The Skidmore College Department of Music will welcome a return visit by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet at 8 p.m. on Sunday, April 21, for a concert featuring a new concerto for guitar performed by the quartet and a guitar orchestra. The orchestra will include approximately 50 musicians ranging in age from 14 to 70 years from throughout the region.
Joel Brown, senior artist-in-residence at Skidmore, an acclaimed guitarist and chair of Skidmore's Music Department, calls the LAGQ "the premier guitar quartet in the world." The quartet's participation in this event, says Brown, "will make a special concert even better." The concert will feature the performance of a new work by Kyoto-based composer/guitarist Shingo Fujii titled "Shiki: Seasons of Japan." The piece is dedicated to the victims of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The guitar orchestra features performers drawn from a number of the region's campuses, including UAlbany, SUNY Adirondack, Schenectady County Community College, the College of St. Rose, and the Crane School of Music, SUNY College at Potsdam. Douglas Rubio, professor of classical guitar at Crane, will conduct the performance. There will be a professional guitarist in each section of the orchestra, notes Brown, who will be in the third section.
The LAGQ comprises four uniquely accomplished musicians who bring new energy to the stage in programs ranging from bluegrass to Bach. Their inventive, critically acclaimed transcriptions of concert masterworks provide a fresh look at the music of the past, and their interpretations of contemporary and world music continually break new ground. They consistently play to sold-out houses worldwide.
Winner of a 2005 Grammy Award, the LAGQ's Guitar Heroes CD released on Telarc is a brilliant follow-up to the group's Grammy-nominated LAGQ Latin.
Quartet members are John Dearman, Matthew Greif, William Kanengiser, and Scott Tennant. Dearman is a versatile guitarist whose repertoire ranges from samba to bluegrass, from flamenco to classical. He enriches the sound of the LAGQ by performing on a unique seven-string guitar with extended upper and lower registers. Greif, the newest member of the quartet, is a classical guitarist with a background playing in jazz, rock, flamenco, and bluegrass. Kanengiser has earned critical acclaim for his imaginative arrangements for solo guitar and guitar quartet, and for producing two instructional videos for Hot Licks. Tennant is celebrated as a world-class performer, author, and teacher who has been concertizing since the age of 12.
Admission for the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet concert is free for students and children, $8 adults, and $5 seniors and Skidmore community. For advance reservations or more information visit www.skidmore.edu/zankel or call the Zankel box office (518) 580-5321.