"That's not how you play that
song!" Those were the words that the junior high school-aged Fred Benedetti
heard as his guitar was yanked out of his hands. Another student that Benedetti
didn't know wielded the instrument and began to pluck. Guitarless and
flabbergasted, Benedetti sat back to hear a very bold upstart launch into the
tune that he had just attempted. He wasn't sure he liked this guy but had to
admit that the kid was playing the song better.
Close to 40
years later Benedetti enjoys recalling this unusual moment in his youth that
led to a lifelong friendship and fulfilling career as a classical musician. The
upstart who bested Benedetti was a young Jeff Pekarek, who is now one of San
Diego's finest bassists. Despite the abrupt introduction, the two became fast
friends and bandmates, and Benedetti credits Pekarek with later influencing his
vocation as a classical musician.
It's almost
impossible to live in San Diego and not know the music of Fred Benedetti. He is
one of this city's top classical guitarists and a prominent music educator who
has taught at local colleges for years. He performs locally, including dates
with the San Diego Opera, the San Diego Symphony, and the Starlight Opera. San
Diego fans of pop and jazz know his music through such efforts as Blurring the
Edges, his collaborations with local jazz icon Peter Sprague. And Benedetti has
performed all over the world, as a soloist and with musical luminaries such as
Luciano Pavarotti and jazz innovator Dave Brubeck.
For the
past 11 years Benedetti has performed in the lounge at the Four Seasons, the
tony resort in Carlsbad. For four hours a night he has mixed his classical
repertoire with some pop hits and jazz standards. Although he has been in the
spotlight, performing in concert halls all over the world, Benedetti feels
right at home playing his guitar in a room of people where listening to the
music is optional. "I don't mind in the least. Sometimes it seems that no one
is listening, and then there are other nights when the whole place is right
there with you," Benedetti says. Unlike the concert stage, the more intimate
setting also allows for a greater interaction with the audience that Benedetti
enjoys. "And at least once a night someone will come up and say ‘Hey I really
enjoy your music!'"
Benedetti
chooses mostly classical pieces to perform at the Four Seasons but mixes in
popular and jazz tunes. "I keep an eye on the makeup of the crowd to see where I
might want to take things next. Sometimes I'll think that the crowd will want
to hear something popular, but then it doesn't seem to go anywhere. And then
I'll think that I'm taking a chance on a challenging piece and they'll love it.
You never know."
Last year
the management of the resort asked Benedetti if he worked with any singers. Off
the top of his head Benedetti said that he didn't regularly work with vocalists
but that both of his teenaged daughters sang. Management liked the idea and
when he talked to his daughters both girls were pleased with the prospect as
well. Now Benedetti performs two nights a week at the resort with his daughters
– Regina, 20, and Julia, 17 – and one night as a solo performer. He says their
initial concern was having enough of a repertoire to fill four hours with
music. But the family band is constantly working on material. Even the drives
up to the resort offer time to work on tunes "The girls will play a song on a
CD and I'll figure out the chords. They already know the words to these songs,
so we've just added another tune to our list," he says.
Benedetti
enjoys this new mix of family time and gigging. And he sees his daughters learn
what the life of a working musician is like, that four hours of gigging will
leave anyone, young or old, tired and hungry. "But it's worth it," he says. "At
the end of the night we're all in great moods; we all feel great." Benedetti's
other steady gig, which he always performs solo, takes place at the Del Mar
Grande on Sundays, where he plays for their afternoon tea. It's the perfect
setting for an acoustic guitarist – quiet with great acoustics.
That leaves
Friday and Saturday, prime time for a gigging musician, open for Benedetti to
perform for other occasions. A self-confessed workaholic with no intention of
abating the condition, Benedetti takes advantage of any and all gigs. He says,
"I do all sorts of things – casuals, parties, weddings. At weddings I used to
do the ceremony and the reception, which means putting together a band, but I've
gotten spoiled. It's so much easier to just perform at another ceremony."
Amplification,
while it is the lifeblood and everlasting joy to rock and blues guitarists, is
what classical guitarists consider the bane of their existence and a product of
the devil, which they occasionally have to compromise with. Like other serious
classical guitarists, Benedetti performs without an amplifier for concerts and
small settings and feels quite strongly that the instrument should be heard
without the changes to the tones that come from pickups, microphones, and
transistors. "If you're in a good hall you want to hear the guitar, the good
tone and all the color of the instrument," he says. Nonetheless Benedetti uses
an amplifier to help out in settings where the acoustics are not the best. He
does not use an internal pickup but a microphone for better sound quality. And
even still, the amplifier is still secondary to the guitar. "I like it when
most of the sound is still coming from the guitar, and the amplifier is just
helping me to be heard," he says.
