Six-stringed Mediterranean sounds

For the umpteenth time, last week I was listening to a vibrant, folk-tinged instrumental piece of music called In-Nissieġa. It is a flowing piece that is pleasant, immensely catchy and has a strong air of the Mediterranean wrapped tightly round its nifty finger-picked notes.

Composed by guitarist Tony Pace, it is one of 17 tracks that make up his latest album Nostalgia. Pace is one of Malta’s leading guitar players as well as an in-demand internationally qualified teacher; a self-professed lover of the classical guitar with a taste large enough to accommodate anything from jazz to Latin American to the blues, and pretty much every type of genuine music in between.

There is a sparkle in his eyes as he reminisces about a time when, despite his fondness for the accordion, a simple mouth organ was the only instrument the family could afford to buy him.

“I would look at sheets of music inquisitively, but had no clue what they meant… and I so much wanted to learn.”

So how did this mouth organ player with an eye on the accordion become a guitar player?

“You can blame it on Tommy Steele,” he laughs. “I saw The Tommy Steele Story and that was it… I was completely taken in by the sound of the guitar and from then on I knew that was my instrument”.

The advent of bands like The Shadows and The Ventures also had an impact on Pace, but at the bottom of it all was one simple but important quest.

“I didn’t want to just play guitar, I wanted to get inside the music and study it intensively.”

Pace went for lessons with Johnny Mick and eventually started to play in dance bands around Malta. Back then, it was imperative for musicians to be able to read music, as the incidence of last minute engagements was rife.

“There was no internet or mobile telephony… we used to hang out in Valletta on a Saturday morning and get the jobs by word of mouth.” Sometimes though, opportunities would crop up when least expected.

He was playing at the Premier café in Valletta with Spiro Barbara when a chap came over to him and offered him a job playing at his club in London.

Still a teenager, Pace wasn’t sure at first, but plucked up courage after learning that popular Maltese band leader Oscar Lucas would also be going to London to perform a few weeks later.

He played with British bands, but joined Lucas’ band when they came over, and spent another six weeks playing gigs with them around London’s nightspots.

The experience taught Pace a lot, but he wasn’t tempted to stay on in London. “That kind of lifestyle was all a bit too rowdy for my liking,” he admits.

Upon his return, Pace joined Edwin Galea’s band (with whom he would later also perform regularly on Maltese television) which had a residency at the Las Vegas Club in Valletta.

Despite having been lured to the guitar by rock ’n’ roll bands, Pace has never been in a rock band. “Dance bands, quartets and orchestras were more my thing,” he confirms.

“There were a lot of festivals, all with live orchestra and no backing tracks. It was tasking, as sometimes you had to learn to play songs just a couple of hours before a performance, but it meant we had work, and in the end it was also fun to do.”

In the 1970s, Pace joined the Armed Forces of Malta as a bandsman, playing flute and guitar. It was around this time he started to study classical guitar, alone at first, and later, thanks to sponsorships from the Maltese and Austrian governments and the British Council, with leading international artists, among them classical guitarists Gregory Bonnenberger, Chris Kilvington and John Duarte and Alirio Diaz.

It is perhaps for this style (but not only) that Pace is best-known, his nimble way around the guitar’s six strings and wide fretboard proving essential ingredients in shaping the style he continues to hone during his daily practice sessions.

A listen to the songs on the Nostalgia album – so titled because it captures the music Pace grew up with – reveals a unique timbre that Pace applies in his arrangement of classic tunes such as El Condor Pasa, Greensleeves, Blowing In The Wind, and various Latin and Neapolitan gems.

“I was never into doing covers; the versions on the CD are all my own arrangements.” He emphasises the difference between a cover version and an interpretation. “I dig deep inside the song, to the point of almost deconstructing a song before putting it back together.”

In the 1980s, then-President Agatha Barbara set up a school of music, where Pace taught for a few years. At the same time, he had also been taking lessons in theory and harmony with Carmelo Schembri, Carmelo Pace and Charles Zammit and studying solfeggio with Freddie Mizzi.

“I was also studying jazz improvisation with Andy Jeff, and was particularly inspired by the style of legends like Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Smith Kenny Burrell.” Jazz was a bit of a niche community, so it wasn’t easy to find work playing originals.

Pace also lectured at the University’s Mediterranean Institute for two years and set up his own guitar studio.

Nostalgia is his first CD release, but not his first recording. That came about with 1974 album Il-Maltija and Other Folk Songs, a compilation of traditional numbers and original folk compositions (among them the aforementioned In-Nissieġa) which is quite possibly the best-selling collection of instrumental Maltese folk music to date.

“Vanni Pulé and I wrote the original numbers on the album, which was so popular that the government back then used to give it as a gift to foreign dignitaries when they visited Malta.”

The record has also found its way into cultural museums abroad, with a British world music student even flying to Malta to interview Pace, while another German collector got in touch after tracking down a copy of the album in New York.

What’s next for Pace? “New material, hopefully, but that depends on when the muse comes to me”, he says with a smile. Despite decades of study and teaching, he insists he still has much to learn.

“Some people pick up an instrument and learn to play it in months, thinking they know enough, but that’s just the beginning.

“To be a better musician, patience, love of music and discipline are a must…there’s always something new to learn.

“The day I stop studying music is the day I’ll stop playing the guitar.”

Tony Pace is a member of the English Registry of Guitar Tutors. He was awarded the Phoenicia Cultural Award by the President of Malta in 1986, and the Loyal Service Award for his work as a tutor from the Thames Valley University, London, in 2006. For the past 18 years, he has been a resident performer at the Phoenicia Hotel. Besides various other local venues he has also performed in the UK, Italy, France, Greece, Mexico, Brussels and Ireland.

www.tonypace-guitarist.info

bugeja.michael@gmail.com