Michael Laucke

Laucke died on 2 December 2021 in Montreal, aged 74. No cause of death was given.

In 2012, Laucke was nominated for the Order of Canada Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015, he was again nominated for the same award.

On 12 September 2001, Laucke released a CD called Flamenco Road, consisting mainly of his own compositions in the new flamenco style, which he also arranged. In an interview for Voir magazine, Laucke stated: "It is also very influenced by my classical background. So it's a smoother flamenco." An example of this style from the album can be heard in Laucke's treatment of the well-known classical guitar transcription "Leyenda", which is given a flamenco rendition using several percussion instruments (claves, maracas, special castanets mounted on wood blocks, chimes, and a large gong), bass, and flute.

In 1994, Laucke became a director of the Mac AIDS Fund (M·A·F) established by his friend Frank Angelo, the co-founder of MAC Cosmetics. After a fourteen-year tenure, he became honorary charter member of the board of directors and no longer participated in its activities. According to Laucke, MAF's directors helped coordinate the film Pandemic: Facing AIDS by Rory Kennedy, and MAF became a secondary sponsor while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation became title sponsor.

The meeting with de Lucía led Laucke to perform two incompatible guitar styles. In 1991, he recorded compositions de Lucía taught him on the album Spanish Guitar Stories. De Lucía expressed his approval, saying the album was: "very beautiful, all of it, from a to z, even my pieces!"

Laucke's career spans over 50 years, with concert and television appearances in 25 countries, including England (Wigmore Hall), the United States (Carnegie Hall, and the White House), as well as China, on the Great Wall of China. Other countries where Laucke performed include Bulgaria, Hungary, Hong Kong, Spain, Israel, India, Japan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Russia. In Canada, he gave annual concerts at Montreal's Place des Arts from 1986. Following a concert in 1990 in Quebec City's Grand Théâtre de Québec, the French-language newspaper Le Soleil wrote a review entitled "Michael Laucke makes one fall in love with the guitar", stating: "More than a virtuoso, charismatic Michael Laucke is pure talent! For him playing is instinctive, just like breathing ...irresistible Michael Laucke." Critics have often written about Laucke's stage presence. A Chicago music critic described how: "His relaxed manner, beaming smile and gracious speaking voice won the hearts of the audience before he even played a note."

In 1984, critics began to take note of the growth of new Canadian guitar works energized by Laucke. In La Presse, a Canadian newspaper, music critic Claude Gingras found in Laucke "an interpreter who could not be more convincing". Canadian composer Claude Vivier expressed his appreciation to Laucke. In his letters, Vivier states that he had: "hardly ever met a musician as committed and dedicated, of such great quality and, above all, of such great completeness and intense capacity for work".

Laucke recorded his last classical album in 1981 with singer Riki Turofsky and Guitar and Lute magazine declared it: "One of the best voice and guitar albums you will ever hear." Although Laucke had played both classical and flamenco guitar music from an early age, he performed mainly classical guitar works until 1990. From late 1990 until his last performance in 2015, his concerts consisted exclusively of many flamenco and new flamenco works he learned from de Lucía.

His recording of works by William Walton, Richard Rodney Bennett, and François Morel on the Radio Canada International label (RCI 457) won the Canadian Music Council's Grand Prix du Disque-Canada in 1979. The album included Morel's new composition Me duele España, written for and dedicated to Laucke. The world premiere of the 21-minute piece took place at Place des Arts in Montreal, under the auspices of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec.

In 1979, Laucke signed with the Waterloo Music Publishing Company, which that year published the sheet music of his transcription of Trois Gymnopédies, the first of many of his transcriptions to be published by Waterloo and arguably the only version for guitar to include all of the notes of the original piano composition. In 1985, the company created The Michael Laucke Series of guitar arrangements and transcriptions.

He was a professor of guitar at Concordia University in Montreal in 1976, but left after two years to pursue a performing career. Ten years later, however, he released an eight-tape instructional video series, to pass along the knowledge he had learned from his teachers. This video series was reviewed by Guitar Player magazine: "Laucke's enthusiasm is infectious" and by Frets Magazine: "thoughtful and thorough instruction". Laucke also published articles on classical guitar.

