Guitarist James Wallace has been teaching and performing for over 35 years.
James graduated from the University of Virginia in 1976. At UVA he read a lot of books, wrote a lot of stories in his creative writing classes, studied art masterpieces and learned a little bit about the history of classical music and music theory. Mostly, however, he played a lot of guitar -- hours each day, in fact -- ignoring admonishments from several professors to put the instrument down or suffer the consequences at semester's end.
After college, he returned to the area where he had grown up in New Jersey and began teaching guitar in the studios where he had learned how to play in high school: the Millburn Music Center in Millburn and Paul Tomey Guitar Studio in Short Hills. He moonlighted by playing guitar in a punk rock band, The Earthlings, and in a progressive rock band called Over the Rainbow. He also accompanied a folk singer for a while and began playing solo classical guitar gigs.
After completing a jazz summer semester at the Eastman School of Music in 1977, James took up teaching and playing where he left off, with a full load of students and late night gigs in some of North Jersey's grittiest clubs. He continued to study guitar with Gene Bertoncini (his instructor at Eastman) in New York City and later with guitar virtuoso Harry Leahey, a sideman with famed saxophonist Phil Woods and on the music faculty of William Paterson University in New Jersey.
After several years on this musical journey, James woke up one morning and found himself in that dreaded place countless musicians in every generation find themselves: broke, destitute, in debt. He had to get a "real" job.
To make a long story short, he did get a job in a high end retail outlet. And he fell in with the "wrong" crowd (ambitious professionals pursuing fast track careers in the big city). And he met the wrong woman. Before he knew it, he had an MBA from Rutgers and he was working in a big corporation, wearing a suit and a tie everyday. Weekends, he wrote and recorded pop tunes in a friend's recording studio and did some session work. Occasionally, he gave a guitar lesson.
James had taken care of his financial woes, but he had -- for the time being -- sacrificed the full time music career that he cherished so much. To make yet another long story short, he ultimately jettisoned the business career (and the woman) and came out to Montana. The rest of the story, the James Wallace Guitar Studio, is still a work in progress. (The "new" woman, his wife Victoria, is a done deal, a real keeper!)
It's worth mentioning that James has had some wonderful classical guitar instruction since moving to Missoula: from Leon Atkinson, formerly on the music faculty of Gonzaga, from James Reid at the University of Idaho, and from Christopher Parkening, who gives a master class at MSU each summer.
To boot, James had the privilege of taking a two hour guitar lesson from jazz guitar giant Peter Bernstein in 2009. Wow!
Study for Composition VII, 1913, Vasily Kandinsky
bpk Bildagentur/Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany/Art Resource, NY