MUSIC : Harmonica Americana : Virtuoso Elaborates on a Musical Tradition by Playing in Pop and Classical Appearances

Are you ready for a Bach concerto played on a harmonica? Why not, asks Robert Bonfiglio.

“The instrument is really not as limited as people think,” says the harmonica virtuoso. “Basically, the work is going to sound different, but not less musically viable, which is the true key to all transcriptions. I refuse to play something that could be played better on some other instrument.”

Bonfiglio and his wife, flutist Clare Hoffman, will play Bach’s Double Concerto in C minor tonight in Fullerton under the sponsorship of the North Orange County Community Concert Assn. Works by Mozart, Debussy, Ravel, Gershwin and others will complete the program, which also will enlist the contributions of violinist Coke Bolipata and cellist Robert Albrecht.

Bonfiglio says he has taken “an instrument based in folklore and the folk feelings of the United States and elevated it to a new level, so it can express feelings about being a human being in a different way.

“Really, all the great classical music and a great deal of the great popular music has always been based on the folk music.”

Indeed, “the harmonica is the instrument you associate with America. You think of campfires and cowboys, freight trains going out to the Rockies--which is great, because we’re living in America, right?”

Bonfiglio, 36, is about American as you can get. He was born in Iowa City, and he says his great-uncle, Tom Wells of Mason City, Iowa, was the model for the hero of Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man.”

“Tom Wells used to play the piccolo. Sousa wanted him to play in his band. He taught a young composer named Meredith Wilson. That’s the only family connection to music. Not too shabby.”

Growing up, Bonfiglio took up the harmonica to play like the blues musicians he admired--Sonny Boy Williamson, Junior Wells, James Cotton.

In 1970, as he began to feel challenged by the possibilities of the instrument, he moved to New York to study privately for five years with Chinese harmonica master Cham-ber Huang. While he was studying, he paid the bills by playing for commercials for M&Ms; and Levi’s, such films as “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Places in the Heart” and such TV soap operas as “Ryan’s Hope” and “General Hospital.”

He also pursued degrees in composition at the Mannes College of Music and later at the Manhattan School of Music, where he worked with composers Charles Wuorinen, Aaron Copland and John Cage.

“Actually,” he recalls “Wuorinen was the one who said I’d do more with harmonica than with composition, because of the special niche.”

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Two other harmonica players had paved the way for his classical career. Larry Adler had been the first American virtuoso to establish the harmonica as a classical instrument--until he was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early ‘50s. Adler left the country but played as recently as 1992, at the concert celebrating the 40th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.

John Sebastian, the father of the leader of the Lovin’ Spoonful, also was a well-known harmonica player until a serious illness ended his career in 1961.

Both Sebastian and Adler realized that repertory for the harmonica was limited so they commissioned concertos from such composers as Alan Hovhaness, Henry Cowell, Alexander Tcherepnin, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Darius Milhaud and Malcolm Arnold. Bonfiglio says there now are about 60 concertos for the instrument, and he is trying to persuade young composers to write more.

Meanwhile, he says, “what I do is pick up where (Sebastian and Adler) leave off. Like everything else, there have been technical and other advancements.” As far as mastering the harmonica is concerned, though, “the process is the same as with every instrument. It’s a very difficult instrument to play. I practice four hours a day.”

He receives coaching--from Andrew Lolya, principal flutist with the New York City Ballet orchestra--”just as any other classical musician does. All the great soloists have had a tremendous number of teachers. This is the basis of how you make decisions about the form of a piece, how you make interpretations, phrasings, feeling.

“People will come up to me after a concert and ask, ‘How did you learn to phrase like that?’ I’ll tell them, ‘I was coached for 12 years.’ ”

He has recorded works by Villa-Lobos and American music including the Cowell Concerto and a Stephen Foster medley. His most recent album is a crossover collection called “Through the Raindrops,” which has been climbing the Billboard Top Adult Alternative chart. It was No. 19 last week.

Bonfiglio plays about 70 concerts a year and says he’s “he only person in the United States playing the major works for harmonica and orchestra.

“What’s amazing to me is that the pop and the classical appearances correlate. I played the title cut of ‘Through the Raindrops’ on CBS, and the next day I got calls from the symphonies. Well, it’s a business. Everybody wants to fill seats.”