Steven
Walter is one of a few individuals in the world to be widely known as
both a classical guitar builder and performing artist. These are not
friendly realms of coexistence when you consider that the demands of
both lie with the hands and the building part can get a little rough!
However, the most important part is The Journey and when viewed in that
context we must conclude the player/builder equation is the best combination
of all! - good listener, knows how it should feel, and knows how to
fix it. Right?
Of course, another view to take is he simply worked
his way through school by fixing guitars. But it’s not that simple.
Briefly, Dr. Walter received music degrees from
the Boston Conservatory and Florida State University as a player. His
skills were so great he was invited to perform recitals and concerts,
and was also finalist in one of the world’s great guitar competitions.
The exceptionally high standard of playing on his recording testifies
to a flourishing virtuoso technique and acute musical insight. But these
artistic gifts fly in the face of wood shavings, the fret wire and glue
that frame a daily scene in his workshop. Is it really possible to excel
at both?
Walter’s guitar building and playing careers began at the same
time in the suburbs of Chicago. Early musical training in drums and
electric guitar (with the associated stints in a few rock and roll bands)
led him to an interest in a higher form of music. At just that moment,
legendary classical guitarist Andres Segovia came to play at Orchestra
Hall in downtown Chicago, and Walter was in the audience. “It
was a pivotal moment for me,” states Walter, “to be in the
presence of someone who could make 3,000 people dead silent so they
could hear one guitar without amplification. It was completely antithetical
to the rock and roll experience.” Walter’s parents encouraged
him to make his own classical guitar, and with the help of a good friend
and band-mate whose father was an accomplished amateur cabinetmaker,
a new career was born.
In the late 1970’s information about guitar building was limited
to a few books on the subject. Most professional builders guarded their
own work methods, and the market was still dominated by the Ramirez
family in Spain. Apprenticeships for a high school teen whose parents
insisted on a college education were impossible to find. Consequently
Walter’s first guitars were rudimentary, at best. “I didn’t
know what a great classical guitar was supposed to sound like, or feel
like, so it is no surprise that my early guitars were not very good.”
Walter
entered Augustana College in 1980 to study classical guitar performance
and finished his degree playing on instruments of his own make, building
them during the summers in his parent’s basement. In 1984, he
began the Master of Music degree program at the Boston Conservatory,
starting the degree on his own guitar, but finishing on an instrument
made by the great guitar maker Robert Ruck. Walter remembers, “Once
I had the Ruck I just stopped building guitars. The sound, playability
and workmanship were so superior to what I had been doing that there
was just no need to go on. I had a great guitar to play.”
After spending a number of years in Boston, honing his skills as a
concert musician, Walter decided to pursue a doctorate in music with
Bruce Holzman at Florida State University. “I regard my years
at Florida State to be the most important in my life for both of my
careers,” Walter states. “For the first time, I had access
to 20-30 great guitars in any given year, and I really came to understand
what makes them great. I felt I needed to try building again using all
of this new information.” Part of that new information was an
increased level of classical guitar performance. In 1991 Walter was
a major prizewinner at the prestigious Guitar Foundation of America
International Solo Guitar Competition, a competition that has launched
the careers of many of the world’s finest guitarists. Finally,
he felt that he knew what he wanted from a instrument, and had a good
idea of how to build it.
In 1996 Walter moved to the mountains of western North Carolina and
began teaching at Furman
University in Greenville, South Carolina. In 2001 he recorded his
first solo CD Steven Walter, Guitar on the Sonari record label, and
has been performing as an orchestral soloist, solo recitalist, and chamber
musician in the southeast and abroad. Since 2001 he has been playing
his own guitars in concerts and recitals exclusively for the first time
since 1986. “I finally achieved a level of guitar making that
was equal to, and in some ways surpassing the instruments I had been
playing in the years since I bought my first guitar.”
To date Steven Walter has made over 140 classical guitars in addition
to a clavichord, two lutes, a steel string guitar and an electric guitar.
Most of these instruments have been sold to professional guitarists,
students, and collectors. He has recently completed a new instrument
workshop next to his home south of Asheville, NC, where he lives with
his wife, mezzo-soprano Kristen Walter, and his two young sons, Tom
and Sam.
