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Press Articles
& Reviews
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Acoustic Guitar Magazine:
Blues in Dropped D Lesson
Few musicians have as diverse a musical
background as fingerstyle guitarist Tim
Sparks. From his early studies with
guitarist Duck Baker when Sparks was a
teen to leading the Latin jazz group Rio
Nido in the ’70s to his immersion in
Balkan music in the early ’90s,
Sparks has a broad foundation for his
original style of composing and arranging.
Sparks has won the National Fingerstyle
Guitar Championship (1993), recorded
several albums for Acoustic Music and
Tzadik Records, arranged
Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite,
toured in support of Dolly Parton, and
collaborated with guitar icons Marc Ribot
and Bill Frisell. While he continues to
walk the line between odd-metered Eastern
European folk tunes and the downtown jazz
world, Sparks has also found his way back
to country blues, as his 2009 release
Sidewalk Blues demonstrates. We talked
with Sparks following a workshop at the
String Letter Music School in San Anselmo,
California, about his blues roots.
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Guitar Player Magazine
interview
Tim Sparks’ career nearly
ended before it began when he broke his
left wrist as a child. “When my arm
came out of the cast, it was frozen in a
palms-down position,” he explains.
“So I had to work for a few months to
get my wrist to rotate. My doctor said if
it wasn’t for wanting to play guitar
I might not ever have regained the use of
my hand.” Fortunately, Sparks’
wrist rotated well enough for him to go on
to become one of the most accomplished and
eclectic fingerstyle guitarists of his
generation, delving deeply into the blues
and other roots music that surrounded him
as a child, and eventually moving on to
classical (his first album featured an
arrangement of The Nutcracker Suite),
bebop and Brazilian jazz, and ethnic
Greek, Portuguese, Russian, and Jewish
Klezmer styles (recording three albums of
avant-garde Klezmer for John Zorn’s
Tzadik label, including 2009’s Little
Princess).
On Sidewalk Blues [ToneWood],
Sparks returns to his early blues roots to
play swinging fingerstyle arrangements of
blues tunes originally penned by artists
such as Jelly Roll Morton, Willie Brown,
Eubie Blake, Fats Waller, Scott Joplin,
and Louis Armstrong on a 1917 Gibson L-3
and Collings, Hoffman, and Lakewood
instruments. “I began the project
more than ten years ago when I was playing
the Collings,” says Sparks. “But
when I returned to it I was playing a
Hoffman, which has a shorter scale. There
are two versions of ‘Mississippi
Blues’ on the record: the earlier
fast and punchy version played on the
Collings, and the slow version on the
Hoffman. In each case the unique qualities
of the guitar called forth a particular
version of the song.”
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Jazz Police - Late Night
at The Dakota
April 2010
The folk traditions of Easter Europe and
the Middle East permeate the recent music
of Twin Cities Guitarist Tim Sparks.
Sparks and his trio will mesmerize the
Late at the Dakota audience on Saturday,
April 3rd (11:30 pm). With Jay Epstein on
drums and Chris Bates on bass, the trio
will perform music from Spark’s
Tzadik recordings, including his latest,
Little Princess.
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Allmusic
Review of Little
Princess
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Acoustic fingerstyle guitarist Tim
Sparks has always set himself apart from
the pack of his peers. Rather than rely
strictly on playing blues or age-old folk
and bluegrass tunes, or even following in
the well-worn paths of John Fahey, Peter
Lang, and Robbie Basho, Sparks has
followed his muse down into the corridors
of musical and cultural history. While no
one can dent the influence of great
jazzmen on his playing, one can hear the
sounds of saxophonists, pianists, and of
course the sounds of Yiddish folk and
popular music, klezmer among them. In
2000, Sparks recorded Tanz, his third
album for John Zorn's Tzadik imprint. It
was a departure from his previous two in
that it wasn't a solo but a trio record.
His partners on that musical journey were
veteran bassist Greg Cohen and master
percussionist Cyro Baptista. The set was
brilliant and innovative, creating an
entirely new perspective on Jewish music
from the beginning of the 20th century to
the commencement of the 21st. It contained
a slew of traditional songs and also
featured four tunes by the original
klezmer legend, clarinetist and composer
Naftule Brandwein. The same trio
reconvened in 2002 for At the Rebbe's
Table, for a similar program that also
contained tunes by Brandwein. Seven long
years later, this trio once more reunites
to perform an entire program of his work,
and the results are quite astonishing.
