Celebrating and listening to the art of David Pelham

On Feb. 27, a concert celebrating the guitar accomplishments of Idyllwild resident David Pelham will be performed at the Idyllwild Library. The concert starts at 5 p.m. and Pelham will be attending.

Thirteen of his guitar compositions will be performed by four local outstanding guitarists — Ernesto Alé, Jack McBroom, Lawrence Spector and David Jerome.

Pelham has been playing the guitar since the early 1960s and composing for years. When he started strumming, it was mostly chords and backing up singers. With friends and for social gatherings, they performed folk and popular music.

By 1962, his preferences began to change. A friend’s family was taking a trip to Mexico. He gave them $20 to buy him a new guitar. He was using a Martin D-18, which was near the top-of-the line then. It was his dream guitar. But the new instrument with its nylon strings overwhelmed him. He still plays it some at home, including the morning of the interview.

“I was just taken with its warmth and nuance of its sounds,” he said. “I was infatuated. I was inspired to start composing with no training, study or music theory classes. I just heard music in this instrument.” And he wrote his first seven compositions.

He was neither a trained musician nor composer. He was an educator in special education. He worked at a private school in Orange County. After several years, they asked him to become director of their Mountain Center campus, known as Morning Sky.

In 1985, he and his wife Barbara moved to Idyllwild. While he taught at Morning Sky, she was on the Idyllwild School faculty. They have two children, a daughter and son, and two grandchildren.

Before the move, he had been taking guitar lessons from Seiko Sesoko in Anaheim. As an adult student, Pelham realized that he was not the best student in Sesoko’s class. “It didn’t occur until years later, but I was a better composer than guitarist,” he said, describing his transition.

Several years after their move to Idyllwild, he revived his interest in composition. That next piece became very personal. It evolved into three movements.

“Sonata for my Farther” was written for his father. Pelham went to the hospice where his father was bedridden. He sat next to the bed and played this music for his ailing father, who died that night.

Among his various compositions is another personal family piece. When his son was old enough to begin kindergarten, many of the boy’s imaginary friends were disappearing. Pelham wrote a piece about that changing phase of youth. After he played it, his son responded in tears and said, “Don’t ever play that again.”

Pelham is now working on his 56th classical guitar composition. The length of time to write a piece varies. He said, “Some roll right off,” and some, such as the piece for his father, take years. While the works are often personal, he also received an international honor for his composition.

In the early 2020s, Mariana Gomez, the award-winning Mexican guitarist (who has performed in Idyllwild), heard and loved his composition “Hymn for the Earth.” She played it at a conservatory in Barcelona, Spain, where a video producer heard it and wanted to make a video of her playing.

The final product was entered in a classical guitar award program at the Siroki Brijeg Guitar Festival in Bosnia Herzogovina. In 2022, the video won three awards, including “Best Original Music.”

While the vast majority of his compositions are for the classical guitar. He did write some electronic music in the early 1990s. And he also drafted a duet for a cello, which Barbara plays.

“I actually liked the cello parts better,” he admitted.

Many of Pelham’s works are personal and derive from his life. One in particular that Alé will play at the concert is “Ashes and Tears.” This was written after the 2018 Cranston Fire, which burned more than 13,000 acres on the Hill and damaged several homes, one of which Alé has lived in.

Last year, Alé was at Pelham’s looking at buying a new guitar (Pelham also makes guitars). He heard the piece and wanted to showcase it to the community and that was the origin of the concert.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Pelham declared. “It’s flattering, almost embarrassing.” And he said, he might play a piece but that was not a commitment.

Suffering from metastasized prostate cancer, the treatments have affected his fingers and feet. “I have neuropathy. I don’t get good feedback from my fingers. I can play some still.”

The compositions that will be performed were mostly selected by the guitarists, he said. “I did suggest a few that should be performed by somebody. We exchanged ideas via the cell phone text group.”