36 Facts About Michael Laucke

Michael Laucke was a Canadian classical, new flamenco and flamenco guitarist and composer.

Michael Laucke was introduced to complex flamenco techniques by Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia when the two shared a loft and performed together for the jet set in New York City in the early 1970s.

Michael Laucke subsequently became Segovia's pupil, and studied with other classical guitar players, including Julian Bream and Alirio Diaz.

Michael Laucke performed mainly on classical guitar until 1990; from then until has last performance in 2015, his concerts consisted exclusively of flamenco and new flamenco works.

Michael Laucke broadened the guitar repertoire by creating over 100transcriptions of classical and flamenco music.

SOCAN's The Music Scene magazine considered Michael Laucke to be one of "five of Canada's best-known soloists".

Michael Laucke was born in Montreal, Quebec, on 29 January 1947 to parents of Russian- and Polish-Jewish heritage.

Michael Laucke's grandmother raised and nurtured him; she died at the age of 100.

At the age of seven, Michael Laucke appeared in the Montreal Star newspaper having designed and built a boat from 2,000 toothpicks.

Michael Laucke discovered an interest in playing guitar, but his brother disapproved, so he practiced at friends' homes.

Michael Laucke took up snooker, and became competent enough by the age of thirteen to gain a job as a demonstrator for the Brunswick Corporation, a snooker table manufacturer.

Michael Laucke learned billiards from George Chenier, a fellow Montrealer and the North American snooker champion.

In 1971, following the first of his many concerts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, The Washington Post proclaimed that Michael Laucke had displayed "the highest form of virtuosity".

In 1973, Michael Laucke starred in a documentary produced by Radio-Quebec called La Guitare, and he performed at Montreal's Summer Olympic Games in 1976.

Michael Laucke was introduced to complex and advanced flamenco techniques by Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia when the two shared a loft in New York City in the early 1970s.

Michael Laucke immediately invited them to one of her parties at her New York penthouse, where the two guitarists performed in private for the New York City jet set, including fashion designer Calvin Klein, Andy Warhol, Halston, and Giorgio di Sant'Angelo.

Michael Laucke was frequently hired to play at the launches of Giorgio di Sant' Angelo's new fashion lines and later those of Calvin Klein.

Michael Laucke's recording of works by William Walton, Richard Rodney Bennett, and Francois Morel on the Radio Canada International label won the Canadian Music Council's Grand Prix du Disque-Canada in 1979.

Later that year, with an increasing number of concerts and recordings, and a busy travel schedule, Michael Laucke became concerned that he would not have enough hours left for practising.

Michael Laucke invented a "practiser": a small, wooden fingerboard with six strings stretched across a bridge.

Michael Laucke was a professor of guitar at Concordia University in Montreal in 1976, but left after two years to pursue a performing career.

Michael Laucke was asked by Valdes-Blain if he would mind sharing his one-room apartment with flamenco guitarist Paco deLucia.

Since deLucia did not read music, Michael Laucke offered to teach him but he refused.

Michael Laucke teamed up again with de Lucia to give a series of concerts combining the two repertoires.

The meeting with de Lucia led Michael Laucke to perform two incompatible guitar styles.

On 12 September 2001, Michael Laucke released a CD called Flamenco Road, consisting mainly of his own compositions in the new flamenco style, which he arranged.

SOCAN lists 112 classical works transcribed for the guitar by Michael Laucke, illustrating the extent to which he broadened the guitar's repertoire in music of the Renaissance, classical, baroque, and romantic eras, as well as in flamenco.

At that time, only simplified arrangements of Trois Gymnopedies existed for the guitar, so Michael Laucke set out to transcribe Satie's three works from the piano score.

In 1979, Michael Laucke signed with the Waterloo Music Publishing Company, which that year published the sheet music of his transcription of Trois Gymnopedies, the first of many of his transcriptions to be published by Waterloo and arguably the only version for guitar to include all of the notes of the original piano composition.

Michael Laucke had at least 25 original, Canadian atonal works written for him, among them the Flamenco Concierto for guitar and full symphonic orchestra by Michel-Georges Bregent, Me duele Espana by Francois Morel, Exploration by Jean Papineau-Couture and Pour guitare, Claude Vivier's only work for the guitar.

Michael Laucke performed all 25 works in major halls, on CBC radio and on his record albums; all of them were commissioned by, and dedicated to, Michael Laucke.

Michael Laucke performed many concerts in Washington, DC, under the auspices of US Senator Claiborne Pell, including several at the National Gallery of Art.

In 1994, Michael Laucke became a director of the Mac AIDS Fund established by his friend Frank Angelo, the co-founder of MAC Cosmetics.

In 2012, Michael Laucke was nominated for the Order of Canada Lifetime Achievement Award.

Michael Laucke died on 2 December 2021 in Montreal, aged 74.

Michael Laucke has published articles in music journals about the growth in popularity of the guitar in Canada including:.