Karl Frederick Herreshoff III

- A Tribute by Dr. Douglas Pressman

In the 1960s the classical guitar scene in the USA was a far cry from what it is today. A few figures, including some lamentably unsung geniuses, made all the difference in catapulting a parochial instrument into the American classical music mainstream, and high on that rather short list, not so many notches below Segovia, is Karl Herreshoff. Born in California on the 16th of October, 1941 into a musical family, Karl was a largely self-made guitar and baroque lute prodigy who, barely out of his teens, became the living center of the nascent classical guitar scene in New York City during the 1960s.

A versatile and brilliant performer, in his early years in New York he accompanied the singer Harry Belafonte, backed up the Chad Mitchell trio (on banjo – which he learned overnight), and performed (on stage) the memorable classical guitar theme in the Broadway opening of the musical, Man of La Mancha. He also toured the United States extensively, playing baroque lute and classical guitar concerts for several years under auspices of the Association of American Colleges Arts Program.

That is how I – in 1967, at the recital hall at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana – first heard and met Karl. I was a high school student in Billings at the time, and little could I know that this concert would lead to a friendship spanning the many talented people whom Karl has touched, as teacher, performer, and mentor.

Karl Herreshoff was preeminently a natural mentor. His apartment in Greenwich Village hosted many young players passing through on their ways to various corners of the world. I myself visited Karl numerous times during my student years in upstate New York, and ended up buying two great classical guitars from Karl's room-mate, the innovative and brilliant luthier Michael Gurian – another pioneer of the New York guitar scene in the 1960s. Most of us players came not only for musical advice, but for words of wisdom from someone who was as much an intellectual as he was a musician. He was generous with himself and his time to a degree I still find astonishing.

Karl's circle of friends was large, included people from all walks of life, including the budding American luthier scene, and he was as broadly well-read as any professor of literature or science. I introduced Karl to the music department at Colgate University, in 1972, and they were thrilled to have him teach there the next several years. After the stint at Colgate, Karl emigrated to New Zealand, where Philip Hii studied with him, but in 1980 Karl returned to New York and eventually to San Francisco, where he and I met up again. The bank I was working for posted me to its Bangkok branch in 1981, and thanks to a tip from Karl I met Philip Hii in Kuala Lumpur.

Karl is by far the best sight-reader of guitar music I have ever seen. He can play through new, complex scores flawlessly, fingering them intuitively, and memorization comes easily to him. The repertoire residing in his head includes hundreds of pieces. I was lucky to have him live with me several months in San Francisco in 1981, and hear him the approximately two hours each afternoon he devoted to practice. He was hardly obsessive, but he kept his technique in good shape, usually playing both left- and right-hand exercises for ten minutes before turning to learning or practicing repertoire, or his trade-mark improvisations. And he took frequent breaks to roll and re-light the Drum cigarettes he favored, to sip coffee, and to tell anecdotes: he was a wealth of information about players and composers, and much more.

Karl returned to New Zealand briefly in the early 1980s and since then has lived in Hawaii, spending relatively little time playing publicly. He nevertheless has a small, informal but devoted fan club of former students and colleagues which spans the globe. Karl is not a distinguished musician so much as he is a distinguished human being who happened to choose music as his main expressive outlet. No homage to Karl can do justice to his personal charisma, as performer and teacher, which has to be experienced first-hand to be believed. As for me, though I did not pursue a musical career and instead have ended up as a professor of sociology, two thirds of what I know about how to teach I learned from being taught by Karl Herreshoff.

© 2005 Douglas Pressman