Benedetti's
father was a guitarist. Untrained and unable to read music, the elder Benedetti
relied on his ear to learn Bach and Albeniz from recordings. "It's surprising
how good his technique was. He had a really great thumb on his right hand,"
Benedetti says of his father as he demonstrates the quick stroking motion that
his father employed. One of the high points of Benedetti's musical life was the
master class that Andres Segovia taught at USD. Although he was performing for
the master, the man who put the guitar on the musical map, having his father
there to listen to his performance was his biggest thrill. "There I was 25 or
26 years old performing for Segovia, and I look out in the audience and there's
my father," Benedetti says with a note of pride in his voice.
At the age
of nine, when his family was living in Hawaii, Benedetti received his first
guitar. His father's preference for classical music having little influence on
him, the youngster picked out tunes of the Beatles, the Monkees, and other pop
hits of the sixties. And before his teen years he joined a band called the Get
Aways.
In high
school Benedetti, Pekarek, and the late James Lyons formed a trio. Reflecting
Benedetti's Asian heritage, the band was called San (rhymes with John), which
means three in Japanese. Often busking in Balboa Park, the band went beyond the
pop charts and played music that was opening up on the FM dial at the time,
such as Fairport Convention.
It was
through his work with this band that Pekarek influenced Benedetti in the
direction of classical music. Benedetti says, "It was at this point that Jeff
started taking lessons. He started using his bow when we played, and that was
very impressive to me. When he was 16 Jeff started playing with the San Diego
Symphony." Inspired, Benedetti started on the classical route himself, studying
with Roberto Torres, the best classical guitarist in San Diego at the time.
When he was
19 Benedetti performed every week on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the now defunct
Prophet restaurant with his partner Dan Grant. Lee Ryan, chair of guitar at
SDSU, heard Benedetti at the restaurant and asked him to join Orion, a
classical guitar quartet whose members were guitar students at SDSU. Joining
the ensemble, Benedetti was determined to make the quartet work. He dropped pop
and rock and went full bore into the classics. The quartet had some success
with performances and recording, but they unfortunately broke up. Nonetheless,
Benedetti's commitment to classical music was sealed.
A similar
turn of events led Benedetti into teaching. In 1985 Ron Sherrod, chair of the
guitar department at Grossmont college, asked Benedetti to teach at the school.
Benedetti was surprised and resistant to the proposal. He had not completed his
college degree and his emphasis was in performance, not education. But Sherrod
was insistent. Benedetti studied up and passed the exams for his teaching
credential. The next thing he knew, he was teaching folk guitar classes and
guitar ensemble at Grossmont College. He is now a full time professor of music
and chairs the guitar studies department at Grossmont, which is well known for
its top-notch guitar program. Benedetti also chairs the guitar department at
SDSU, which includes George Svoboda, Robert Wetzel, and Celine Romero.
Although he
once again felt a bit unprepared for the next teaching venture, Sherrod
encouraged Benedetti to apply for the full-time directorship of the concert
band, reminding the young man that full-time positions don't often come up.
Having played saxophone in his school's concert band, Benedetti was familiar
with the music and arrangements for the new position. But a roomful of
trombones and saxophones is a whole different animal than a handful of students
with guitars on their laps. Controlling the possible cacophony forced Benedetti
to develop his leadership talents.
Benedetti
tailors his teaching methods to each student and also considers the type of
music that the guitarist wants to play. "If I have a student in one of my folk
classes and when he grabs a D chord his thumb sticks out a little bit, that's
okay. He's still grabbing the D chord. But that's not what you can have in
classical playing," he says. He emphasizes the importance for all musicians,
popular as well as classical performers, to learn to read music, and unlike
some classical instructors who avoid using tablature (a type of musical
notation that demonstrates graphically the strings and frets to be used for
plucking and strumming), he encourages his students to learn this notation as
well as traditional written music.
Benedetti
says, "Time was when I'd teach at Grossmont from eight to two, at State from
three to five, then I'd have a change of clothes so I could go off to a
performance that night." He has slowed down from this frantic pace, but between
teaching and performing he is nonetheless quite busy. Besides local
performances, he tours with fellow classical guitarist George Svoboda, with
whom he has had a decades long partnership. They split their touring between
Hawaii, where Benedetti spent his childhood, and Svoboda's homeland, the Czech
Republic. The two performed several times at this year's Del Mar Fair.
For the
near future, Benedetti's schedule includes dates with Celtic bands and tango
ensembles, more touring with Svoboda, and of course his teaching obligations.
To find out where he's performing or if you're interested in taking guitar
classes at Grossmont or SDSU, go to
http://www.odeumguitarduo.com/solohomeset.html.