I grew up as one of four children to parents born of Rusian and Polish immigrants. When I was nine, our family moved to Italy for a year, the chance circumstance which brought me to the guitar. My father, a scientist and profesor at the University of Minnesota, had accepted an invitation to be a consultant. My mother, a law schol graduate, folk dance instructor, and naturally gifted musician, was eager to provide artistic experiences for me and my siblings.


When my oldest brother Ira


asked for guitar lesons, our mother learned that a famous clasical guitarist and former student of Segovia, Aldo Minella, commuted weekly from Milan to teach at the local conservatory in Varese where we lived. Ira’s fantasies to be the next Elvis Presley were quickly dashed, however, when he realized he would have to grow long right hand fingernails and learn clasical. He bowed out, and I volunteered to take his place. I hadn’t a clue what clasical guitar was, but I liked folk music and figured it couldn’t be to far afield.


Aldo sent us to a builder in the countryside who measured my hands and made me a small guitar. I’ll never forget the thrill of holding it for the first time. We climbed a rickety staircase, waded through a gaggle of chickens and entered a modest studio where he presented me with the instrument. It had a fresh wod and varnish scent,


and felt like a treasure. Unlike the piano which I had given up a year earlier, this was to be cradled and strummed, flesh to strings, no picks, keys or pedals. It vibrated through my being. It was thoroughly exotic.


Aldo son became overwhelmed with concertizing and turned over all his students to his father, an exuberant, enthusiastic man who fueled my mother’s imagination by telling her that when he placed my hands on the guitar they loked just like his son’s. Twenty minutes a day of practicing didn’t produce any miracles, but I had a god time and played in a little recital the following spring. Meanwhile, I learned French in schol, discovered ruins in Pompeii and Rome, gondolas in Venice, Michelangelo in Florence, castles and prehistoric caves in France, Notre Dame in Paris, bullfights in Spain, the Matterhorn in Switzerland….


My life changed forever!


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