With steady invitations to perform all over the world, Corey Christiansen says returning home provides opportunities he just can't find elsewhere...

“When we figured out your contract hours,” Corey says to Mike, “it was literally the work of three people.” Now make that three over two: Perhaps not an even division of duty, but an imbalance in workload with potential to shift in Corey's direction, should Mike ever flirt with retirement.

“Yeah, I guess I could...” Mike begins.

“He's never going to retire,” Corey says.

Not completely, anyway. “When the timing's right, I'd like to become an emeritus professor,” Mike says. “The guitar majors, I just love hanging with them – some more than others – but I love hanging with them,” he adds.

For now, Corey will shoulder what he can, albeit as “padawan,” he says, to the “Jedi master” of guitar teaching, who will definitely, if you're wondering, be keeping his office. Together, they'll be able to attend and conduct workshops and clinics they'd have missed individually. Mike says, in particular, he's looking forward to their “synergy.” With his background in jazz, Corey will probably take some students with similar interests. And who knows? The pairing could, if necessary, feature a little good cop, bad cop, Corey says, though it remains to be seen who would play whom. (Possible hint: One tells the other, “Finally, after all these years, you get to have a bad cop.”)

A famous metaphor of science might read, to an instrumentalist: “If I have learned anything about this thing, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Legendary saxophonist John Coltrane, for starters, took Giant Steps in 1960 by building on the work of his forefathers.

By the same token, the saying applies to guitarists. Corey recounts how he took over for Jack Petersen at the University of South Florida after receiving his master's degree there in 1999. A professor's job, Petersen explained, is to digest 40 years experience and regurgitate it in two, laying a foundation of knowledge for subsequent students to build upon. Learners become teachers; the cycle continues. “That's how,” Petersen concluded, “we're going to progress the instrument.”

Devoted to that end is, if not in a name, a guitar-guru guild – a community of musicians traditionally marginalized by academics.

“The brotherhood of guitar teaching is pretty serious business,” Corey explains, “because we've always kind of been this rogue instrument. People in academia haven't really known how to accept it. ...We're on a mission; we're motivated to elevate the status of the instrument.”

Still only a child when he began studying with Dad, Corey grasped little of his instrument's history. What he did notice were distinct identities that varied with location. “Lessons were lessons,” Corey says “and home was home.”

Mike had drawn a father/professor line, crossing it only en route to his office, maintaining his distance at all other times. Insofar as he could, Mike handled Corey as he would any other student – only more firmly.

“I was probably tougher on Corey,” he says, “because I didn't want anybody to scream ‘Nepotism.’ ...So I made him toe the mark more than others.”

“The only thing is,” Corey says, “I never really had any good excuses for not practicing like maybe some other kids. They'd say, ‘I had a really busy week.’ It's like, well, ‘I knew exactly what your week was.’”

On lesson days, Corey and two friends carpooled (here it's worth acknowledging Mom's role as home-to-campus shuttle driver, not to mention that of family band manager, in which she helped arrange countless performances for both Mike and Corey) to the Fine Arts Center, where turns in Dad's office were interspersed with trips tearing through the building.

“I think he was just as excited about the vending machines as coming up to take guitar lessons,” Mike says. The year Corey began lessons, 1977, was also Mike's first contractual year at Utah State, though he came on as an adjunct three years earlier. That made Corey one of his first students and, in a way, a teacher himself. As Corey was taught, so he reciprocated. Though he couldn't have known it, neophyte guitarist doubled as guinea pig.

“Guitar is a fairly green area, unlike some instruments that have had the pedagogy down forever,” Mike says. “When I started teaching, I tried out a lot of things on Corey to see if they would work.”

The verdict?

Music is that rarest of gifts that, once unwrapped, is individualized, internalized, extemporized – savored in the moment of creation – then awkwardly repackaged and handed between generations. The communication of such abstract concepts involves continual trial and error, and Mike says he “probably did a lot of unsmart things.” But, education aside, you can't excel if you don't practice. Nowhere is this more evident than in the performing arts. “Playing,” Corey says, “is the easy part.” With Dad for a teacher, he felt no pressure to play, only pressure to practice. Work ethic is in his blood. Mike smiles when he hears this; trial with error, perhaps, but ultimately with professorial success, that point when teacher – father – and student recognize paternal prodding is no longer a course requirement.

There could be a third. Corey's son, Beck, is the same age Corey was when he started strumming. He's studying with grandpa, who's counting on him to help refine a new, “revolutionary” method book for children. Beck, too, is a guinea pig.

And a natural, apparently. Brother to three (Kaiya, Crede and Sofie), Beck showed uncanny coordination at 6 months, when he could eat with utensils without dropping a bite. Though it sounds ridiculous, Corey says, he bought Beck a ukulele on his first birthday, then e-mailed a photo of his son to friend Joe Diorio, a jazz guitarist in Los Angeles.

“(Beck) might be,” came Diorio's reply, “the one we've been waiting for.”

Until then, Mike and Corey will have to suffice. Life is busy but comfortable. When New York musicians are slugging it out nightly to the tune of $38-per-band, Corey says, Utah's dearth of competition, by comparison, makes for a pretty good music scene: “I'm sitting pretty fat, the way I see it. I still get to tour, I'm going to teach at USU and I'm going to get to learn a TON.”

For Mike, Corey's return is a confirmation of Smithfield's sense of community, a small-town aspect he doesn't take for granted. It's the type of place where your barber greets you by name, where the president of the university lives across the street and where the guy at the hardware store knows that when you drop by, another pocketknife has been abandoned in some airport, somewhere.

It's a welcome retreat. On occasion, it seems, even those who eat, sleep and breathe music suffer from overexposure. “Sometimes,” says Corey, “the news is the most beautiful sound you've ever heard.”

Not tonight, though. Tonight he's performing with his father. Later, it'll be Mike in Indianapolis and Corey in Louisville, which might involve a pickup game of basketball with friend and longtime jazz educator, Jamey Aebersold. Next month? If their paths don't cross, fall semester is around the corner. For now, Mike's in the business of building more memories. His grandkids are calling.

–David Sweeney '08