He writes,"Every page of music we play is a piece of personal, intimate history: comments from famous guitarists, coffee stains from some festival, my wife’s secret messages on the margins, my daughter’s artistic mishaps, my own remarks…" The notation by the name of Bach carries these words…"folk (and court) dances, stringed one after another like… perfectly cut diamonds on a beautiful necklace." Of Serbia, the musician write, "my first memories of music: family gathering, my dad and aunts at the piano, I cuddled in my mother’s lap, not wanting to go to sleep, wanting to hear another song… my mother’s voice singing that last song before dreams come…"
Kodzas comes from a background of performing and teaching. Delve deeper and you discover a musician who truly believes that his purpose in life is connected to the guitar, that the musical instrument selected him rather than Kodzas picking the guitar. He studied piano as a child, but his parents did not want their son to become, a musician, an attitude that prompted Kodzas to lean toward mechanical engineering or, perhaps computer science. But a chance encounter with an old guitar that was hanging in the family home sealed Kodzas’ fate. Once he played the instrument, he knew the direction his life would take. "It was instant love," recalls Kodzas. "There was no way out. From that moment, my life changed…I couldn’t see myself doing anything else." He still has that old guitar, a 19th century instrument that Kodzas had repaired and restored, although it doesn’t quite make the grade as a concert instrument.
Eventually holding degrees from the University of Belgrade in Yugoslavia and Ithaca College, Kodzas came to Rochester’s Eastman School of Music where he earned a Doctorate Degree of Musical Arts in Performance and Literature. He previously taught at Hochstein School of Music and Dance in Rochester and Nazareth College in Pittsford. Since 1998, Kodzas has been on the Eastman faculty, teaching students about the guitar. Performing is another link to the guitar, and Kodzas has taken his concerts throughout the United States and Europe, and played at festivals in Yugoslavia, Virginia and Rochester.
In Canandaigua, he will present his "Between Two Worlds-Folk meets Classical," a program he has also given elsewhere in New York and in Ohio, Illinois and Michigan. The folk-classical connection was a natural for Kodzas. "I like folk music and I always perform it for fun. I was raised with folk music as part of my cultural heritage. And, of course I play classical music. That was what I was educated for." What the guitarist wants people to know is that many classical compositions are based on folk tunes-which is why he mixes, for example, a work by J.S. Bach on a program with Serbian folk music. "I hope classical music lovers and folk music lovers may come together and see that classical music can be developed out of very simple tunes."
For any selection to make the "Between Two Worlds" cut, to be included in the program, "it had to sit in my heart," says Kodzas of his emotional reaction to the sounds of a particular composition. Performing this music is a gift Kodzas gives to himself and to others. For the audience he wants to "take them to some other place.’ For the musician, the experience of playing music is…"Oh, it’s the same thing. Here’s how I explain it to my students. Try to think of the most beautiful life experience. That’s how I feel." Granted, not every performance can be so uplifting. There are some nights, Kodzas acknowledges. When a performer fights with the sounds, when the "music is the enemy." But there are other occasions when the music takes flight. Says the guitarist: "It’s an inside feeling that fills you up."
