid Jacobs, Jonathan Kreysberg , and playing with many of them and many masters like Steve Laspina, John Stowell  with who I recorded as well, Jim Masters, 

ova y juampy 2Howard Alden, Rick Stone, Peter Mazza, Joe Giglio, Tony de Caprio, Ben Monder, Freddie Bryant, Dan Adler, Brian Adler, Tony Romano, Tosh Sheridan,  Joe Berger, and many many others.

And of course I played with many Argentina’s rock and jazz stars, doing live gigs on Disney Channel with my band for three years.

I  have  been teaching and researching the guitar for the past twenty-five  years, I wrote three books from my research, and I have many video lessons for www.mikesmasterclasses where I teach my ideas on video.

My main projects now are Praxis, my atonal jazz guitar and piano(Sebastian Crusvar is the fantastic piano player, besides this he is one of my best friends)  duo now upgraded to trio with a drummer Diego Arcaute, the group is based upon my atonal and 12 tone investigations applied to jazz composition and improvisation.

I have two guitars duo with great players Luis D’agostino, and in Argentina’s mediterranean province Cordoba with Ova Brizuela.   I have my solo gigs, I’m in love with this style, playing my solo arrangements and ideas on jazz/bossa standards and my own compositions, using my Aprile baritone, 6 and 7 strings guitars, and perhaps my jazz trio gigs.

I hold clinics too, and I have been a rock producer for many years. I have been playing injuampy flyer clinica APAISADO many other countries including Usa, Brasil, and Thailand.  I played all over my country many times, I have many cds coming, with Praxis project, a solo cd, and with a trio.  Two books will born soon I hope.I love making music, teaching, researching, traveling, meeting  many musicians and friends all over the world, and I love family and peace of course.

Juampy, welcome and thank you for being part of this project.  I decided to leave your story as is because it is very interesting especially to young aspiring musicians who need encouragement.   We will immediately jump into part one of your article, as it is very long.  So here we go:

No. 1)  What is music to and for you?  (in general and personally) 

1) Music is the most perfect form of art, and the most mysterious and magic, because  is does  not relate  to anything material like images or colours, although these things could be in our mind and imagination when we are listening to music or even making music, because these factors are not there for real.  As musicians , we are dealing with sounds , trying to communicate feelings , good or bad, dark or light, through this form of art.  And this for me is the most important thing about music, I need music to communicate my feelings to people, music is a necessary language for me, if I wouldn’t have music in my life, my whole life could be incomplete, and life in general would be boring and in black and white.

For me music is present in everything, only you have to listen well. Jim Hall said “listening is still the secret”, and I agree.  Creativity is my favorite word in this world, and I’m trying to be creative everyday that I wake up, music is my discipline, and within  I can express myself better than with nothing else, even with Spanish or English languages.

01 (2) No. 2)  What inspires you?

2)When I was a child, I remember listening to  Beethoven 9 symphony and dreaming within the music, and  I could take a pencil and a paper and draw for a long time, trying  to put my dreams produced by the music on paper .

This kind of feeling always comes to me, everytime  I listen to good music, I can fly and dream, and it’s possible that for this is  the primary reason why  I wanted to be a musician.

Nowdays, I’m looking for inspiration on creative music , I love good, fat tones, may be in a human voice, or in a guitar or any other instrument, and I’m always looking for new  things, new approaches to music, I really apreciate new ideas on music, even if these still are there as a project. 

I love classic rock, Led Zeppelin was my favorite band in my teen days, same with Beatles, Pink Floyd, Hendrix, Rush, mostly classic 70′ rock.These bands still inspire me.  I love the usual jazz stuff, Trane, Parker, Ornette, Herbie Hancock, ECM music, Wayne Shorter, Pat Metheny, Joe Pass, Pat Martino, with who I took some lessons.   But in the last two years, I got divorced , and my tastes have changed to listening to  more solo guitar, or solo piano, or any solo instrument, I love the space inside the music, the silence, a big reverb, and again, fat, good tones.

