A powerful banking executive. A passionate musician. A dedicated luthier. A curious Renaissance man.
These are just a few ways to describe Michael Lazar, 72, the Lifetime Achievement Award recipient to be feted at Friday night's Mayor's Celebration of the Arts Awards.
Known affectionately as Mick to close friends and family, Lazar has quietly carved a unique but respectable reputation for himself as a luthier.
According to the dictionary, a luthier makes stringed instruments such as violins or guitars. Lazar's specialty is building classical guitars.
Slightly baffled about receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award, he speaks candidly.
"I would have thought that many people more deserving than me would be nominated. But nonetheless I'm pleased about it."
Since 1981 when the St. Albert resident crafted his first guitar, Lazar has fashioned 107 acoustic guitars. In his tidy basement shop, he assembles anywhere from five to seven guitars a year.
As a kid, growing up in Meadow Lake, Sask. was fantastic deal. His dad, a successful fur trader, did well financially. The family owned a house in town and a cottage at Jeanette Lake where he spent summers enjoying nature.
"All we ate was geese, ducks, fish, deer and moose. On the occasion my dad would buy a steer from the 4-H Club," he said.
His mother instead was very artistic.
"She was quite a good painter and could sit at the piano and play quite well."
As a teenager, Lazar had dreamed of obtaining a post-secondary degree and eventually joining the aerospace industry. But by the time he graduated in 1958 at 16 from Carpenter High, the fur trade crashed and with it the family's lucrative cash flow.
His dad switched career paths and was setting up a business selling farm machinery and automobiles. This left no money for a university education.
Initially Lazar did minor mechanical repairs around his father's shop. Then one day he was greasing the bank manager's car when the executive offered him a job as a junior clerk.
"Show up on Monday and wear a shirt and tie," was the manager's sole request.
The lanky adolescent went to work for the Imperial Bank of Commerce, which later merged with Canadian Bank of Commerce to form what is today known as CIBC.
Back in those days, an employee with talent and brains was transferred to a different bank often to gain experience across the national network.
On the move
By the time Lazar was 25, he had been transferred to eight banking posts across Canada from Banff to Port Arthur, Ont. By the time he landed in Port Arthur, a series of small promotions had propelled him to the position of second in command at the branch.
Throughout his career trajectory, only at Banff did he ask for an early transfer.
"In Banff you lived at the bank. They had staff quarters. But you had to eat in restaurants, and some months my expenses were higher than my salary."
In his next move to Prince Albert, Lazar discovered his roommate played guitar. The discovery turned into a key incentive to purchasing his first guitar – a Kay flattop.
"It was a hobby. He would play the chords and I would play the melodies."
As Lazar's career grew in stature, so did his musical accomplishments.
At Balmertown, Ont., a transient mining town, he was invited to help form a high school band known throughout the district as The Dynatones. Later at Fisher Lake, Man., an agricultural community, Lazar switched gears to the steel guitar in a country and western band.
"I went in thinking I was one of the more talented to a position of humility. Those musicians sure could play," he said.
But it was in the Mennonite town of Altona, Man., where drinking and dancing were not permitted, that the banker discovered classical guitars.
"I made a friend who was 10 years older. He was married, but his wife passed away and he was left with two kids. He was the town maintenance man and a mean guitar player. He approached me and we'd doodle around on the guitar. I got another lesson in humility from him. He could play Chet Atkins tunes like Chet Atkins."
When his friend showed him a classical guitar with the wide neck and nylon strings, Lazar thought it might be a toy.
"He proceeded to play classical guitar and it knocked me off my feet – the beauty of the music."
Eager to learn techniques to play the new instrument, he first had to learn to read music.
"It opened up a whole new area of interest. While I continued with other music, my interest in classical guitar music accelerated very rapidly."
By the time Lazar was transferred to Edmonton in 1977, his career trajectory was climbing quickly. He arrived at the main branch as senior commercial account manager handling a portfolio in excess of $1 billion.
"It was a plum job complete. I was given a golf club membership and my clients were Syncrude, the Government of Alberta and all big commercial businesses."
First guitar
It was in 1981 during Alberta's economic crash that Lazar decided to make his first guitar.
"I'd travelled to Vancouver and Seattle and looked for and found classical guitars. Once I got over the initial novelty, I didn't like them. They weren't as good as a classical guitar should be. They weren't as perfect as some I'd heard."
A bit of a Renaissance man or "a jack-of-all-trades" as he calls himself, Lazar enjoyed working with his hands. He designed and built model airplanes, built model cars, rebuilt small engines, built electronic equipment for bands and speaker cabinets.
Trekking down to Audrey's Books, he spotted a book, Classical Guitar Construction by Irving Sloan. It was on sale for $2.50.
"I paid $2.50, got in the car and drove to Sears to buy a jointer, band saw and a drill press. I already had a table saw."
His first guitar was constructed with four types of wood.
"I was making it to see what would happen. I thought it might be a piece of junk and at least I'd be able to get it out of my system," says Lazar. "It was crude. It was not much to look at, but it sounded pretty good."
There were mistakes in the guitar and eventually after a couple of years it found its way to the garbage.
However, his second guitar was more smooth, refined and polished.
"I don't have it, but I got to see it in a music store for sale at $2,000 and I almost bought it."
The quality of his work is advertised mainly through word of mouth. And Lazar has passed on his love of the stringed instrument to his son Tyler, 21, "potentially one of the most talented guitar players I've seen," he says.
Unfortunately Lazar stopped playing guitar five years ago due to growing arthritis in his hands.
"I can't. It's just too painful. I'm thankful so far it hasn't stopped me from building guitars. It's not in my nature to get too upset. I feel life has been good to me and it wouldn't be right to complain about minor setbacks. But still you miss it."
But just last week while wandering through Don's Piano Showroom, he tickled the ivories. Is there a keyboard in his future? We'll have to wait and see.
