{"id":143106,"date":"2023-12-31T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=143106"},"modified":"2024-01-03T09:32:26","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T17:32:26","slug":"remembering-michael-chapdelaine-1956-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/remembering-michael-chapdelaine-1956-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAren\u2019t We Lucky?\u201d\u2014Remembering Michael Chapdelaine, 1956-2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>You never know when you\u2019re going to see somebody for the last time, and I was fortunate enough to have dinner with <a href=\"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?s=Michael+chapdelaine\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Michael Chapdelaine<\/a> and his wife, Suzanne Dove, in September, just two months before the guitarist-composer died unexpectedly on November 16. They were in Atlanta for a conference Suzanne was attending, and we met at a wonderful vegan Caribbean-fusion restaurant in Midtown where we were able to sit outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019d known Michael for about ten years. He\u2019d been my teacher, musical mentor, and, most importantly, a beloved friend. I don\u2019t remember how or when I discovered his videos on YouTube, but I recall being absolutely floored by them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019ve never heard Michael\u2019s rendition of the Beatles\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TSUqNLo7UKI\">\u201cShe\u2019s Leaving Home,\u201d<\/a> for instance, I think it\u2019s safe to say that you don\u2019t know what a guitar can do. From his note-perfect rendition of the opening harp figure to his recreation of Lennon and McCartney\u2019s overlapping vocals to his simulacrum, in miniature, of the piece\u2019s orchestration, the song is at once familiar and completely stunningly new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TSUqNLo7UKI?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Enthralled by the videos, I looked up Michael\u2019s website and saw that he offered lessons, so I booked a week of them for the summer of 2014. These lessons actually mark the beginning of my semi-permanent return, after decades away, to New Mexico, a state Michael and I shared a love for, and as I write this, I realize my being here is one more precious thing I owe to Michael\u2019s presence in my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In any case, when I last saw him, to be honest, he didn\u2019t look well, and I felt concerned. Still, it was a lively evening, flowing with wonderful conversation, warm affection among the three of us, and excellent food, which was always something important to Michael. Texting from our mutual airport terminals the next day, he celebrated the \u201coh so good Cuban caf\u00e9\u201d from the previous night, while decrying \u201cthe pig excrement restaurants\u201d he\u2019d found in the airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Michael was a complicated fellow, a man of extremes. An intellectual and a sensualist, a deliberative artist, and a reckless sensation junkie, he was the yin to his own yang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"994\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/michael-chapdelaine_younger_photo_LOE_inside.jpg?resize=900%2C994&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Michael Chapdelaine, seated outdoors in New Mexico,playing a classical guitar. Photo by Joseph Skibell.\" class=\"wp-image-143108\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/michael-chapdelaine_younger_photo_LOE_inside.jpg?w=900&amp;ssl=1 900w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/michael-chapdelaine_younger_photo_LOE_inside.jpg?resize=453%2C500&amp;ssl=1 453w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/michael-chapdelaine_younger_photo_LOE_inside.jpg?resize=768%2C848&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/michael-chapdelaine_younger_photo_LOE_inside.jpg?resize=272%2C300&amp;ssl=1 272w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Chapdelaine in New Mexico circa 2003, photo by Joseph Skibell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I remember calling him in Albuquerque, where he was living at the time, after I\u2019d arrived in New Mexico for those first lessons and mentioning that I was at a friend\u2019s house in Santa Fe. \u201cOh, I <em>grieve<\/em> for Santa Fe!\u201d he told me, his voice dropping into a growl over the telephone line. I remember thinking that if anybody ever asked me how <em>I<\/em> felt about Santa Fe, I\u2019d probably say, \u201cWell, yeah, I guess I do kind of miss being there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the thought occurred to me that it was Michael\u2019s passion and his ability to express his emotions so openly and without apology that made him the great artist and the expressive musician that he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I imagine it\u2019s no secret among those who knew him that Michael had a complicated relationship with his own career. His accomplishments were by any measure extraordinary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He is and probably will always be the only guitarist to win First Prize at both the Guitar Foundation of America International Classical Guitar Competition and the National Fingerstyle Championship at the Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival. He twice won the National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Grant, and First Prize in both the Guitar Foundation of America\u2019s and the Music Teachers National Association\u2019s Guitar Competition, as well as the Silver Medal in Venezuela\u2019s VIII Concurso International de Guitarra \u201cAlirio Diaz.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Michael gave hundreds of performances over four continents and recorded a dozen or so albums of both classical and pop music, including two versions of <em>Land of Enchantment,<\/em> an album filled with his own radiant compositions. That night at the Cuban-fusion restaurant, I told him that I\u2019d been listening to the album again and again in my car, and he told me that he had at least 40 unrecorded compositions of his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Chapdelaine-and-Skibell_DSC00260-copy.jpg?resize=900%2C600&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Michael Chapdelaine and Joseph Skibell seated with guitars\" class=\"wp-image-143111\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Chapdelaine-and-Skibell_DSC00260-copy.jpg?w=900&amp;ssl=1 900w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Chapdelaine-and-Skibell_DSC00260-copy.jpg?resize=500%2C333&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Chapdelaine-and-Skibell_DSC00260-copy.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Chapdelaine-and-Skibell_DSC00260-copy.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Chapdelaine and Skibell<\/em>, Photo by Joseph Skibell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>A professor of music and head of the guitar program at the University of New Mexico, Michael gave master classes throughout the world\u2014in China, Thailand, Malaysia, Peru, Venezuela, Taiwan, Indonesia\u2014and at universities and conservatories all over the continent.