Canberra Classical Guitar Society presents Australian classical guitarist Simon Powis in his only Canberra concert in 2010.   Powis completed studies at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Raffaele Agostino and Greg Pikler in 2004, and in 2006 he was invited to undertake a Masters of Music at Yale University on a full scholarship.  Upon completing this degree he was accepted as the first guitarist in over two decades to undertake doctoral studies at Yale.

Where: Wesley Music Centre, 20 National Circuit, Forrest.
Tickets at the door.  Full $20, concession $20
Enquiries: 0403 640 669

It is planned to pay $1,500 for each of two works and therefore the target for fund raising is $3,000. The actual commitment to commission the works is dependent on the fund-raising success.

Please click on the project page above for more details.

Canberra Classical Guitar Society presents the renowned duo of New Zealand guitarist John Couch and Australian violinist Judith Hickel performing together in a delightful concert.  The program will include selections from their collaborative CD “Andre’s New Shoes”

When: Friday, 10 September, 7:30pm
Cost: Tickets at the door. Full price $20, concession $15.
Where: Wesley Music Centre, 20 National Circuit, Forrest.
Enquiries: 0403 640 669.

Our next regular monthly meeting is planned for Sunday, 12 September 2010 from 2:30-5pm at Wesley Uniting Church, 20 National Circuit in Forrest.

Earlier this year, Harold  released his CD “the 20th century guitar,” which is a result of his PhD research at ANU into performance practice.  Visit Harold’s website to learn more and to order a copy. www.haroldgretton.com.  (I’m sure his next CD will include a bit of Mertz!)

A NEW VOICE: Australian guitar music with Vietnamese cultural influences

Le-Tuyen Nguyen will present a lecture-recital of new Australian guitar compositions inspired from the Vietnamese music culture at ANU’s Llewellyn Hall on 31 August at 10am. Traditional folk songs, melodic and rhythmic idioms from various regions of Vietnam are brought to life in harmony with art music of the twenty-first century. Each composition displays the explorations of musical and technical possibilities for the guitar. Creating and finding its own paths to a new stylistic identity, this genre of music has emerged as a new voice in contemporary Australian music.

You can find Le-Tuyen’s program and biography at the School of Music website.

Free admission.

PROGRAM

Call of the Mountain and the Forrest
The mystical landscape and the supernatural world of Vietnamese highlands

Highland Dreaming
Melody and dance rhythms of the Vietnamese highlanders

Chanson du Sud
Homage to Debussy
Whole-tone scale and the folksong Ly Chim Quyen from South Vietnam

Nocturne
Creating tone colour of the Vietnamese gongs in a study of natural harmonics and the new staccato-harmonic duotone technique

Fantasia
A fancy arrangement of the folksong Trong Com from North Vietnam for the guitar

Love Song
Exotic nonfunctional harmony for a Vietnamese traditional love song Ly Con Sao

Come Together
The sounds and activities of the highland harvesters during a good rice crop

Gods of the Highlands
Ambience of overtone clusters and ritual rhythms of a highland festival

Guitarist Rupert Boyd at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ

Remember the name Rupert Boyd. While there may never be another classical guitarist like Segovia, this young Australian left his Marlow Guitar Series audience with the impression that someday there may not be the likes of him again, either.

Playing for a clearly knowledgeable audience Saturday at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Boyd took on a program prodigious in both scale and intensity. Many of the works were intimately known by his audience with the exception of his openers, two highly imaginative compositions by fellow Australian Phillip Houghton, which Boyd interpreted deftly in the style of tone poems, only more indigenous.

Boyd’s hour-plus program included works by Ponce, Llobet, Albéniz, J.S. Bach and Granados, which he played with remarkable versatility and an almost preternatural use of color and tone, notably on Llobet’s “El Noi de la Mare.”

Throughout his program, Boyd’s precision yielded the effect of more than one instrument, especially on fugal sections and specifically in Bach’s Suite in A Minor, the sarabande movement of which was a textbook example of how to keep playing in spite of an unexpected lapse or two. Boyd rebounded with dispatch in the gigue movement, which he laced with energy and dance.

Overriding incipient fatigue, Boyd concluded with his arrangement of Enrique Granados’s “Valses Poéticos” punctuated with a stunning fade-to-black decrescendo and truly evocative playing in the closing movement, “Melódico.”