[2015075] FUSION GUITAR: CLASSICAL & PERCUSSIVE GUITAR
Declan Zapala @ The Garage International – Town Hall
9:00pm, Tue 24 Feb 2015
So – I’m scanning through the Fringe Guide in early (late?) January, and a phrase leapt off the page at me: “You won’t believe it’s just one man and a guitar.” I’m interested, and read the rest of the précis… and when I saw “classical & percussive guitar”, I immediately thought of the amazing Tim McMillan. But I’ve been hurt by that expectation before, so I was a little wary when heading to the Town Hall.
But I bump into some old neighbours in the queue out front, and we have a nice chat… it’s been ages since I’d seen them, and we swap stories and they’re super-interested in hearing about my new belle, and I’m loving the opportunity to tell them about it since (a) I’m pretty sure they thought I was gay, and (2) she’s coming to Adelaide in three days and to say that I was a little excited was an extreme understatement. Anyway… we chat, the doors open, and the deceptively large Town Hall venue gets about a quarter full of mainly middle-aged people who mostly seem to have some idea who Declan Zapala is.
I, however, have no idea who he is.
It turns out that Zapala is a slight, quiet Englishman who plays guitar well. His fingers are undoubtedly quick, but I must admit to being a little disappointed with his opening two pieces, both Eric Roche covers… the technical skills were certainly there, but there was little engagement on the musical level.
But once Zapala moved onto his own compositions, my interest was stoked: they tended to be more uptempo, intricate pieces that showed off the fast fingering style of guitar that I’d been hoping to see. And this was genuinely compelling stuff… for awhile. But let me be completely honest here: the music was awesome, but – once I got the groove of any of his pieces, and figured out his rhythms and percussion points – I spent much of the performance with my eyes closed, imagining that I was in the arms of my Significant Other. My mind would drift forward another three days… but then the song would end, there’d be some wonderfully English banter with the audience, and the next song would grab me… for awhile.
Fusion Guitar was certainly well-performed, and Declan Zapala’s own songs were compelling listening… and he’s a lovely bloke, too, with his amiable chatter and insistence on meeting people at the end of the show. But rather than songs being a fusion of nimble picking and percussion, as I’d hoped, alternate songs tended to focus on one of the two styles… and that left me longing for McMillan’s batshit-insane approach to melding the two approaches in the one song.
(75) FUSION GUITAR: Brilliant percussive guitar theatrics. Own compositions were complex highlights. #ff2015 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 24, 2015