California Guitar Trio

The California Guitar trio is an international group (one American, one Japanese, one German), who are disciples of Robert Fripp’s influential school of “crafty” guitar technique, recognizable by, among other things, its extremely precise and articulated style of fingering and plucking. I have seen them play a couple of times and it’s always an exhilarating experience watching them braid their highly disciplined individual guitar techniques into an incredibly intricate, stunningly tight, almost waterproof tapestry of sound. Their live sound can be heard on The Bridge Between, where they teamed up with mentor Fripp and his King Crimson cohort, Chapman Stick player Trey Gunn as the Robert Fripp String Quintet.

This, however, is from the CGT’s second studio album, Invitation, and amply showcases their phenomenal technique. Technically a studio album, I’d be surprised if there were any overdubs. Although I like their recorded music, like Junior Brown, I really didn’t understand how good they were until I saw them perform live. One of the things they are known for is their transcriptions of classical pieces (including what is perhaps my favorite piece of classical music, Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, which is included on this album). When I saw them open for a Robert Fripp solo concert at LA’s House of Blues, I had the great fortune of getting a seat right in center of the front row. Near the end of the show, the trio performed this track, Prelude Circulation, which is a transcription of a Bach prelude for keyboard. I was familiar with their version of this piece and was soaking in the glorious layered sound when I noticed a very peculiar thing. Each guitarist was only playing every third note. This had the benefit of making the piece sound richer than it would if played on a single guitar, as each note could be held three times longer than if one person were playing it on one guitar. But the technique involved was mind-boggling. How these three men could play every third note of a fairly uptempo piece was beyond me. Plus they were able to slow down and speed up in perfect synchronization. Having played in a band for a while, I understand that exhilarating feeling of becoming a part of a larger whole and sublimating your individuality for the group, but this was taking that concept to a stunning degree. It was as if I was listening to one being with three heads and six arms. Crafty, indeed.

Unfortunately, their predilection for transcribing classical pieces got totally out of hand on their follow-up disc, Pathways. It’s one thing to rework a Bach prelude, which, because of its original instrumentation (clavier) and its style (arpeggiated chords), lends itself well to the crafty guitar treatment. Even their version of Fratres is pushing it because part of the joy of that piece is the long legato phrases slowly growing from nothing, and the guitar is not particularly well suited to long legato phrases (unless you’re playing Michael Brook's Infinite Guitar, which they’re not). But when you take a symphonic warhorse like the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and rewrite it for three acoustic guitars, well, gentlemen, you’ve gone too far. The power and majesty of that piece depends on having the entire orchestra at your disposal, and three acoustic guitars, no matter how well played, won’t begin to give you the depth and range of sound required for such a monumental work. What was an interesting exercise has gone straight through novelty into tasteless joke. If they come out with another disc, I’ll have to look closely at the song list before deciding whether or not to give them another chance.