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William Gibbs IS AN EXCEPTIONAL CASE FOR A FOREIGNER LIVING IN Spain. As Artistic Director of the television program "Lo + plus" on Canal Plus in Spain since 1997 and news broadcaster for the Sunday morning news program, "Sin Fronteras" on Telemadrid he is a beacon. The right combination of good humour, simplicity, intelligence and a lot of diligence has led to a wave of success and subsequent media buzz. We spoke to him about the many facets of his talent and the world of music and television in Spain.
November 7, 2000
My mother was an orchestral violinist and my grandmother was a composer. So, at the age of six they encouraged me to take up a string instrument and I began with the cello and the typical classical music education, Mozart, string quartets, what have you. We lived in Somerset, the West Country in England and when I was 4 we moved to Portugal for a year and then we went to live in the lovely rural part of southern England called Bristol. We ended up in London when I was about 7. I preferred to play football when I was young and didn't take up music, classical and jazz guitar, really seriously until I was about 17. I read music and fine arts at Sussex University which is in the great seaside town of Brighton. There I switched from classical guitar, which was too much of a taskmaster, to the saxophone.
Well, when I was at university I met some Spanish people in Brighton that were doing a language course, as Spanish people often do, and their descriptions of Madrid sounded incredibly romantic to me, long hot summer nights, crazy and creative people. My family is full of creative people, musicians and painters. There was a girl that I liked which was also an incentive, so I decided to find out for myself about Spain. I came here in 1986 for my summer holidays in August for a month. Within a year I had returned to stay for what I planned to be another year, but it has been 12 years now and it has gone very well. I started off teaching in the British Council School where I stayed 9 years, running the choir and orchestra with Rafael Villanueva. As soon as I arrived in Madrid, I started playing the saxophone professionally. In 1997, when I felt I needed a break from teaching and had planned to return to England, the job on television appeared! There was a message on my answering phone saying that they were doing some auditions and that I should give the chap a ring. It was a fluke, a major chance. One can spend years in the music world sort of banging your head against the brick wall. It's tough. It's been about 20 years now since I began working in music.
Well, my mother, obviously, she was the musician in the family. I wouldn't say there was just one teacher but many. When I was young I had one of the top cello teachers and performers in England, Jennifer Ward Clarke. I studied with her until I was 13. She was a young and trendy musician role model, active in the contemporary music scene. I also had two really good guitar teachers. When I took up the sax, I was at university and didn't have much time so I am pretty much self-taught.
Although I can appreciate strident or discordant music, as a musician I really enjoy beautiful music especially when I am alone. It could be a Mozart clarinet concerto or David Sanborn*. I wouldn't say it has to be any particular style but I do appreciate music you can chill out to, lyrical music. If I had to choose some records to take to a desert island I suppose I would take a Mozart quintet, Miles Davis blues and some jazz.
I've got a friend, Carolina Cubillo, who works in Telemadrid and she told me they were auditioning for a bilingual news program and that they wanted someone who speaks good Spanish, that can write, that had good communication skills and that doesn't look like the back end of a bus. I decided to audition although I couldn't really see myself in that role at the time. I wasn't actually nervous because the audition was Spanish style. The audition was having a beer. The Spanish are very suspicious about auditions and trails in general. Their approach is more getting to know the person and afterwards on the professional side they say, "Oh, by the way can you bring me a resume?", after they have already given you the job. So, I went around to have a beer and I told them what I had done, theater in England and all that. They did a screen test but basically they looked for someone who could fit in with the team. You can have a great resume but if you are going to be a pain no one wants you. The four of us have a good rapport and it shows that it was a good choice of people. Perhaps, we get along even better than they can imagine because we go out together. The atmosphere of the program and the way we chat, you might want to call it frivolity, comes from having 4 young people present the news. I think that within 3 months what seems to our audience as natural now will be even better because in a way we are still learning the ropes. To be able to portray and capture the spontaneity on screen is a technique. Susana Pfingsten who is the producer of the program, and the director help us a lot.
I think that having a light, pleasant manner, if it's not put on because that is something that shows through, is important. Sometimes inside you might be feeling something completely different. One might be feeling grim but it's good to get into the habit of being light, airy and cheerful. Television is communication. It is light entertainment and what works best is gaiety. It's not heavy, deep-thinking, dark thoughts. That's something else and you can save it for film or another medium. Television is happiness with a light touch, playing with Celia Cruz and Phil Collins, for example. That was good fun and we enjoyed ourselves. You need enthusiasm the minute you walk into the building. Even the security people emanate it. It is a way of dealing with the tremendous stress there. Yesterday, for instance I was in Alicante in the car and I plugged in my cell phone which I hadn't had connected for a couple of days. They phoned from Telemadrid and asked where I was. We were supposed to record in two days but they asked if I could come right then. So, I did the translations over the phone with them and drove straight to Madrid, 4 hours. I changed, made up, recorded the program in an hour and got back in the car and drove back to our concert in the Jazz Festival in Puertollano, Ciudad Real.
