keskiviikko 15. elokuuta 2012

On times past and present, early music, and the electric guitar


Thomas C. Boysen at a home concert
at Vantaa Music Festival 2012

 An interview with Thomas C. Boysen


When I meet Thomas C. Boysen in a hotel lobby in Vantaa, Finland, he asks me where I’d like to do the interview. I say we should probably go upstairs to the now empty restaurant, because he might be bothered by the background music playing downstairs.
– I like many kinds of music, Boysen says, and I’ve already been upstairs. Let’s go downstairs!
Once seated, I list the topics I have in mind. Time permitting, we might finish up with the question of whether money brings happiness to Norwegian cultural life. Boysen laughs and suggests we tackle that last one first.





Germany and Norway on my mind

Although based in Germany for the last 17 years, Boysen still follows the press of his native Norway. He laments the government’s low level of investment in infrastructure, and explains that the cost of living is so high that people don’t really have loads of money to spend on culture. Unemployment is not much of an issue, however, and travel is cheap.
– Looking at things from the outside, I’d say that Norwegians aren’t aware of how lucky they are, Boysen remarks.
History is another major interest.
– Without history, we’re nothing. It makes us who we are. And it’s simply impossible to take early music out of context and to understand it.
– I have always been interested in everything old, like old buildings. I don’t really read about history, but I like learning about it in everyday life. In Germany, you see reminders of WWII every day. In Norway, nature speaks of Ice Age, Boysen reflects.
 
Thomas C. Boysen at St. Lawrence, Vantaa
Musical continuities
On his website, Boysen has a picture of all his instrument cases stacked up. There is the renaissance lute, Boysen’s main instrument, but also a baroque guitar, renaissance guitar, theorbo, vihuela and archlute. For a layperson, it’s hard to understand how anyone can master such an array of plucked instruments. Maybe it’s because Boysen is a third generation musician that he sees nothing unusual in this. 
– They’re all so similar, he says with genuine modesty.
Boysen’s father is an organ professor, and his mother is a pianist. They tried a clever plan: young Thomas would get an electric guitar as soon as he’d learn to play the classical guitar. Boysen thought it a bad deal, saved his pocket money, and bought the coveted electric guitar at the age of 11. The sales assistant at the music shop where Boysen and his father made the purchase was none other than Rolf Lislevand, his future teacher.
– I don’t believe in fate, but that was very strange, Boysen admits.
The story of how he discovered the renaissance lute is equally strange.
– There was a lute in the cellar of the music academy of Oslo, which I could borrow, since my uncle was a harpsichord professor there. When I tried it out, I knew right away that that was it.
Sometime after, Boysen took a master class and was reunited with Rolf Lislevand, with whom he went on to study at length.


Thomas C. Boysen, pensive
Boysen himself firmly sees his professional path as one of continuities rather than discontinuities.
– In continuo playing, I can use my pop/rock background more than my training in the classical guitar. In both rock and early music, there’s a certain freedom – nobody tells you this part’s got to be played piano. My pop/rock background is the very reason why I could learn to play early music so quickly, often just by hearing it.
He tells me he has recently taken up the electric guitar again.
– It must be part of mid-life crisis, this turning back to the things of your youth. All my friends play football these days. I don’t, but I just played the electric guitar at my first gig in 17 years!

Something lost
The passing of time has brought other changes as well.
– The whole early music scene used to be like a hippie movement. People absolutely didn’t want to play at Vienna’s Musikverein. Now the best they can do is to play at Musikverein.
Boysen is deeply concerned about the withering young audience. In his generation, people went to concerts in their youth before taking a break to establish their careers and raise a family. But the students of today haven’t followed suit, and, consequently, the audiences have aged considerably in the western world.
– I must confess that I miss having young people in the audience, Boysen says. 
– Of course, 25 euros for a ticket is a lot of money for young people.
Still, he wonders why things are different in the former Eastern Europe and Asia, and adds that music festivals somehow manage to draw more of the young crowd than other concerts do.

Thomas C. Boysen with Hans Knut Sveen at Vantaa Music Festival
Something found
Since Boysen has toured widely, I’m curious to hear whether he thinks that audiences differ from one country to another.  
– Finns are very different from Scandinavians, but people react to music in similar ways. Though in Spain, women keep fanning all the time, and Russian audiences are quite noisy. Once when we played in Moscow, the audience demanded an encore in the middle of the concert. And in South Korea, people went wild every time we managed to bow at the exactly same time! Boysen reminisces.
In his two years with Vantaa Music Festival in Finland, Boysen has played several home concerts. He had played in castles before, but never in somebody’s living room.
– I think home concerts are a fantastic idea! For many instruments, this is the absolutely right historical setting. For example, music written for the solo lute was meant to be played to an audience of eight people smoking their pipes and drinking red wine in Paris.
– At a home concert, the audience turns into individuals. People want to touch instruments and to ask questions, which wouldn’t happen in a church setting.
Non-western guest performances are another interesting aspect of Vantaa Music Festival. Boysen is sorry to have missed Tan Longjian Quartet’s performance last August, but said he would try to catch Bombay Jayashri’s concert this year.

At one point of the interview, I told Boysen that the time I’d originally mentioned was up, in case he needed to go.
 – I have time, he answered kindly.
Boysen’s only complaints were about the weather, and, even then, he added that it’s pointless to complain about such things. So let’s hope we’ll be luckier in that regard, if he comes to play for us again.

Text by Suvikki Honkkila    
Photos by Katri Somerjoki    

Vantaa Music Festival 2012 

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