I’m listening to  contemporary classical music(I prefer the term Orchestral music rather than contemporary classical , because this is an oxymoron) almost every day, every moment,  I’m trying to develop contemporary compositional techniques and adapt  then  to the guitar both for improvisation and composition, my project Praxis is an example, same with my video clinics fo mikesmasterlcasses.com and my three books.

This music really inspired me for many years in a row, I love Schonberg, Berg, but Webern isrick and juampy my favorite. Cage, Babbit, Boulez, Varese, Berio, Liggetti, Sarahio, and actually Brain Ferneyhough is my favorite, and in my country, Argentina, we have great composers like Mauricio Kagel and Carmelo Saita.

Books on philosophy and mithology have been inspiring me for many years and same with movies, 

I love Nietzsche, Heidegger,  Foucault, Deleuze, Adorno, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Julius Evola, Kafka, Borges, Lovecraft, Camus, Robert Graves, and many more talking about books.  And about movies Woody Allen, Tim Burton, Almodovar, Alex dela Iglesia, David Lynch, Herzog and many more. Plus paintings, Van Gogh is my favorite, along Dali, Miro, Kandinsky, El Greco, Klimt, Mannet, Monnet, and much more. Being in love too, or being not in love too!lol

No.3)  When you are playing, creating, where does it take you?  Where does your mind travel? 

3)My mind travels before I’m composing, when I’m composing the previous feelings that I had serve to get fruits, and immediately my mind appears and begin to works, 

I feel that the primal motor is my heart, and then my mind finishes the compositional work. Both things works together, but it’s looks different when I’m improvising, I become a more loose guy, dreaming more, evoking some old feelings, sometimes painful, sometime not, sometimes it’s angry, sometimes it’s love.

DSC00754No. 4)  Do you think music, visual art and health are related and if so, how?

4)I think that music is related to good health or bad health, but definitively your physical body and consciousness and unconsciousness works alongside the creativity process, many sick people, many crazy guys create wonderful music and art now and in the past,  but I think that when you have good health and and well balanced mind, your spirit will have a good place to show him self, and music or any form of art depends on it for sure.  If you are depressed for many days or months in a row, music will not flow, and dealing with the dayly problems will be  a lot more difficult, with no strenght at all to help you keep your career and your life.

I’ve been  training at the gym for 23 years in a row, lifting weight and playing soccer and table tennis, and I need these sports.  Without these things I could start feeling bad or sick.  Going  to a psychoanalyst is a good thing too, at least it works for me.   But more important is nutrition, keeping a balanced diet is really a must to have energy and stamina.

No. 5)  How do you feel when you are playing?

5)this question was already answered in the previous question, but I have to say that being a performer is really necessary  both for me and for my career.  In the past I usually finished a gig feeling bad, because I was so self critical of myself, but now I feel better and more relaxed, more comfortable with my playing, still I’m very hard on myself sometimes, but I ‘m really doing that to get better, not to hurt my self. Selfcriticism is a necessary tool, but you have to take care. After a good gig is like an orgasm, the most beautiful thing in the world. After a good recording still more, because you know that the music will be there for ever.

When I’m practicing at my home, and taking notes about any ideas that I get, I have to sayguitarra de 7 juampy that nothing in the world is like that, with a cofee on my table, the sunlight entering  through my window, I love those moments.  Each time that I can not investigate music, compose or practice, I feel worse for sure. For me, my room is like an atelier, everytime that I get my guitar, it’s like a white canvas, ready to be painted.

No. 6)  Do you identify to your music and if so, on what level?

6)Talking about my music is hard, but I have to say that I feel that it is becoming more and more original, and in fact it is for me very important,  I work everyday for it, I have big, nice compliments for many masters musicians all over the world, and  it gives me strength to move forward.

The only thing is that playing live, getting interesting, creative gigs is more and more difficult, and people apparently don’t enjoy anymore creative and original music.  You need to spend lots of money in the press,and again, just getting a  few people coming to your gigs.

