Charles Mokotoff is a classical guitarist based out of the Washington D.C. area. He reccenty returned to guitar after a long break and has remastered an old recording for his first CD Autumn Elegy. I had the chance to Ask Charles a few questions regarding his experiences as a performer in the 1980s and today.


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Can you give us a bit of background on yourself? How did you start playing? Did you begin with classical guitar?


I guess I started like everyone else, playing electric guitar in a rock band, pretty young, something like 13 or 14. I kept that up right through to college, playing in one not so great band after another. When I hit college at 17 I met someone playing classical guitar, and that was it. She was working her way through the Six Lute Pieces of the Renaissance you know the Chilesotti works…and I was totally awed by it. I picked up a classical guitar somewhere and just kept on plugging. Lucky for me there was a fantastic teacher in my area who had worked with Yepes for years. She was very strict with me and laid the groundwork for my further study.


I also had an enormous capacity for practice. I just kept on improving and my family was very encouraging. It was all pretty surreal now that I look back at my college years, graduate study and resulting career, because, at around 15 years old, I lost a lot of hearing. But I just put on some blinders, ignored the apparent futility of it, and kept at it.


I studied with Edward Flower at Ithaca and also Carlos Bonell in London. Then I went on to do some work in early music on the lute with, among others, Paul O’Dette. But my real mentor was Michael Lorimer, who showed me what it was to be a pro. He knows the guitar, music and the business very well and has a way of guiding that is unlike any other teacher I have ever had, in any discipline.


You’ve just released a new album, tell us a bit about it. I noticed on your CD page that your recently released album was recording in 1985, was it released then? What did you have to do to get it ready for release now?


I did my New York Debut at Carnegie in 1987, but leading up to that had quite a lot of work in New England and also overseas. When I came back from some concerts in the Far East, I knew I just had to do some recording. We laid down the tracks on the CD Autumn Elegy in the summer of 1986 (that’s a typo on the web page, it says 1985) at a church inside Harvard Yard in Cambridge. We recorded at night so we could take advantage of the great acoustics but minimize ambient noise outside. Keeping that up for about a week, I learned what it was like to do the graveyard shift!


But, for some reason, with the pressure of performing and teaching and the looming NY Debut, the master never got pressed into a CD. It was way more complicated back then, so it just languished in my closet.


A good friend (that would be Scott Kritzer, no stranger to your blog) suggested having it re-mastered by Bernie Grundman. The before and after of this recording is just stunning. When I heard what he could do, I finally took the ball over the finish line after all those years and produced this CD just a few weeks ago.


You’ve been an active performer for a few decades now, what has changed about the classical guitar concert? Is it the same world out there for the classical guitarist today as it was 15 years ago?


Actually that is not entirely the case. Around 1993 or so, I just hung it up. Got a job in the IT world and started a family. I just said goodbye to the guitar for quite some time. It was a period of reflection and self-examination for me; I also became fluent in American Sign Language and met lots of fascinating people, both deaf and hearing. But one day, really just one day, I felt I had to play, of all things Sor’s Andante Largo Op.5 #5. I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I took my old concert guitar, out of that same closet, the very instrument on which I recorded my CD and did all my concerts, and started to play again. It was slow going for about a month, but things picked up quickly.


That was about 3 years ago and I have been practicing daily ever since. I do lots of small gigs around the DC area, but also some full recitals. I performed a concerto with a local orchestra this season, and have a few recitals out of the area. One recital in Chicago this June is under the auspices of William Coble, composer of the wonderful guitar solo, Autumn Elegy. I keep busy and, in many ways, sound better than ever.


2009 is a much different world for guitarists and I can sum it up in one word: “internet”. When I was doing my thing in the ‘80’s I had to send out typed sheets of paper with my PR, headshots, and cassettes. Then spend at least an hour or two daily on the phone. Now, one URL does it all, you send a couple emails and there you go, contact made. Of course it isn’t any easier to get a gig, but at least by the large number of contacts you can make, the odds increase greatly. The downside of this is a lot of players are perhaps better at websites and publicity than the guitar, so that can’t be too good. But in general, I am overwhelmed with the sheer number of guitarists, many who are quite accomplished. You can hear them all going at it on YouTube, which has to be one of the wonders of the world…it can be a big time waster too if you aren’t careful!


Another thing that fascinates me to no end this time around is the guitar itself. Back then, I was faithful to one guitar for 15 years or more, now in three years I have bought and sold quite a few. I have already had, or still have in a few short years, guitars by Delarue, Bernabe, two different Humphrey’s, and now my current love, an instrument by Andrea Tacchi. I also have on order a guitar by Ross Gutmeier who is a very talented luthier in Baltimore, I am sure we will hear more about him in the future.


What was it like coming back to the guitar after such a long break? What did you do to get back to your former level?


Coming back to the guitar after a long break was a complicated experience. Over all of it was relearning the music, my hands seemed to move like always, just a bit slower, but I didn’t recall anything to play. Reading music came right back of course, but I grappled with scales, arpeggios, tone production, LH slurs, like anyone does. It all came back faster than I could imagine.


The big thing was more psychological, i.e., I am technically not a professional guitarist anymore, wow, this is fun! I was just doing this because I wanted to, not because I needed or had to. There were many other hobbies I could pursue, but with my training and diligent study many years ago, why not enjoy myself with the guitar? There have been a few full concerts I did last season and so far this one where I got nervous, questioned why I was doing this, etc. In the dress rehearsal for the Concerto I did a few months ago I recall thinking, what am I crazy? Why am I doing this again? But, not unlike Segovia who claimed nervousness and apprehension before each concert, that he made up his mind each one would be his last, and then after the performance just dying to do it again, I decided this was fun and worthwhile, I should be doing this. I have been preparing for these concerts basically all my life.


What I do now is really not much different than what I had always done, only less of it. That would be daily practice, no matter what, come hell or high water as they say, I would spend at least an hour with the guitar. I wrote out a schedule of pieces to review, new music to learn and at least 15 minutes or so of technical exercises. Some good days I get two hours, rarely up to three. This is a big departure from the old days when five or six hours of practicing was fairly routine for me.


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More to come tomorrow!

Did you enjoy this article? Check out An Interview with Charles Mokotoff, Part two .

About the Author

Christopher Davis founded The Classical Guitar Blog in 2008. He is currently pursuing a Masters degree in guitar performance. In addition to his studies, Chris is an active teacher and performer based in Middle Tennessee. Connect with Chris on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and the Classical Guitar Network.

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