This is a repost of a blog originally posted 1/19/09.

At a recent Saturday night Acoustic Vortex house concert, I had the rare opportunity to witness  amazing live performances by two of the best living acoustic guitarists alive. First up was guitar instrumentalist Teja Gerken.



This short bio, which appeared on my Acoustic Vortex evite for this show, sums up what Teja is about:
"Teja is a central figure in the Bay Area acoustic guitar scene.  Born in Germany, he is a seasoned performer whose playing blends myriad influences into a musical style that hovers around the perimeters of folk, contemporary classical, and world music, often involving alternate tunings, right-hand tapping, and percussive effects. His two CDs of original guitar music, On My Way and Postcards, have received much critical acclaim.  Teja is the founder of the Acoustic Guitar Showcase, a monthly event at the Bazaar Cafe in San Francisco.  He is also on the editorial staff of Acoustic Guitar Magazine and hosts the "Guitar Journeys" radio show on KUSF which occur every fourth Monday of the month."

Teja is a fingerstyle guitarist whose style emulates the late Michael Hedges, and is similar to that of his co-performer Vicki Genfan. Check him out for yourself as he plays on an unfamiliar baritone 12-string guitar.





Teja was instrumental in bringing Vicki to this particular house concert, as they are not only good friends, but have also toured together through both the U.S. and Europe.  They do not perform together.  At this concert they each performed two individaul sets.

While Teja was amazing on his guitar, Vicki's performance was phenomenal, its intricacy almost unfathomable.  Modest and unassuming, she plays with a "slap and tap" technique.



While her "slaps" appear random,  her exacting strikes on the strings using the pads of her fingertips at just the pressure needed for perfect resonance and minimal discordant vibration, are applied with the precision of a brain surgeon.  Her other hand, meanwhile, flies up and down the keyboard, finding each note with uncanny accuracy. Below, Vicki plays "Kali Dreams" from Up Close & Personal





While Vicki's sense of hand/eye coordination is the most acute I have ever seen in my life, this was only the tip of the iceberg of the mind-boggling complexity of her music.  Vicki uses a different, alternative, sometimes unorthodox tuning for almost every song she plays.  This means that, without using any tuning aids, only her own ear, she can precisely tune each string to the exact note she wants and acheiving each complete tuning in under 5 minutes, all the while chatting with the audience!  The tunings for each of her songs are posted in her CD liner notes. Examples (normal tuning is E-A-D-G-B-E): 
"Atomic Reshuffle" - Bb-Bb-Eb-G-Ab-Bb
"Norweigian Wood" - D-A-D-E-A-D capo 5
Vicki uses something like 28 different tunings, and will use any of them at any given time during her performance.  She also does not make a set list, but decides what to play pretty much at the moment.  I can only conclude from all this that this chick has the mind of a supercomputer, or she's a Cylon .

Vicki also employs different techniques using her keyboard hand.  Here she approaches the board from above.



On top of being one of the best music composers and guitar instrumentalists in the world (her performance of "Atomic Reshuffle" won her the title of "2008 Guitar Superstar" against all-male competition - see the video of her winning performance on her myspace page), Vicki is also an accomplished singer-songwriter who possesses a quite lovely singing voice with a warm, emotive vibrato.



Vicki mixed her instrumental and vocal performances evenly throughout her sets. She has produced four CDs, three of which are available at CD Baby.  I bought the two that were being sold at this performance, 2006's Up Close and Personal (which includes a CD of instrumental only (up close) and a CD of songs that are vocal-based (personal)), and the newly minted 2008 import Uncovered, the best compilation of cover songs that I have ever heard so far.  It is absolutely wonderful, but so far seems to be only available at Vicki's shows.

One of the songs that Vicki played was The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" (in fact, it was her opening song).  Below is a video (included in the evite) of a past performance of this song.



This song from Up Close & Personal is a beautiful cover of "Ain't Got Love"



She also played "Atomic Reshuffle" at the end of her 2nd set to a standing ovation from the 60+ mesmerized attendees, prompting an encore song.



I knew that I was witness to something most unique and amazing that night.