USU’s guitar studies program is one of the top 25 programs in the U.S.
One of the nation’s top guitar programs held a concert at the Performance Hall on campus Tuesday evening to a crowd of little more than 100 people. The semi-annual Utah State Guitar Ensembles concert, under Director of Guitar Studies Corey Christiansen, put on a show featuring three student ensembles playing a variety of tunes.
Last year, Matt Warnock from Jazz Guitar Online listed USU’s guitar studies program as one of the top 25 programs in the U.S. alongside legendary programs at Indiana, North Texas, Berkley and the New School. However the quality of USU’s program is nothing new, even if recognition of its caliber has been slow.
“I’m really proud of what’s going on here,” Christiansen said. “As far as the intermountain west goes, the proof is in the students. Forget about me.”
Though he wouldn’t say so, a lot of the prestige of USU’s program comes from Christiansen, who has enough experience and esteem in professional guitar circles to be playing or teaching just about anywhere. Just last week Christiansen played at the Velvet Note, a jazz club in Atlanta, Georgia where names like Christian McBride, Gretchen Parlato and Wycliffe Gordon have played.
Guitar student Ivan Gygi said the years Christiansen spent as a professional musician is one of the things that makes Christiansen a great teacher.
“He can explain things so simply,” Gygi said. “And it’s great to see he has real life experience.”
Tall, casual and boyish, Christiansen’s congenial temperament almost betrays the status of his musicianship. Christiansen was born in Cache Valley and received his undergraduate degree in guitar studies under the tutelage of Mike Christiansen, his father, before leaving to get a master’s degree from the University of South Florida, where he studied with Jack Petersen.
Christiansen said studying with Petersen for two years was life changing. Petersen taught Christiansen from his 40 years of experience and told Christiansen to take what he learned and pass it on.
“I took that seriously,” Christiansen said. “Now my students get to learn on some pretty good inherent knowledge.”
Christiansen later moved to St. Louis, Missouri and became the Senior Editor of Mel Bay publishing. It was there where he made many of the connections that have shaped his professional career. Christiansen now continues his father’s legacy, having taken charge of the guitar program after his father retired, but the legacy isn’t his main goal. His goal is to help his students learn faster than he did.
“You want to see them be successful, but that doesn’t mean they need to do what you do,” he said. “What I hope is that I can teach them how to recognize something that is excellent.”
Christiansen said he believes studying music teaches students valuable skills applicable to all aspects of life.
“If you’ve had music at a high level in your life, you take criticism better, you work with groups better, you work by yourself better; you can set all these goals for yourself because you’ve done something hard.”
Hunter Bergman, another of Christiansen’s students, said Christiansen gives him and the other students the right combination of challenges and freedom.
“Corey gives us great opportunities, stuff that will make us grow. And you can tell that he actually cares about the development of each student.”
While the guitar program at USU continues to grow, the jazz department still often finds itself strapped for a depth of players on every instrument. The jazz faculty at USU annually visit high schools in Utah to recruit future students, but despite the quality of programs and teachers, Gygi said he still wishes USU had more players.
“I think the guitar program is fine. If I could say anything about the music program I’d say we need more drummers and bass players that could kick my butt.”
He said the quality of a program not only has to do with the teachers, but with the fellow student musicians.
“Even if Indiana doesn’t have as good of a teacher as Corey, they just have so many other killing players on drums and bass and saxophone that playing with them makes you a better guitar player too,” he said.
Christiansen has seen the effects of people not knowing the quality of the jazz programs at USU. Over the past few years he held a concert series at WhySound in downtown Logan, and brought in jazz musicians from all over the country.
“I thought, ‘I think these guys need to hear my play at a high level,’” he said. “I was trying to bring in guys at a very high level of jazz playing. I wanted them to see that you have to hustle. You have to create gigs.”
Christiansen hasn’t continued the concert series this year due to low attendance, but hopes that Logan, with its beautiful setting and quality of musicians, in the future, will play host to more concert series and even perhaps a festival.
This last year, two of Christiansen’s students left Utah to pursue masters programs in Indiana and California and another won the Outstanding Soloist award at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in February.
For Gygi, the lack of players in Logan doesn’t rob from the experience of having Christiansen as a teacher. He said his lessons always leave him inspired to practice more, even if they get distracted sometimes.
“It’s funny because we both get sidetracked,” he said laughing. “Like one lesson, we started watching plane jets flying.”
Christiansen said he hopes his students walk away from their lessons with more than just musical skills — he wants them to walk away with empathy.
“I want them to have some kind of understanding, and music teaches that,” he said. “Hard things teach you to be a good person.”
—mikeburnham3@gmail.com
@mikeburnham31