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Jazzitis -
Little Princess
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El sitio para hablar de jazz y de lo que
plazca
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Multikulti
Project
July 2009
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Another fabulous CD of traditional Jewish
music arranged for fingerstyle guitar and
performed by the wonderful trio of Tim
Sparks, Greg Cohen and Cyro Baptista,
whose CD Tanz was released in 2000 to
great acclaim. Focusing this time on the
traditional repertoire of the great
Klezmer clarinetist Naftule Brandwein, the
arrangements are delightful, highlighting
Tim's elegant guitar style and fine ear
for detail and harmonic sophistication.
Naftule features colorful and lyrical
music that takes the Jewish tradition into
the 21st century with style, originality
and a charming sense of wit.
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Berkshire
Jewish Voice
May 2010
Seth Rogovoy
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Tim Sparks, a native of Winston-Salem,
North Carolina, was raised on traditional
country blues and the gospel his
grandmother played on piano in a small
church in the Blue Ridge Mountains. At the
prestigious North Carolina School of the
Arts, he studied classical guitar with
Andrés Segovia
protégée Jesus Silva. While
recording three albums with the seminal
vocal jazz ensemble Rio Nido, Sparks also
became proficient in jazz styles from
Brazilian to bebop. In 1993, he won the
National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship
at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield,
Kansas, for playing his bluegrass
adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s
Nutcracker Suite.
Not exactly the obvious ingredients for
the making of one of the world’s
greatest interpreters of Jewish music on
guitar, but that’s exactly what
Sparks has become over the last decade, as
he has applied his talents and omnivorous
musical appetite to Jewish folk, jazz, and
klezmer, along the way establishing a
niche for himself as one of Jewish
music’s most highly respected
guitarists, along with Marc Ribot and Gary
Lucas, who have perhaps dubious or
superfluous benefit of Jewish
backgrounds.
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(pdf)
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Pinkusion -
Sidewalk
Blues
October 2009
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De la même
génération que Scott Witte,
Tim Sparks (né en 1954)
bénéficie d’une
exposition et d’une reconnaissance
sans comparaison possible — quoique
par chez nous étrangement
limitée au microcosme du jazz
semble-t-il. Auteur d’une dizaine de
très bons albums, dont quatre
sortis sur le label Tzadik de John Zorn,
ce musicien new-yorkais pour le moins
virtuose a étudié la guitare
classique auprès du maître
espagnol Andrés Segovia. Par la
suite, il s’est frotté avec
conviction au fado portugais, à la
musique brésilienne (en incorporant
le groupe Mandala), à la musique
persane (avec Robayat) et la musique
klezmer (à écouter notamment
l’album Little Princess, paru cette
année, dédié aux
compositions du célèbre
clarinettiste Naftule Brandwein et
enregistré en trio, sur Tzadik,
avec le contrebassiste Greg Cohen et le
percussionniste Cyro Baptista). Autant
dire que Tim Sparks cultive un
éclectisme et une curiosité
qui transpirent dans sa musique gourmande,
jamais avare de nouvelles conquêtes
et d’horizons non explorés.
Une gourmandise sans frein qui trouve une
fois encore à se manifester sans
forcer sur son nouvel album solo, Sidewalk
Blues.
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Dave Walker
Music - Sidewalk
Blues
November, 2009
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Do you like good old-fashioned solo blues
guitar? If so, then you will really want
to check out Sidewalk Blues by Tim Sparks.
This CD features a great selection of
blues, rags, jazz, and spirituals. Tim
Sparks has a fine technique and he does
the songs proud. Beyond technique though,
he has a great feel for the blues that you
can hear in each of the 17 tracks on this
CD.
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il Manifesto
review
Concert in Rome with Greg Cohen and Cyro
Baptista
Amanti dello stile chitarristico
finger-picking, appassionati della musica
della diaspora ebraica (radical jewish
culture, come ama teorizzare John Zorn,
che ne ha fatto un vessillo artistico e
culturale), curiosi richiamati dai nomi
del chitarrista Tim Sparks, del
contrabbassista Greg Cohen (a lungo nel
gruppo Masada) e del percussionista
brasiliano Cyro Baptista si sono ritrovati
al club La Palma il 24 sera. Sparks,
proveniente dalla North Carolina, alunno
di Jesus Silva, il protegé di And
res Segovia, membro del gruppo Rio Nido e
appassionato esploratore di tante culture
sonore, ha pubblicato due importanti album
per l'etichetta zorniana Tzadik basati
sulla «jewish traditional
music»: Neshamah, per sola chitarra,
riprendeva e adattava brani da sorgenti
yiddish, sefardite e orientali; Tanz -
realizzato nel 2000 dal trio del concerto
capitolino - proponeva, tra l'altro, il
repertorio del leggendario clarinettista
klezmer Naftule Brandwein ma anche
materiali tradizionali provenienti dal
Dagestan, dai Balcani, dallo Yemen e dalla
Bulgaria.
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