In this weird and strange, illogical world,  music education is living a wonderful time, as musicians, we are living and saving money giving lessons, clinics, making books, and teaching privately or in schools/universities, and sometimes I could ask myself where will all these new students will present their music, we are lots and lots more musicians than in the past, and it grows everyday. 

DSC00667David Liebman talks a lot about the ugly situation that jazz musicians have now, he said there is no work outside,  still, I have enough strength fo fight against this, and I can not stop making original, creative music, I play solo jazz/bossa guitar, duos and trios, and I have a 12 tone/atonal music project called Praxis, that is in a duo with a piano player, and now we include a drummer, this music is my flag, and these are all my compositions, 

and I will push my music the most that I can, internet now is a good thing, because people all over the world could listen to you, internet puts you on the map, and I take advantage of it, no doubt about it. The only bad thing about internet is that many bad musicians are there too, uploading videos to youtube or any other web places.

No. 7)  Under what conditions do you work best?

7)I work better playing my music, whenever I play  someone else’s music I can love it, but I’m not myself one hundred per cent.  Besides that I need wonderful musicians behind me , supporting my music , melodic and, rhythmically and about interplay, I need sensitive guys, they have to want that you give the best of yourself, and not the opposite. Ego is not a good thing when you count 4 and the music begins.

I work better if the environment is warm, with respectful club owners, cool public watching and listening, and with people keeping silent, a hard thing nowadays.  If the place has plentyIMG_5178 of woods, dim lights, nice weather, music will flow. Good acoustics are a must, and possibly a quimera, lol.  If I’m the studio, I need respect for the musicians, sometimes studio owners and engineers think that they know  my music better than I.

I work better when the musicians that are playing with me, look me in the eyes when they are soloing or composing, it means that they are listening to you.  Friendly musicians it’s a must too.  And perhaps, I need peace on my mind, if I have  problems in my personal life, it becomes that much harder.  Anytime that I feel bad or at least a little down, playing my guitar helps me a lot, and for that reason I’ll never stop playing my guitar, I love it for ever!!

Again, Juampy, thank you for being so generous with your thoughts and feelings and experiences along the way.  We’ll stop here and save the rest of your article for the next time.

To be continued…

TO THE READER :

You are cordially invited to visit Juampy’s links to hear more of his music and get to know him even more.  As always, your comments are most appreciated, thank you so much and enjoy! 

www.modernguitarlessons.blogspot.com  
www.youtube.com/user/juampyjuarez  
www.mikesmasterclasses.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Juampy-Juarez
https://twitter.com/#!/JuampyJuarezgtr  

http://www.dimarzio.com/player/juampy-juarez

http://youtu.be/BRJLL4xAZDE

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Filed in: MUSIC • Thursday, November 1st, 2012

Comments

By Daniel Spina on November 2nd, 2012 at 8:14 am

Juampy Juarez is a great guitar player. He´s my guitar teacher and I´m very proud. Also, he´s a very good person and friendly. He teach with his soul and is very “appasionato” of music in general.

By pancho guidarelli on November 2nd, 2012 at 12:01 pm

Juampy no solo es en excelente musico y muy buena persona, lo q predomina en el es su gran humildad, puede tocar con un principiante con las mismas ganas y pasion que con un artista reconocido mundialmente. Eso para un musico de su calidad y trayectoria no es comun. (Please, use the google translater, my english is not very good when i write)

I’m truly enjoying the design and layout of your website.
It’s a very easy on the eyes which makes it much more pleasant for me to come here and visit more often.
Did you hire out a designer to create your theme?
Outstanding work!

 

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About

My name is Michele Andree. I am an artist, I paint musicians in action. I think I’m a musician at heart, my instrument being… a brush, so I play…brush and I paint… music.
I love jazz. I call it freedom music. It promotes special values. I love intelligent people and good conversations.

Some people ask me how music relates to art. Personally I find they go hand in hand. Music is what turns me on to painting. It makes me see colours