California Guitar Trio performance is like a night at the theater: Drama, passion, humor, joy, pathos, it's all there. The band has been exhilarating audiences around the world with lavish arrangements of classical works, for three acoustic guitars, such as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. But like a good play, there is plenty of substance beneath the show-stopping numbers. With two albums, Yamanashi Blues and Invitation, to their credit, and a third due by the end of the year, the CGT continues to expand boundaries. Though they often use complex arrangements and inventive techniques, their music is as accessible as it is exciting. CGT's tastes and repertoire range from such recognizable pieces as Ennio Morricone's theme from The Good The Bad & The Ugly and J.S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor to their own equally eclectic and more reflective compositions.

The group, Bert Lams who's originally from Brussels, Hideyo Moriya from Tokyo, and Paul Richards from Salt Lake City, met more than five years ago while in England, studying King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp's Guitar Craft courses. Though now the group members reside in different states, if not continents, they began working together in earnest in Los Angeles, thus the moniker California Guitar Trio.

"Things just developed naturally, though each of us has his own background, it was interesting to see how the music evolved," Richards says. "When one of us would come up with an idea, there wasn't much discussion whether it was the right idea or not. It was just like something sparked up."

The group's assimilation of Lams' classical training, Moriya's affinity for surf music, and Richards' roots in rock and jazz, goes a long way in overcoming the potential limitations of their instrumentation, as Richards explains.

"We're in kind of an interesting position because it is quite a challenging thing to write music for three acoustic guitars and make it have something new every time," he says. "You have these three instruments with basically the same sound and to continually come up with new stuff is difficult, so that's why drawing on classical works or other things that come from our backgrounds has helped us in a big way."

Another important factor that contributes to CGT's depth of sound is their use of the "new standard tuning," which they learned in Fripp's Guitar Craft course, and even there, their different viewpoints are apparent. It's based on fifths," Lams says. "The thickest string is tuned down to low C, then we go up in fifths C, G, D, D, E, G, which is only a minor third above the fifth string." Richards looks at it another way. "I think of it as a tuning based in the C major pentatonic scale." The players do agree, however, that learning this tuning has opened up their playing significantly.

"I was kind of stuck in this place where I wasn't going anywhere. I felt I was just going to be this mediocre guitar player all of my life and I needed something more," Richards admits." Having this new tuning was a way for me to drop everything I played before and start over again. It offered me a fresh start and a way to look at things from a new and different perspective than I had before."

Lams agrees, and points out several of the practical advantages, as well. "The tuning is kind of transparent and it's a little like you have everything in front of you on the piano. It's easier to remember parts, where before the notes were all clustered together, and the [dynamic] range from low to high notes is expanded." Using plectrums and steel string guitars, the trio relies on crosspicking most of the time, but also uses another technique picked up in Guitar Craft called circulation.

Originally developed for use in Guitar Craft courses to keep the group of students "alert and present" each musician plays a note, and passes the sustain "or the quality of a note" in quick succession so the melody is played round-robin style. It is particularly effective in the fugue part on the Toccata and Fugue because it creates a rich, full-sounding harpsichord effect.

"One of the intentions in fact is to make it sound as if it were one instrument and to play so together and so in time with each other that it's as if it was one instrument," Richards says. The technique can be a little disconcerting for an audience that is unprepared, however. "If you look at us it looks like we're not doing anything. You hear this melody that's going up and down but you just see we're just playing one note each. There's hardly any movement but you hear this whole thing going on." Richards says with a chuckle." I think it works to bring the music more alive because it's three people playing with one note with all our presence and if one of us is not there, like day-dreaming or something, it can break down very easily," Lams adds. Given everything that goes into a performance, the often demanding material with its complex polyrhythmic arrangements, the musicians' interdependence is particularly high, and day-dreaming or a forgotten part or chord out of time seems inevitable. "You really need to stay awake during a piece because if you don't, something's going to go wrong," Richards says.

"Yeah, it's like Bach is somewhere around the corner saying 'hey, wake up' and then he gives you a blackout," Lams jokes. "One thing we're all getting good at is finding our way out of it when something goes wrong," Richards says, grinning. "But those are exciting moments," Lams adds, clearly energized by the thought. The CGT's mastery of Guitar Craft methods led the group to conduct a workshop last spring in Los Angeles, and they are hoping to work more into their schedule. While building and repairs are not involved, Guitar Craft covers more territory than just playing. "It can become a way of life," Richards explains. "For example, if I apply the same quality of attention to cleaning my kitchen that I do to my guitar playing, I might find that my quality of attention in general may improve and thus my guitar playing may improve. And I may have a really clean kitchen too!"