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He performed his own <em>Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra<\/em> as the soloist in 2012 with the Grand Forks Symphony and was the soloist for Kip Winger\u2019s Guitar and Orchestra Piece performed with Denver\u2019s Colorado Symphony in Denver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then, of course, there were, as he put it, the \u201czillions\u201d of videos he produced of his own compositions and arrangements. He must have played, filmed, recorded, edited, and posted at least two a week. He never stopped working. The last one he sent me was of his rendition of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TVPn2cG7dRA\">Carlo Domeniconi\u2019s \u201cKoyunbaba.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The music is rich, sonorous, and turbulent, and visually, the video is a stunningly beautiful portrait of a passionate, years-weathered man who has ridden that guitar for decades across glorious artistic expanses to the ends of the earth, until he and the guitar and the music are all one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAren\u2019t we lucky?\u201d Michael once said to me early on in our friendship, as he poured beans into his espresso maker. \u201cWe\u2019ve gotten to be artists for the last 30 years.\u201d I\u2019ve carried these words with me, as though they were a sutta from Buddha, ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the same time, Michael was plagued by a terrible sense of dissatisfaction. It was as though his daimon, his genius, his gift, was so extraordinary that he could never feel he was truly living up to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Half humorously, half not, he blamed Andr\u00e9s Segovia\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wiAbqfaYGwk\">kicking him offstage during a masterclass broadcast on PBS<\/a> with destroying his classical concertizing career. \u201cSegovia,\u201d he told me, \u201ckicked a lot of people out of masterclasses, but none of them were on national TV.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Though his <em>Guitar by Moonlight<\/em> (Time-Life Music) collection sold 250,000 copies in its first two years in the stores\u2014an impressive figure for a solo guitar album\u2014Michael had been led by its producers to believe that it would sell three million. According to Michael, the album came out on the very day O.J. Simpson drove his white Bronco up the 91 freeway. American television viewers all switched to cable news, and so no one was up watching the album\u2019s late-night commercials on the broadcast stations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don\u2019t quite remember what in our conversation at the Cuban-fusion restaurant lead up to it, but towards the end of the evening, that side of Michael, the dissatisfied side, came out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve accomplished <em>nothing<\/em>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was on the point of protesting when Suzanne said, \u201cMichael, you were a <em>professor<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That sort of stopped me in my tracks because that\u2019s what my wife, Barbara, tells me whenever I grumble about my career and my accomplishments. Suzanne\u2019s an engineer, and to her, being a professor is the coolest job, but I know what it sounds like to the ears of a writer or a musician. It\u2019s as though someone were saying, \u201cHey, look at all you\u2019ve done! You got to sell peanuts by the side of the road!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The whole thing made me laugh ruefully to myself, and so, although I understood that Michael needed some encouragement that night, and though in our text exchange the next day, I wrote to him about how much I longed to hear those 40 compositions <em>and<\/em> his Concerto, I had no idea that it would be the last time I ever saw him. I\u2019m not that good at speaking from the heart anyway, but what I wished I had said to him was this: \u201cWhat are you talking about? You got to be Michael Chapdelaine! This crazy-mad desert saint of the guitar who got to write all those beautiful pieces and perform all those mind-bending arrangements, and who, for a fraction of the glory Segovia received, did as much if not more with and <em>for<\/em> music, pushing the guitar way beyond what most people imagine it can do, while making it look easy, and who, like some crazy holy man, gave most of his life\u2019s work away for free!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Michael, I\u2019ll miss running into you and Suzanne at the Shed, another indispensable Santa Fe institution you turned Barbara and me onto. I\u2019ll miss our long talks about Jackson Browne\u2019s lyrics, especially on the subject of \u201cMy Redneck Friend.\u201d I\u2019ll miss the bottles of red wine late into the night, and the sound of your morning practice under our portal. But I won\u2019t miss your music, because it\u2019s playing now and will forever play in both my head and in my heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Godspeed, my friend, my brother, my teacher. If there\u2019s another world, I\u2019ll see you there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Gifts in Michael\u2019s memory will support the Guitar Program at his alma mater Florida State University College of Music: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/give.fsu.edu\/michaelchapdelaine\"><em>https:\/\/give.fsu.edu\/michaelchapdelaine<\/em><\/a><em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tp5uGf93PbA?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Author and guitar lover Joseph Skibell says farewell to guitarist-composer Michael Chapdelaine, his teacher, friend, and musical mentor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":143107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Author and guitar lover Joseph Skibell says farewell to guitarist-composer Michael Chapdelaine, his teacher, friend, and musical mentor.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1696],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[1721],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Michael-Chapdelain_DSC00239.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1","authors":[{"term_id":1721,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"joseph-skibell","display_name":"Joseph Skibell","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Joseph-Skibell.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/Joseph-Skibell.jpg"},"user_url":"https:\/\/josephskibell.com\/","last_name":"","first_name":"","description":"<a href=\"https:\/\/josephskibell.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Joseph Skibell<\/a> is the author of many books, including the novels <em>A Blessing on the Moon<\/em> and <em>A Curable Romantic<\/em>."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143106"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143140,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143106\/revisions\/143140"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143106"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=143106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}