Laucke was introduced to complex flamenco techniques by Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucía when the two shared a loft and performed together for the jet set in New York City in the early 1970s. In 1982 he was selected by Andrés Segovia to perform for the PBS network at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Laucke subsequently became Segovia's pupil, and also studied with other classical guitar players, including Julian Bream and Alirio Díaz. He performed mainly on classical guitar until 1990; from then until has last performance in 2015, his concerts consisted exclusively of flamenco and new flamenco works.

In the 1970s, Laucke moved to New York City to further his career. He was asked by Valdès-Blain if he would mind sharing his one-room apartment with flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucía. Laucke taught de Lucía music by Bach and Villa-Lobos. In return, de Lucía showed Laucke some of the secrets of his art of flamenco, an oral tradition handed down through generations, "their secrets and knowledge jealously guarded". Although Laucke had played flamenco for his own pleasure since he was a child, he had never felt comfortable playing it in public. De Lucía's influence helped change this: "This meeting changed my life," Laucke declared, "he taught me flamenco works which were not written anywhere and to which no other guitarist had access. So for me to be taught all these techniques by a guitarist of Paco's caliber was an incredible stroke of luck". (English translation)

While living in Greenwich Village, New York, in the early 1970s, Laucke became interested in the French music of Eric Satie, "the world's first hippie". At that time, only simplified arrangements of Trois Gymnopédies (Three Gymnopédies) existed for the guitar, so Laucke set out to transcribe Satie's three works from the piano score. Determined to fit all of the notes from the original piano version using the guitar's six strings, over the course of three weeks he calculated the number of times open strings would occur per note.

Laucke studied with several classical guitar masters: Franco–Spaniard Rolando Valdès-Blain from 1963 to 1977, Julian Bream in 1969 as winner of the Julian Bream Master classes, Alirio Díaz from 1977 to 1979 and Andrés Segovia from 1982 to 1986. Laucke was introduced to complex and advanced flamenco techniques by Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucía when the two shared a loft in New York City in the early 1970s. During this period, de Lucía and Laucke gave a concert in the Spanish Embassy, where Countess Elsa Peretti, jewelry designer at Tiffany's, first heard the two guitarists. She immediately invited them to one of her parties at her New York penthouse, where the two guitarists performed in private for the New York City jet set, including fashion designer Calvin Klein, Andy Warhol, Halston, and Giorgio di Sant'Angelo. The Montreal Gazette noted that these artistic gatherings were: "the closest thing to the 18th century intellectual and artistic salon to be found anywhere these days". Laucke was frequently hired to play at the launches of Giorgio di Sant' Angelo's new fashion lines and later those of Calvin Klein. "I was only 21 at the time, and it all seemed like a dream," Laucke recalled. In 1977, he founded Trio 3 with Sayyd Abdul Al-Khabyyr and Pauline Vaillancourt, and the D'Addario strings-manufacturing company became his sponsor.

With Frank Angelo as his manager since 1961, Laucke performed his first guitar concert in Montreal in 1965, a program of atonal music with the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec. In 1971, following the first of his many concerts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The Washington Post proclaimed that Laucke had displayed "the highest form of virtuosity". His first concert in New York took place in 1972 at the Greenwich House Music School. Senator Claiborne Pell was in attendance and invited Laucke to perform his first concerts in Washington, DC, thus beginning a 15-year affiliation as Laucke's active supporter in the U.S. Pell's former campaign manager, Raymond Nelson, handled logistics for many of Laucke's U.S. performances. In 1973, Laucke starred in a documentary produced by Radio-Québec called La Guitare, and he performed at Montreal's Summer Olympic Games in 1976.

Michael Laucke (/ˈlɑːk/; 29 January 1947 – 2 December 2021) was a Canadian classical, new flamenco and flamenco guitarist and composer. Starting at the age of thirteen, Laucke gave professional snooker demonstrations and his winnings allowed him to take trips from Montreal to New York City to study the classical guitar with Rolando Valdés-Blain. With a career spanning over 30 years, Laucke began performing in 1965, recording the first of 16 albums in 1969, and toured in 25 countries. In 1971, he performed his first of many concerts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. His first concert in New York, where he also first met Senator Claiborne Pell, took place in 1972.

Laucke was born in Montreal, Quebec, on 29 January 1947 to parents of Russian- and Polish-Jewish heritage. After they separated when Laucke was six months old, he lived with his mother, brother, uncle, and grandmother. His grandmother raised and nurtured him; she died at the age of 100.