You have never heard Mozart like this before.
Drew Henderson and Michael Kolk, the two men in the Henderson Kolk Duo haven’t been in Yorkton before, and they haven’t committed their new arrangement to record yet. Plus, it’s never been on guitar before. They’re on tour with Prairie Debut, and will be performing in Yorkton as part of the Yorkton Arts Council’s Stars for Saskatchewan series on March 3.
There isn’t a lot of duo guitar music, says Henderson, but there are many great composers who have never written for guitar, including the aforementioned Mozart, but also Chopin and Beethoven.
“It’s sort of irresistible to explore this music. It’s easy to enough to read part of it off of a piano score or an orchestral score, and from there you get a sense if it can work for two guitars. A lot of it does.”
The duo did get ambitious with the Mozart symphony arrangement, and Kolk did have to play on an eight string guitar just to get the flexibility to play it.
“It has taken eight years and we are finally getting around to recording it.”
Compressing a symphony down from a room full of musicians to two men with 14 strings between them isn’t easy, Kolk admits.
“It was tough because we like to make the arrangements pretty interactive between the two players. The melody is easy enough, it’s everything else that has to go underneath... Some things are impossible to voice with the guitar, because we kind of have to do everything with one hand, so we have to reduce a little bit. It’s in the same way a pianist would have to make a reduction of an orchestra... Making it sound convincing with that reduction is the main challenge.”
It’s not just reducing many instruments to one, but also moving pieces from one instrument to two.
“Doing something with two guitars has a particular beauty. For example, the way in a classical composition there is often a dialog between two parts, that would otherwise be played by one person. The dialog between two guitars is something that’s really fun, it enhances the music, particularly something that should be played on one instrument. Dividing amongst two instruments can make it a little bit more beautiful and fun to watch to be honest. The melody bounces between the two guitars.”
Henderson and Kolk met studying at the University of Toronto. The guitar program was young, and Henderson saw other players on other instruments on chamber groups. He requested a course from the dean, and he was happy to get it going.
“From there, I chose the best player I could, so I chose Michael Kolk, and that was it. We had a pretty good chemistry right off the bat, and we actually started arranging things immediately.”
That chemistry is what has helped the group stay together, whether on stage or on the road. The duo loves guitar and loves seeing new places, so the Prairie Debut tour is what they love to do.
“To last this long you need to really get along, not only personally but musically. To enjoy each other’s company. If you don’t, well, you won’t last very long.”
The duo is going across Saskatchewan, with five shows in five days, with the Yorkton show wrapping up the tour. They will be at the Anne Portnuff Theatre on March 3 at 7:30 p.m.
