Opus One by Simeon Flick

Beset by aging hands and failing nails, Simeon Flick fought to finally check off a long-standing bucket list item with the release of 2020’s Scarlatti’s Greatest Hits For Classical Guitar, his self-produced debut on this challenging plucked instrument. Flick’s interpretive talents shone on those deftly arranged, performed and recorded transcriptions of well-traveled yet still somehow obscure Baroque keyboard works, and he would have been fully justified in resting on those laurels, which made the rapid conception and completion of 2022s aurally bewitching Indigenous: The Spanish Guitar that much more surprising. He then felt compelled to make a third, just as a two-book serial novelist might aspire to attain the almighty status of “trilogy author,” and to continue proving he wasn’t a fluke to his audience, let alone to himself. But there was a dearth of novel ideas. What about a Scarlatti sequel, or another Spanish album? What about transcriptions of some of the gorgeous but untranslatable 20th Century solo piano works he had recently discovered and with which he had become utterly smitten? None of these concepts captivated Flick’s creative or practical imagination.

The most compelling idea––initially a minuscule what-if seed that would quickly take root and grow into a massive beanstalk of possibility in his mind––was to turn the impasse into an asset and at least temporarily refrain from recording the works of other composers, which had proven problematic in terms of copyright and swallowed pride. It was time for Flick to raise the bar once more by asserting himself no longer as just an arranger and interpreter, but now also as a composer in his own right.

Enter Opus One, which finds Flick achieving that very result, and with a style-blending aplomb that goes above and beyond providing one possible answer to the hypothetical question, “What if Yes’s Steve Howe extrapolated an entire album from Fragile’s ‘Mood For A Day’?”

Composition is hardly an unfamiliar endeavor to Flick, who had completed the impressionistic Three Contemplations in time for his University of Redlands senior recital on May 18, 1992, but he didn’t finish anything else until the Paganini-esque Capriccio no. 1 in E minor “The Acrobat” showed up as an anachronistic interlude on his third singer/songwriter album (the River Contemplation had made a similar appearance on the second). The wistful, even heartrending Rêverie Inclément, which had languished under the macabre working title Leper’s Waltz from its 1998 conception until its 2019 completion, rounds out the five pieces predating Opus One’s genesis.

Brand-new compositions began manifesting themselves in earnest during the summer of ‘22, spurred on by the setting of a 10-track minimum for the album and the ease of use of the recently acquired Guitar Pro notation app.

Jubilant album opener Capriccio no. 2 in E major “Cappuccino”, or the “Jazz Caprice”, borrows and beautifully elaborates on the first two measures of Domenico Scarlatti’s K. 135 harpsichord sonata before transitioning to a modern jazz feel (the seamless shift to a swinging A Dorian middle section and back is a thrilling twist). “Ciel Bleu” is deceptively plain in its initial imitative polyphony and innocuous key of C major, but a harmless adventure subsequently unfolds, proceeding like a dream through the enchanted forest of related keys and modalities. The triple-voiced, common-timed passacaglia Desert March manages to onomatopoetically imply its title, with a slow ostinato and cinematic theme steadily building up through the mirage-heat waver of exotic, eventually ominous tonalities. “Seven To Tango” starts with an elegantly arpeggiated intro before dropping into an animated––and sobriquet-apropos––7/8 groove awash in melody. Album closer Blues a la Ray is a hat tip to polyphonically adept Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, with a like-mindedly strident bassline in fifths supporting Mixolydian riffs, and features a rhythmic modulation to swinging eighths mid-piece.

The two Caprices notwithstanding, Flick presents himself more as an understated master of polyphony than a flashy technical wizard throughout this release, offering up sublime melodies underpinned by subtly innovative contrapuntal challenges that are as imaginative as they are idiomatic, and aid in sustaining the dazzling illusion of there being two guitars present instead of just one. He also puts the instrument’s quirky capabilities on full display with the execution of natural and artificial harmonics, the occasional Villa-Lobos-ian exploitation of movable chord shapes, and lush open string chords and unisons, none of which feel forced or superfluous in their dutiful service of the music.

The creation of new repertoire for the classical guitar carries an inherent stigma, as it is all too easy to lump many of the results in with one cheesy “new age”, “neo-classical”, or “world” genre or another, or is off-putting in its pretentious, melody-bereft complexity, amounting to nothing more than a self-indulgent vanity project on the part of the often too thinly spread modern creator. Rest assured, Opus One is not that kind of record; there’s no incongruous technical bombast or smarmy tropes––just ambitious guitar music of high harmonic and thematic value from a bona fide composer intent on amiably innovative outreach.

Of course it remains to be seen, but Opus One––which was far easier to assemble than Flick expected––has been the shot-in-the-arm challenge needed to unleash his full creative potential in the contemporary compositional arena and on the classical-guitar-enjoying world, so much so that he may never again record someone else’s music.

At the very least, if not comprising a significant and lasting contribution to the classical guitar repertoire, Flick hopes Opus One will sufficiently sidestep the stigma to become an esteemed aural experience for any listener.

Opus One is now available for download and streaming at premium online outlets. File under contemporary classical guitar music.

Simeon Flick is an independent San Diego-based heritage artist who specializes in Alternative R&B pop-rock music but dabbles in classical guitar on the side. His albums exhibit his prodigious, multi-instrumental musicality and poetic, confrontational, erudite, often humorous lyrics sung through his soulful vintage tenor. He owns and operates Blue Chair Studio in La Mesa, CA.

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