A Busy Summer, And A Future Filled With More Music

By Shannon Hicks

N

Newtown resident Erik Bagger is about to join the ranks of those who have released a self-produced solo album. Perhaps young Mr Bagger — a freshman at Newtown High School — will also become one of the lucky few who go from self-producing albums to having their work produced en masse, and performing in front of thousands of fans.

Down the road, there is no reason any of this cannot happen for the 14-year-old singer-songwriter-guitar player.

Erik has been working on his debut album, to be called August 2001, for most of this year. The album will offer ten tracks, nine of which were recorded in the studio and the tenth, a song called “It Don’t Matter,” that was recorded live at The National Guitar Workshop.

All ten songs were written and composed by Erik. The young musician also handled the recording and engineering, in addition the vocals for all but one song, playing electric guitar, steel string guitar, and banjitar on the entire album, performing bongo drums on one track, and keyboards on another.

Erik’s father, Peter, provided the photos for the front and back of the CD cover. The front cover is a picture of Erik playing the guitar. The back cover is a fantastic photo Peter shot will he and his sons were at Grant’s, a fly fishing camp the Baggers visit regularly. The photo shows Erik mid air, just after releasing from a rope swing.

Erik Bagger began playing guitar just five years ago, but he has already shared the spotlight with the legendary guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, opened with a solo set for Connecticut State Troubadour Kevin Briody, and has performed sets in a number of local open mic events.

He was nine years old and in Boston with his family when he saw a guitar in the window of a music shop and something tugged at him.

“It was a random thing,” Erik recently admitted. “It don’t know why I bought it. I hadn’t played any music before.” But he came up with the $35 the store was asking for the guitar and he eagerly returned home. Where he proceeded to put the guitar in a corner, and it sat and collected dust for the next six months.

Erik’s mother was the one who suggested her son pick up the guitar and start taking lessons. Erik’s first teacher was Jim Allen, and the two worked together for two years, until Erik decided he wanted to focus more on the classical aspect of guitar playing.

At age 11, Erik began attending The National Guitar Workshopb (NGW), a summer program with campuses set up in seven United States locations and another in Canada. Connecticut is home to one of these campuses, with six weeks worth of classes offered out of Canterbury School in New Milford.

For summer 2001 (the 18th season for NGW), students in New Milford had the opportunity to work with special guests Ty Tabor and Brett Garsed, attend a Blues Summit with Pat Metheny, or a Classical Summit with Ronnie Earl.

A typical day includes more than five hours of classroom time, plus ensembles, lectures and concerts. Students have opportunities to perform in front of a live audience, jam with other musicians, and student with world-famous artists, all in a positive, supportive and non-competitive learning environment. Teamwork and hands-on teaching are stressed. Attendees range from young teens to senior citizens.

“I was the youngest, by far, in all of my classes,” said Erik.

Attending NGW has been a good stepping stone for Erik. The first year he attended the workshops, he met a classical guitarist named Kim Perlack. Erik ran into Miss Perlack,  a grad student at Yale University, about a year after the workshop in New Milford, at a Yale Guitar Extravaganza. After discussing where he wanted his lessons to lead, Erik and Kim began working as student and teacher. Miss Perlack would present Erik with a lesson plan, which he would work on independently, and he would then contact her when he was ready to perform his latest lesson for her.

A few months into this arrangement, Erik began seeking instruction on jazz guitar as well. That was when he was introduced by Kim to another Yale grad student, Rich Hinman.

This past summer Erik returned once again to National Guitar Workshop, where he took a number of advanced classes.

Jazz 3 is an advanced course that covers whole-tone scales, diminished scales, combining melody and harmony, chord enhancement, and octave playing, using examples from the standard jazz repertoire.

Jazz 4 is a high-level master class designed for the student who has a thorough knowledge of the topics covered in Jazz 1 through 3. Students need to arrive prepared with pieces in at least three of the following styles: swing, bebop, modal and Latin, and then in class they handle applications and approaches to passing chords, chord extensions and other advanced skills, with musical examples taken from a variety of jazz styles

Erik also took Practical Music II, an intermediate-level music theory class that includes sight-reading, rhythm and fingerboard knowledge; Chord/Melody, which taught students to arrange music for solo jazz by combining melodies and chords, a class Erik calls “very complicated”; and Jazz Band, which was taught by Jeff Siegal from Western CT State University and offers students the skills needed to play in a jazz band.

Erik also took two NGW_Summits this year, five-day courses designed to immerse the serious player in a specific instrument or style of music. Summits offer the opportunity to attend workshops with visiting artists. Erik attended the Classical Summit one week and the Jazz Summit the following week.

Now, in addition to settling back into the routine of a new school year, Erik has been practicing his latest lessons and techniques since August.

“I’ve been working at getting all the material they gave me under my fingers, and that’s a lot,” he said. The CD, he hopes, will be ready by the end of the month.

Today Erik is playing a brand-new guitar he purchased from Mandolin Brothers in New York City, a D’Angelico New Yorker 2, which was delivered to his home the same day he started high school. The guitar features a floating pickup and a floating tailpiece.

“There’s not much touching needed at the top of a guitar like this, which produces an amazing sound,” he explained. Erik spent four hours at Mandolin Brothers a few months ago when he was looking for the new guitar, and ended up purchasing what had been the first one he tried.

“I just kept going back to it. It’s a great guitar,” he said. “The thing is though, you have to pick up and play guitars when you’re purchasing them, then have to feel right. I really like the tone and feel of this one.”

With a new guitar and a brand-new CD, Erik is hoping this summer’s work will lead to more gigs. He has performed for a Newtown Lions Club fundraiser, at Merryhill Nursery School, Newtown Coffee House, the annual Sandy Hook Carnival, Starbucks, the Roxbury Pickin’ Festival and the Morris Pickin’ Festival, among others. He has also performed with the WCSU Western Regional Chorus and WCSU Western Regional Jazz Band, but this young musician is craving the solo spotlight.

He had his first “serious” show last weekend, a two-hour gig at Next Stop Café in Bethel.

“It’s all been a lot of fun already,” he said. “Now I’d like to get a few more solo shows. I’m really hoping this CD will lead to more gigs, which will offer even more exposure. I’d love to continue doing this.”

(Erik Bagger can be contacted at EBMusicMail@aol.com).