It's Father's Day tomorrow. Róisín Ingle meets a family duo whose model relationship has been honed by hours of shared music practice.
Father and son Michael and Alec O'Leary have spent almost 15 years teaching each other about music, and forging a bond that has got stronger over the years. "He taught me to play guitar when I was around nine or 10," says Alec (26) who founded the annual Walton's Guitar Festival of Ireland three years ago. "He picked things out from records by ear and taught me how to play, guitar to guitar. He spent ages with me, away from the sheet music, and it was the start of what is now a very close relationship."
When Alec went on to study classical guitar with virtuouso John Feely at the Dublin Conservatory of Music and Drama, he had to unpick some of his informal training. "The ragtime and blues style I taught him wasn't compatible with the classical style so Alec had to transform his technique," says Michael, who is based in Carlow, while his son lives in Kilkenny. "The self-taught technique is never perfect," explains Alec. "A couple of years later, Alec retrained me in the classical style which was a great experience. Even now Alec teaches me," Michael adds.
While father and son still play duets occasionally, Michael no longer plays as much as he used to because his main business is guitar construction, which he studied in Spain after getting design and technology qualifications. "You need good, long and strong nails for playing, and the materials I use to make guitars don't allow for that," he says. His guitars are sought-after by players around the world, and Alec is in charge of quality control, testing the guitars before they are delivered to customers.
Alec's idea for a guitar festival came after he visited festivals across Europe with his Dad as a teenager. "He decided to try to set up something like that here, so Irish students didn't always have to go abroad for these events. The first one was a huge success, thanks to guitarist John Williams, who liked what we were doing and continues to support us," says Michael."I'm really proud of how he manages to pull it all off."
"It's a symbiotic relationship," says Alec. "It always has been. Now that we organise the festival, together with my mum, Margaret, it means guitarists from all over the place hear his instruments and go mad for them." Alec himself is one of the foremost players of his generation and has played with luminaries in the guitar world such as Manuel Barrueco, Roland Dyens, Scott Tennant, Sergio Assad, Elena Papandreou and Fabio Zannon.
As Father's Day approaches, Alec says that the older he gets the more he realises his Dad is right about "nearly everything". Michael is often the first person he comes to when he needs advice. "Not just about music, but about relationships and other aspects of life. The more I listen to him the better things seem to work out for me," he says. Michael, meanwhile, cherishes their "unusually close" bond. In the run-up to the festival, which features players from Cuba, China and North America, they have been meeting four or five times a week. "I think our relationship works because we always make time for each other," says Alec. "We give space to each other's opinions. We don't have arguments; we discuss things." "We started working and playing together purely for the enjoyment," says Michael. "And it's still that way now."
The Walton's Guitar Festival of Ireland begins on July 4th in Dublin. For more details see www.gfi.ie