Pardon our appearance as we redesign JayKauffman.com
About Me:
I’ve been playing and performing classical guitar for nearly 40 years. I grew up in India and the Philippines. In the early 90s I found myself in New York City for the first time, getting a graduate degree in performance at the Juilliard School of Music. By now I’ve lived in Manhattan long enough to fool most people into thinking me a native, not that that’s ever my intention. I created this website to share and showcase my compositions, arrangements, performances and occasional other stuff. My “official” bio is here. If you live on the Upper West Side, drop in to Kuro Kuma coffee shop sometime around 10 AM and chances are you’ll run into me!
Here’s a video recording of the 2nd Movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik:
The score and tablature are available here.
My online technique course now available for $25 To access the course, click here.
Over the next week I’ll be sharing a short series of videos from the course with you for free.
To watch the first one, about holding your guitar, click here.
To watch video two, about left hand leverage, click here.
To watch video three, about the differences and commonalities between the hands, click here
To watch video four, about how to position and move the right hand, click here
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525 Arranged for Solo Classical Guitar
This is it—the full Serenade No. 13 for Strings, K. 525.
It’s transcribed for the advanced classical guitar, from G Major into D Major. The Rondo in C is in G Major. If you’re a bit burned out on Sor and Giuliani and their ilk, it’s a lot of fun to play a great composer such as Mozart on the guitar. A worthy challenge for all!
Click here or on the picture for more info.
Archipelago
I’m exploring an extended group of Islands that have been hidden from Google Maps due to their aural nature. The musical ecology I have found so far in this journey seems to draw its inspiration from many parts of the globe. And yet each island in this hitherto hidden Archipelago seems to have also developed its own vivid and pristine musical ethos—highly unique to its shoreline borders.
Although I am still in the initial stages of navigation, the Archipelago shows promise of being quite extensive and wondrous. So stay tuned to my blog for further updates!
Island Three was discovered in 2007, but very recently I revisited it and was happy to find that it had evolved and even been re-fingered into a form more playable by someone like me who’s not a flamenco scale speed demon:)
This is a live clip from my June performance at Make Music Harlem, a wonderful musician/composer concert in Morningside Park, Harlem, Isle of Manhattan.
J.S. Bach’s Prelude, from the Cello Suite BWV 1007: A repertoire course on my Art of Guitar website.
This is a “contemplative” interpretation of the prelude, inspired in part by the lute and harpsichord tradition of playing and composing improvisatory, unmeasured preludes—sometimes even used as a way to tune the lute. It was literally the first thing I played upon picking up the guitar that morning, and although I didn’t use the prelude to tune the instrument, it was a way to tune myself to the instrument and to the music.
