It’s early July and I’ve just arrived in London. After taking the Tube from inside Heathrow Airport to the Turnham Green stop in West London, I step outside to find the night air is warm and muggy. It’s a two-block jaunt past darkened shops and bustling pubs to my hotel. The Brits are mindful that visiting pedestrians might not be accustomed to their driving patterns, so painted on the curb at every cross walk is the warning “Look Right.”

As the editor of Berklee Today, a magazine published by Berklee College of Music in Boston, I sometimes travel to great cities like London on assignment. I’m here to interview and do a photo shoot with jazz pianist/composer and BBC host Julian Joseph, a major figure in London’s jazz scene. But after my work is done each day, I plan to seek out things of interest to me as a classical guitarist.

I try to bring my guitar along on these trips whenever possible, to keep my chops up and avoid vegging out in front of the TV in my hotel after work. My guitar, a 1998 spruce-top made by Italian luthier Gioachino Giussani, has a very compact, custom-made case that has always fit into the overhead bins on domestic flights. I felt I’d pulled off a caper getting the guitar onto the craft without being told I’d have to check it, but the overhead bins on the wide-body Boeing 777 were too small to accommodate my instrument. A sympathetic stewardess stows it in a closet in the first-class section, and I make my way toward the cheap seats at the back of the plane.

After working on my story here for a few days, I find myself in front of the famed Spanish Guitar Centre in Soho (www.spanishguitarcenter.com) and decide to go in for a look around before they close for the day. Len Williams, the late father of classical guitar virtuoso John Williams, established the shop as a teaching studio in 1952. Now Barry Mason is the proprietor, and the pictures on the wall show that some pretty high-profile guitar players stop by periodically. Barry keeps an impressive inventory of classical and flamenco guitars and recently began stocking Martin and Taylor steel-strings.

Gerard Cousins teaches here two evenings a week and is tending the register today. A recent graduate of Leeds University (majoring in classical guitar), Gerard shows me some great mid-priced instruments by makers I was unaware of. I fall in love with a cedar-top by Spanish builder Amalio Burguet selling for £999 (about $1,680), and I also take a shine to a spruce-top by Antonio Picado of Barcelona, Spain, for £699 ($1,175). I thumb through the racks of hundreds of CDs featuring top European guitarists whose work can be hard to find Stateside, including Hungary’s Katona Twins, Italy’s Oscar Ghiglia, British virtuoso Graham Devine, and the fantastic French composer/guitarist Roland Dyens. I buy a few items, including a folio of music that I failed to find during my last visit to the well-stocked Luthier Music in New York then make myself leave before I buy more than I can stuff into my suitcase for the flight home.

On Saturday, I arrive early to my photo shoot with Julian Joseph at Steinway Hall to scope out the site. We guitarists really shouldn’t complain about the prices of even the most high-end concert or vintage guitars. I pity the serious concert pianists shopping for Steinway grand pianos when I see price tags reading £80,000 ($134,400)! The results of the shoot with Julian are fantastic and I leave Steinway in the late afternoon walking on air. There is even more spring in my step because next on my agenda is a visit to the home of classical guitarist John Williams.

I have been a huge fan of Williams since the 1970s and met him in 1998 in New York while writing a feature for Acoustic Guitar. It is a thrill to be standing on his doorstep. John welcomes me and introduces me to his wife, Kathy. While making tea in the kitchen, he tells me that he just returned from one of his Impressions of Africa concerts in Córdoba, Spain. In addition to his solo recitals, Williams and a group featuring John Etheridge (steel-string guitar) Paul Clarvis (hand drums and other African instruments), Richard Harvey (flutes, whistles, mandolin, dulcimer and other instruments), Chris Laurence (bass), have been presenting music from Williams’ 2001 CD The Magic Box for the past two years. We start talking about jazz and some of its key figures—an area about which he is quite knowledgeable. He tells me about his daughter, Kate Williams, an accomplished jazz pianist who plays all around London and has released two CDs.

Williams points to the week-old stack of newspapers he has been perusing and the conversation turns from music to another of his passions: politics. Williams is avidly following the political row that has embroiled British Prime Minister Tony Blair regarding pre–Iraq War statements about the threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Williams is eager to hear how Americans feel about the subject. Before we know it, an hour has passed and we haven’t even touched on the topic I came to discuss: El Diablo Suelto, his latest CD of guitar music from Venezuela. The new disc features 26 works by Venezuelan composers like Vicente Emilio Sojo, Antonio Lauro, Heracio Fernández, Alfonso Montes, Raúl Borges, Ignacio “Indio” Figueredo, and others. The music is rhythmic, festive, and upbeat.

In the living room, Williams picks up a guitar leaning against the wall and plays some selections from the album. He seems most intrigued by those based on the joropo, a traditional Venezuelan dance rhythm that combines 3/4 and 6/8 simultaneously in a texture that includes a bass line, accompaniment, and a melody. His fingers seem to move effortlessly, bringing out three independent parts on a single guitar. Putting the guitar down, Williams goes to the stereo to play me an old recording given to him by his longtime friend, renowned Venezuelan guitarist Alirio Díaz, who originally piqued Williams’ interest in Venezuelan music. The recording features joropo music as performed traditionally by a harp, guitar, and bandoneon trio.

After a thorough discussion of guitars, Venezuela’s music, culture, and history, Kathy rejoins us and the conversation drifts back to politics. By now, I have been at their home for hours, yet the time has flown. I bid them both farewell, and turn to walk down a cobblestone street back to the Tube with thoughts of politics and music still in my mind. I momentarily wonder if Williams would ever consider following in the footsteps of piano virtuoso Ignacy Paderewski. After a brilliant concert career, Paderewski became prime minister of his native Poland in 1919. I dismiss the idle thought; it’s really not Williams’ cup of tea. I hope he’ll always be a concert guitarist.

On my last day in London, I have a few hours before my return flight to Boston, enough time to peruse the musical instrument collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington. En route, I pass street musicians and buskers in the Tube stations; their musical offerings range from “Volare” and Elvis hits (played on two guitars and an accordion) to Steely Dan songs sung by a guitarist struggling to remain standing inside the train as it lurches between stations.

Arriving at Exhibition Street, I go directly to the museum’s musical instrument display. The ancestors and cousins of the guitar are a diverse lot. The first case holds a ten-string English guitar from 1770 with 16 frets and a round, flat body. Others house a cittern from 1562, an Italian chitarone from 1614, an assortment of ten-course lutes, German theorbos, English harp lutes and harp-lute-guitars, an ornate 11-string baroque guitar, Portuguese guitars, mandolins, viols, and an Apollo lyre. Finally, I spot an ornate 1845 six-string guitar from Barcelona that looks like something I’d know how to play. The collection also includes flutes made of wood and glass, recorders, keyboard instruments, harps, oboes, music boxes, and an enormous one-stringed bass. All of these instruments exhibit exquisite workmanship. Periodically, early music specialists present concerts on them here. I’d love to hear the sounds these instruments make, but there’s no concert today.

After fetching my bags from the hotel, I take the train to Heathrow and catch a last glimpse of London as we slip underground. At the airline ticket counter, I'm told I’ll have to check my instrument, but they assure me that it will be hand-carried to the plane. Will it then be hand-thrown into the compartment, I wonder? Thankfully, seven hours later in Boston, my guitar is delivered to me in perfect condition—an excellent ending to a fantastic trip.

Cheers,

Mark Small