Tim Sparks' long journey to the 1993 National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship,
and beyond, began modestly in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, when he started
picking out tunes by ear on an old Stella flat top. He was given his first
guitar when a bout of encephalitis kept him out of school for a year, and
the music he heard around him was traditional country blues, and the gospel
his grandmother played on piano in a small church in the Blue Ridge mountains,
so that's what he taught himself to play.
A musically-astute uncle heard him one day, and amazed that he had come
so far on his own, nominated him for a scholarship at the prestigious North
Carolina School of the Arts. There he studied the classics with Segovia
protegee Jesus Silva, while continuing to play all kinds of music, increasingly
turning to classic jazz for inspiration. He adapted compositions by Jelly
Roll Morton, Scott Joplin, and Fats Waller to the guitar, frequently reducing
piano arrangements to their spare essence. Early influences were Doc Watson,
Arthur Smith and, most importantly, Duck Baker, who opened up an horizon
of possibilities for fingerstyle guitar.
After a stint on the road with a Chicago-based rhythm and blues band, Sparks
arrived in Minnesota, where he soon established himself as a journeyman
guitarist and session player. While recording three albums with the seminal
vocal jazz ensemble Rio Nido, Sparks also became proficient in jazz styles
from Brazilian to Be Bop, which brought him several regional music awards
including Best Acoustic Guitarist, Best Latin Jazz guitarist, and Best
Jazz Guitarist. Important models in this period were Kenny Burrell, Wes
Montgomery, and fingerstylists Lenny Breau and Ed Bickert. Two Minnesota
guitarists with whom he shared a lot of ideas and inspiration were National
Fingerstyle Champ Pat Donohue and plectrum ace Dean Magraw. It was at this
time that he arranged Carla Bley's composition "Jesus Maria"
for Leo Kottke.
He also found the time to revive his interest in the classics, adapting
Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite to the guitar, a work that has been cited
as a significant contribution to solo guitar literature. For Sparks it
was a labor of love, which earned him the fingerstyle guitar championship
in Winfield, Kansas.
A sojourn abroad inspired an interest in European and Mediterranean styles,
particularly the music of the Balkans, culminating in the recording of
Sparks' Balkan Dreams Suite, a remarkable collection of odd-meter guitar
arrangements. Many of the Balkan Dreams compositions were recorded on Tim's
debut solo guitar CD, The Nutcracker Suite. The recording was cited by
Guitar Player Magazine as, "An exhilarating, odd-meter minefield inspired
by Near Eastern music. An important recording from a gifted composer, arranger
and performer." A complete folio of this music is available from Mel
Bay Publications. Book (95449), CD (95449CD).
In recent years, Sparks has been immersed in the ethnic music scene, performing
on Oud in middle eastern ensembles, and accompanying on guitar in Greek
and Klezmer orchestras. He was a featured performer with Crossing Borders
at the Bethlehem International Music Festival in July of 1995 and has received
two Arts Fellowships to pursue ethno-musicological studies. Last fall was
spent studying Fado and Portuguese Guitar in Lisbon.
Guitar Bazaar, his newest release on Peter Finger's cutting-edge guitar
label, is a collection of original compositions that blend Middle-Eastern
and Mediterranean sounds with jazz, country blues and Celtic fingerstyle
techniques.
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