We recently connected with Guy Klucevsek and have shared our conversation below.
Guy, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
It took me quite a while to develop my confidence and self-esteem, because I felt my worth only existed in comparison to others, whereas the simple truth is that I have a unique background, history, influences, personality, as does every other person. Once I finally realized that, I learned to appreciate and celebrate what I am, rather than whatever I feel (rightly or wrongly) I may lack.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am a musician—specifically, an accordionist and composer. I grew up in western Pennsylvania, studying accordion as a classical instrument, while also learning the music of the Slovenian-American culture I grew up with there. In my late teens and early twenties, I began composing music for accordion, and, eventually, other instruments as well. In order to be in the midst of what I felt was the center of artistic activity in the 70s, I moved to New York City, where I have been ever since. Since arriving here, I have had the chance to: free-lance as accordionist in a wide variety of settings including as a soloist; with chamber ensembles, bands, improviser collectives; commission dozens of composers to create new pieces for me; and, as composer, collaborate with choreographers, theatre artists, and filmmakers. I also love the process of recording, whether on my own projects or those of others, and have had the good fortune to be able to pursue that activity as well. Among the countless things I love about what I do: I get to create something from scratch, work with others to bring it to life, and share it with listeners who are often hearing it for the first time; I have traveled the world playing music throughout the Americas, and across Europe, Japan and Australia; I have had the good fortune to work with some of the most gifted musicians, producers, creative artists and technicians of our times, developing close friendships with many of them along the way.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Seek out teachers, mentors and advisors who will help you to develop your individual interests and skills to the utmost, rather than trying to fit you into a mold. I was very fortunate to have an accordion teacher, Walter Grabowski, who instilled in me a love for classical music, and the belief that the accordion deserved to be in that world. He also stressed musicianship and expressivity as much as technique. My first music composition teacher, Robert Bernat, gave me some advice which forged my path. What he said was along the lines of: “You are a wonderful accordionist, and there is not enough original music being written for your instrument. You should create your own music for it.” He got me out of the mind-set that I had to immediately dive into writing for string quartet, orchestra, opera–plenty of time to do that later, if I chose to. My next composition teacher, Morton Subotnick, introduced me to electronic music, of which he is a pioneer. Also, he had no particular “axe to grind” in terms of stylistic “isms;” he introduced me to serialism, minimalist, post-modernism, but did not dictate what language I should write in. This allowed me to develop my own vocabulary and language, and, for that, I am forever grateful.
2. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate!!! Work with other people as often as you can, from as wide a variety of fields as you can. I thought I would spend my life as a composer purely creating music for the concert hall. Instead, serendipitously, I found myself writing music for dance and discovered I LOVED doing that. Don’t pigeon-hole or pre-limit yourself. Don’t be afraid to “fail.” After all, what IS failure? Is it writing a book or play that is not a commercial success at first? Is it doing a recording which does not sell well? Is it inventing something that does not get backing? I don’t think so. Those are measures of commercial, not artistic achievement. You keep at it. If you have to do it, you WILL do it, come what may.
3. Vision, goals, direction: how do you SEE yourself; what do you hope to achieve in whatever field you are in; how do you find ways and people to help you on your path? As a creative and performing artist, I found it invaluable to my development to attend as many performances and exhibits as I could in all art forms. Not only did that inspire and educate me in possibilities, it literally introduced me to people with whom I would collaborate, often for years, or even decades.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
At the end of 2018, I was dealt several health challenges, which led me to all-but-retire from public performance, after 50+ years. Once I made that difficult decision, I had to ask myself, what now? Instead of focusing on what I could NOT do, i.e., perform and tour, I realized there were still things I COULD do as a creative artist–e.g., continue composing, but more for accordionists OTHER than myself now; and write more for other instrumentalists; create audio- and video-recordings at home, and self-publish a book of my accordion compositions. With the help of a handful of extremely talented and generous friends, I have been doing all of these things. I wrote accordion solos for four fine players, all friends, whose playing I love and admire. I wrote several piano solos, which have since been recorded and performed by Jenny Lin. In 2019, I collected 19 of my compositions from over the decades and self-published a book, “Vignettes: Short Pieces for Accordion,” which is now distributed by Starkland@Bandcamp. To go along with this, I, along with several of my accordionist friends scattered around the world, recorded every one of these solos and included the recordings as digital-downloads to go with the book of scores. I collaborated with filmmaker, videographer, cameraman, Ray Foley, on music videos of several of my solos, recorded in my living room in Staten Island, NY. We released them on my YouTube site, where they remain. Once the pandemic hit in early 2020, forcing us to isolate, I collaborated with pianist Jenny Lin on a remote recording of Giya Kancheli’s “Simple Songs,” 33 pieces which we divided into solos for piano and accordion and duos for the two of us, for which I did the arrangements. The recording was released on Steinway & Sons in 2021. With my 75th birthday approaching in 2022, I was invited by Roulette Intermedia, in Brooklyn, NY, to present a concert of my music to celebrate. Unable to perform myself, I produced the concert by engaging the services of a circle of my friends and collaborators from over the years–Todd Reynolds on violin, Jenny Lin on piano, and a bevy of fine accordionists: the Bachtopus Accordion Ensemble, Alan Bern, Will Holshouser and Nathan Koci. This concert was video recorded and is available for viewing in the Roulette Intermedia Archives. Inspired by the concert, which included a lot of unrecorded pieces, I decided to make an audio recording in the summer of 2022, using all of these fine musicians. The resulting recording, entitled “Hope Dies Last,” was released on Starkland@Bandcamp on December 1, 2023. I stepped out of retirement to perform myself in September of 2022. I was asked to create and arrange music for the appearance of “Little Amal Walks” at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, near my house in Staten Island. Little Amal is a 12-foot puppet (designed by the same folks who did “War Horse”), representing a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl (and, by extension, refugee children worldwide), and became one of the most emotionally moving and thrilling events of my life and career. I arranged the music for a quartet of trumpet, saxophone, bass clarinet and accordion. Because the band had to be mobile, leading a procession, I needed to be mobile, too. Since I was unable to carry my accordion, Snug Harbor arranged for me to seated on a golf cart, facing backwards, towards the rest of the band, who were walking. Seeing hundreds and hundreds of folks of all ages and ethnicities joyfully interacting with Little Amal brought chills up my spine. The trumpet player and curator of the event, Volker Goetz, suggested after the event that we should find a way to play the music again. We received a grant which provided a commission for me to create more music and arrangements for the same personnel, which I did for the winter-summer of 2023. I then stepped out of retirement for the second time to do a concert of the music in October of 2023, again at Snug Harbor Cultural Center (but this time indoors). In the week leading up to the concert, we recorded all the music in my living room, produced and engineered by Jeanne Velonis, a long-time collaborator of mine. We are now editing the tracks and now in discussions with a label, with eyes towards a release later in 2024.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.guyklucevsek.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/guy.klucevsek
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@gklucevsek?si=_mrYjB8umPEte3PX
- Other: https://starkland.org/catalog/guy-klucevsek-hope-dies-last/ https://starkland.org/catalog/gkm110/
Image Credits
Lance J. Reha, Jan Klucevsek, Jeanne Velonis, Ray Foley, Alexey Novikov
