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Nicholas Goluses turned 70 this year, but this guitarist who has been praised as a “musician’s musician” and “a true American master” is nowhere near slowing down, let alone retiring.
He continues to teach a full load of 18 students at the Eastman School of Music, where he has received the Eisenhart Award for Excellence in Teaching. Goluses celebrated his milestone birthday by joining his colleagues in a concert in March, and he offers a solo recital at Eastman on Sept. 29 with repertoire from his new album, “Across the Horizon,” from Albany Records.
The album celebrates many kinds of voyages, and Goluses is still enjoying his own journey, which began in Rhode Island in the 1960s, when he played electric guitar in a rock band. One Sunday night his father called him to see a guest on “The Ed Sullivan Show”—the revered Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia, performing Bach.
“Segovia really spoke to me,” Goluses recalls. “His playing was like water—the colors just flowed. It was as if his hands were dancing on the instrument.
“My father told me, ‘You just heard a real musician.’ So, I guess the gauntlet was thrown.”
Goluses recalls that he had to teach himself, as there were no classical guitar teachers in Rhode Island in the 1960s. He progressed well enough to be admitted to the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with another outstanding guitarist, Manuel Barrueco.
Goluses found an ideal model in Barrueco’s teaching and playing.
“He plays with wonderful precision and wonderful lyricism—two very different things that don’t always co-exist,” he says.
Like Goluses, Barrueco is still actively teaching.
“As long as we can continue to contribute to young people’s lives, we’ll both keep going, because we love it,” Goluses says.
Goluses received three degrees from Manhattan, and the opportunity to meet his (and every other guitarist’s) idol, when Segovia made a very rare journey to New York City to receive an honorary degree from the school in 1982. (Among all the master classes, celebrations, and interviews, Goluses discovered that Segovia did not recall that “Ed Sullivan Show” appearance as fondly as he did; to the guitarist’s annoyance, the “Applause” sign was turned on before he’d finished playing.)
When Goluses joined the Eastman faculty in the 1993, guitar professors were still a novelty in music conservatories. Thirty-two years later, almost all music schools have them and, according to Goluses, turn out remarkable young guitarists.
“Originally, the style of many teachers was ‘watch, and do it like me,’” he says. “This has changed almost completely. It’s all about customized teaching. It is not the same process for each student. Every year, I see students with amazing gifts walk in the door of my studio. The thought of limitations to their playing never occurs to them—they just do it.
“Nothing is broken, so I don’t need to fix it! It is much more enriching and effective to help them find their own solutions.”
Many of his students are building audiences by teaching the lively guitar curriculum at the University of Rochester’s River Campus.
In the past 30 years, Goluses has recorded numerous solo and chamber music albums, with music from J.S. Bach to Duke Ellington. “Across the Horizon” is his tenth, and he describes it as “a voyage across several continents, linked by the vision of each composer to create a soundscape for guitar.”
“I love sailing on Lake Ontario, and the feeling of seeing the horizon,” Goluses says. “That got to me thinking about all the journeys we’ve been on lately, good and bad, starting with the pandemic. I decided to make my next album a metaphorical journey—one we could take together across the Americas.”
For “Across the Horizon,” he focuses on composers of the 20th and 21st centuries—a couple are familiar, but most will be new to listeners.
The familiar names are composers Goluses describes as “towering giants” of guitar music, Astor Piazzolla and Heitor Villa-Lobos. Both are known for integrating classical technique with Latin American popular tunes and rhythms: Brazilian folk and pop music in Villa-Lobos’s classic “Etudes”; Argentinian tango in Piazzolla’s less familiar “Five Pieces.”
Closer to home, the album includes a “Fantasy” by Bill Dobbins, Eastman professor emeritus of jazz studies.
“I just love Bill’s music. He wrote a concerto for me, but I wanted a solo piece too,” Goluses says. “It’s jazz, and I had to adjust to performing in that style. But it’s a sophisticated piece, while being true to that language.”
Philip Houghton’s “Stélé” is an evocation of Greece mythology and landscapes by way of the composer’s native Australia. Welsh composer Stephen Goss’ “Concerto of Colours” wasn’t written for Goluses, but this is its first recording, joined by members of the Eastman Wind Ensemble conducted by Mark Davis Scatterday. The clever scoring for winds and percussion evokes the vibrant, sunlit colors of scenes of the American Southwest, and the guitar part is a virtuoso workout.
The presence of Dobbins’ music and performance by the EWE provides “the strong Eastman component” Goluses likes to include on his albums. He has also recorded chamber music with Eastman professors Bonita Boyd (flute) and George Taylor (viola).
“Across the Horizon” ends with “Home,” a thoughtful miniature by Andrew York of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet.
“The culmination of any voyage is the return home,” Goluses concludes. “I hope listeners will feel like we’ve been on a beautiful journey together.”
Goluses’ “Across the Horizon” will be released digitally by Albany Records today.
Goluses will perform the solo pieces from “Across the Horizon” (Piazzolla, Villa-Lobos, Dobbins, Houghton, and York) on Sept. 29 in Eastman School of Music’s Hatch Hall. General admission tickets ($10 or free to UR ID holders) are available at the Eastman School Box Office.
David Raymond is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.
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