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"Guitar is my life"
William Jenks makes his living exploring the nuances
of classical guitar playing - and says he couldn't be any happier
By Dawn Taylor
A wedding emporium - the sort of place one goes to pick out a wedding dress - seems like an odd site for music lessons. But it makes perfect sense to classical guitarist William Jenks.
"I was looking for a place where I could meet with brides to talk about their weddings - I play a lot of weddings - and I was also looking for somewhere that I could teach,"
Jenks recalls. The studio space he leases, at the Island Station Wedding Emporium in Milwaukie, fits both criteria.
A highly regarded classical guitarist, Jenks, 31, plays
concerts and receptions (including a gathering hosted by Mayor Vera Katz) as well as corporate events and weddings throughout the Northwest. He says he also
has about 50 guitar students, ranging in age from 5 to 67. Business has been so good, he says, that he's considering expanding and adding more teachers.
Jenks says that, like most young people interested in music, "I was told by a lot of people that I'd never make a living this way."
He started playing guitar in college, at age 19. He says he wishes he'd started earlier, "but I think it's because I threw myself into it completely that I've come so far, so fast."
Starting out playing rock guitar, Jenks started studying classical techniques to improve his playing - and fell in love with music: "It was, for me, basically the beauty of the
instrument, and listening to the great composers, I started studying classical and never got out of it."
The difference between rock and classical guitar, Jenks says, is not just the music but
the technique. "you have to play with dynamics - more than one volume level, soft, loud and in between," he explains. "You're also studying and playing music from a broad
range of styles and composers, from the Renaissance to contemporary." Classical guitars always use nylon guitar strings, he says, and are always acoustic instruments.
"And you sit down when you play, using a footstool."
Jenks has three guitars, one of them hand-crafted for him by Portland luthier Woodley
White. The process for custom-making a guitar, Jenks says, starts with the choice of wood. "There are two woods used for the fronts of the guitars - they're either 'cedar
top'or 'spruce top,'" he explains. "Cedar produces a more warm tone, a more seductive sound. Spruce-top is a brighter sound - much clearer. They also use premium, aged
wood; the back and sides are rosewood." Classical guitarists are split, he says about 50-50 on their preferences for cedar or spruce. His own custom guitar is cedar.
Jenks is currently working on a CD of baroque music to be released in the fall, and was recently chosen to study with Christopher Parkening - a student of Andres Segovia, and
considered one of the world's leading guitar virtuosos.
From Parkening, Jenks says he learned " to present the music to the audience in an
effective way - to play with feeling. I also learned the discipline to practice, to be really focused."
In passing his own knowledge on to his students, Jenks uses a traditional approach,
teaching fingering technique, note reading, music theory and repertoire development. It's an old-fashioned approach, but one that Jenks thinks is extremely valuable to the
student. "I think guitar instruction has become overly simplified," he says. They're not teaching note-reading anymore, so students are missing a lot of training."
He holds quarterly student recitals so that his students can get experience performing before audiences; several of his students will open for him at a free concert he'll be
presenting on March 16 at Cascade College.
"Guitar is my life," Jenks says, smiling, "I'm married and I have kids, but outside of that - I love guitar."
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