CHENNAI : He was four when Mircea Gogoncea first strummed a guitar. Today, the 26 year-old Romania-born classical guitarist, based in Germany, has 165 awards to his repertoire. “I started playing the piano before I took up guitar. But later on, I had to switch to guitar because my parents couldn’t afford a piano,” he says. On his debut tour to India, Mircea will be in Chennai today to conduct a workshop, and perform at Preludio’s event.
You started playing classical guitar at the age of four, how challenging was it?
It was not harder than any other activity I did. I was a lazy kid. I had to be convinced to eat, go to kindergarten, go to sleep, and play the guitar. It didn’t feel easier or harder than anything else I was doing.
You were five when you first performed on stage. What are your memories?
I have very few memories. My first performance was at a guitar competition for children up to the age of 10. I was told I was so small that the jury couldn’t see me from behind their large desk. I was asked to play on the jury table, rather than on stage.
You’ve performed in over 350 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. How has travel influenced your music?
It would be foolish of me to claim that I have fully taken in the culture of every country I have performed in. However, travelling to so many places has definitely impacted the way I view the world. I certainly see myself as a ‘citizen of the world’. After traveling for most of my adult life, I can confirm that a mind whose horizons have been broadened by travel can never go back to its original dimensions.
Who is your biggest source of inspiration?
People who fight for their dreams and passion against all odds, and define themselves by who they want to be rather than the circumstances they happen to have been born with or forced into, inspire me.
This is your first tour to India.
I am loving it so far. I just played my first concert in Kolkata and I can’t wait to experience the rest of the country on my tour. I will be going to Trivandrum, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Surat, and back to Mumbai on this trip. Everything is colourful here, everything tastes different, even the air and something as simple as pepper or a tomato salad is flavoured differently. I have wanted to experience Indian culture first hand ever since I was a kid.
Tell us a bit about the tour and your workshop in Chennai?
The purpose of my trip, apart from playing and teaching, is to pick up a guitar donated by a musician in Ahmedabad and bring it to a disadvantaged self-taught guitar teacher in Nigeria. I am also turning my entire trip to both India and Nigeria into a documentary which will be screened in Germany in May. The workshop is designed to take participants through necessary musicianship and technique skills for professional musicians and will be an interactive activity meant to develop not only the way they make music but also the way they listen to it.
It will be followed by my concept concert ‘A Trip around the World of Music’, which is an innovative programing scheme where music is ordered geographically by the country of every individual piece’s composer, rather than chronologically.
What do you think about the music community in India?
In my five days in India so far, I have only met highly motivated, attentive, knowledge-hungry, with an unwavering desire to keep learning and improving. This reminds me a lot of the situation in my home country of Romania a few decades ago.
What are your thoughts on doing a fusion with Indian music?
I would love to do so. Unfortunately, although I have listened to it, I am almost entirely illiterate when it comes to Indian classical music. I would love to embark on the journey of discovering it and finding out more about both its similarities and differences to western classical music!