Rick Peckham

Over the years since Guilfoyle and Peckham met in 1993, the two have collaborated on several projects. But this music was a different order of magnitude. “I thought Ronan would write something for me that was similar to what I would usually play, but he was true to the concerto form,” Peckham recalls. “The lines he wrote for the guitar were angular and long. It was like a 20-minute bebop head.” With the exception of the cadenza, Peckham says that there was little improvisation and a lot of reading.

The three-movement work integrated Peckham’s cleantoned Telecaster figures into the orchestral fabric in the outer two movements, but the electric guitar was front and center in an openended cadenza in the Adagio middle movement. During an extended orchestral tacet, Peckham used his JamMan effects pedal to build loops derived from the concer- to’s themes and then improvised over them. “I needed the loops to defend myself against the massive sound of the rest of the piece,” Peckham recalls with a wry grin. He relates that the orchestral players were quite intrigued by his cadenza that incorporated an array of effects pedals. (Visit www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/ rteradioweb.html#!rii=16%3A3174214 %3A8861%3A20%2D01%2D2012%3A to hear the premiere performance.)

The whole experience was fairly removed stylistically and geographically from Peckham’s midwestern musical roots. He grew up in Norwalk, Ohio, which is between Toledo and Cleveland. His father played Chet Atkins records around the house, and other relatives sang in church choirs, but the younger Peckham is the only career musician in the family. During the late 1960s, Peckham’s grandmother gave him a guitar and he started learning rock tunes and joined a garage band. He picked up the mechanics of the instrument from instructors at local music stores and from another teacher who was pivotal in Peckham’s development as a player and, later, an educator. “I had a great high-school teacher named R.P. Laycock,” Peckham recalls. “He was very devoted to music and teaching, and he made a big impression on me. It’s important for a young musician to run into someone like that. You never know how much that will affect you later on.”

When it came time for college, Peckham wasn’t sure about becoming a musician. He took a number of gen- eral music courses before committing to being a music major. “There was no interest at all in rock music [from the administration] at the school,” Peckham says. “So I went about reinventing myself in order to get a jazz performance degree. I got interested in the playing of Wes Montgomery and Grant Green and found jazz pulling me in deeper.” He was drawn to the more angular music on the jazz spectrum. “I really loved the album The Avant-Garde with Don Cherry and John Coltrane. I sensed the kind of energy in that music that I’d felt in the music of Jeff Beck and other rock players.” In 1978, Peckham heard drummer Billy Cobham’s band with keyboardist George Duke and guitarist John Scofield ’73. Hearing how Scofield had blended different influences to emerge with his own voice inspired Peckham to do the same.

After earning his master’s degree at North Texas State in 1986, Peckham read an ad stating that Berklee was seeking faculty members. He landed a job and taught in the ear training and performance studies areas before being appointed as the assistant chair of the Guitar Department in 1992. “Working with [Guitar Department Chair] Larry Baione has been great. The position has allowed me to do a lot of things educationally and performancewise. It’s been outstanding.”

In addition to his other duties, Peckham teaches 8 to 10 guitar pupils every semester. “Through the years, I’ve had some great students,” he says. “Lionel Loueke and Kurt Rosenwinkel were among them. I encouraged Lionel to do his vocal percussion thing along with his playing. I told him, ‘It’s great that you’re working at playing lines like Mike Stern or John Scofield, but when you sing with your playing, you’re the only one on the planet who sounds like that.’”

Peckham’s discography lists several albums, including two with Guilfoyle’s group Lingua Franca, Life Cycle with late faculty member John LaPorta, and Peckham’s own critically hailed trio outing Left End. He authored Guitar Chords 101 and 201 for Berkleemusic. com, two 12-week online courses that have reached thousands of guitarists worldwide. His DVD Jazz Guitar Techniques: Modal Voicings and Berklee Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary have been best sellers for Berklee Press.

As for the Guilfoyle concerto, it was a hit with the audience and con- ductor Scott Stroman. The maestro
is planning future performances in the United Kingdom, so Peckham will need to keep his fingers limber. “This was a bit different from other work I’ve done,” he says. “I put in hundreds of hours working on the piece. When I was onstage playing it, I was grateful for every minute I’d spent.”