It was his love for flamenco guitar playing that led a Thames High School student to victory at a music competition last month in Pukekohe.
Thirteen-year-old Luca Yamamoto left the New Zealand Modern School of Music Competition on a high note after strumming up a storm and securing two golds and two silvers.
He took home gold for his cover of Malaguena in the open choice category, snagged one silver for his original song Open Seas in the open composition, and another silver for his cover of Someone you loved in the text piece category.
But it was his gold winning original song Spanish Nights that Luca said really made the difference in the open performance category.
Luca told The Profile he was up against 15 “really amazing” musicians, and wasn’t sure if he would place, let alone win.
“It was a really tough performance right at the end of the day.”
Luca said he shared a speech before he played, which “really helped the judges tilt towards my favour”.
“I wrote this piece and I just told them about my love of the flamenco genre,” he said.
He played it “pretty close” to how he was supposed to, but said: “I did add a little bit extra in some of the parts though”.
Even though Luca said he knew his song was one of the more technical pieces out of the group: “I knew if I wanted to win it – I needed to play it with a lot of emotion to sway the crowd and the judges”.
Luca said he added a piece while playing in the moment because “it just felt right at the time”.
For the open compositions category, Luca said he competed against a pianist he played against in 2023.
Last year Luca beat him by one point, and this year the competitor came back and beat Luca by the same amount.
“I got a score of 95 to his 96.”
That would not stop Luca though, who said he was spending his time: “just learning pieces and trying to just get better”.
It was his father’s words that encouraged Luca to embrace flamenco style of guitar playing in the first place: “if you can master, or at least semi master the genre – everything else later on will just become a whole lot easier”.
Luca said if he gets into playing with bands in all the other popular genres, it would “just feel really easy”.
One thing about playing flamenco is: “there’s a very significant and iconic strum style – and you need to have long fingernails for that”.
A couple of days before the competition, Luca said he had a basketball match and snapped off two fingernails, which meant he “stuffed up one of my pieces, but still managed to get a score of 98”.
For students thinking about playing the guitar, Luca said: “the best thing you can do is play everyday”.
“The first part is tricky, that’s when a lot of people stop I think.
“But if you can push past that first bit, then yeah, that’s when you really get it.”
