The Grammy Award-winning LAGQ is one of the most multifaceted groups in any genre. The LAGQ is comprised of four uniquely accomplished musicians bringing a new energy to the concert stage with programs ranging from Bluegrass to Bach. Winner of a 2005 Grammy Award, their Guitar Heroes CD released on Telarc is a brilliant follow-up to their Grammy-nominated LAGQ-Latin.

FESTIVAL REPERTOIRE

Los Angeles Guitar Quartet 
John Dearman ~ Matthew Greif ~ William Kanengiser ~ Scott Tennant

Frank Salomon Associates manages LAGQ / Managing Associate: Ms. Barrie Steinberg 

www.franksalomon.com / TEL: 212-581-5197 

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PROGRAM NOTES

The quartet begins tonight’s program with Giacomo Rossini's Overture to "Il Barbiere di Siviglia." one of the most popular of his uniformly brilliant opera overtures, and one which has taken on a life of its own apart from the opera it introduces. The work has become a staple of the symphonic repertoire, as well as a frequent soundtrack to cartoons, most notably in the classic Bugs Bunny adaptation. John Dearman's realization is an excellent example of the rather "democratic" philosophy of arrangement that LAGQ frequently employs. The four members of the quartet are treated as equal voices, and nearly all prominent melodies are distributed antiphonally within the ensemble. 

Phillip Houghton is one of the most recorded and influential Australian guitar composers. His work expresses a distinctly Australian aesthetic, reflecting the country’s vast landscapes and mystical “dreamtime” Aboriginal legends. He was famously a synesthete, wherein he saw very specific colors when hearing musical tones and timbres. “Opals” (1993, revised 2014) is a three-movement work for guitar quartet, and it attempts to capture the myriad glints and sparkles emanated by Australia’s opalescent national gemstone. In the score, there are detailed notes describing the colors and sheens that the music attempts to evoke. The composer provided the following notes for each movement: 

"Rather than being pitch-black, the Black Opal is a stone of fantastic colour. Electric reds, purples, blues and greens of every shade predominate and refract and collide, in a fiery rainbow of splinters of brilliant light against a dark matrix. One could say that the opal is “made” from water, and, in the “Water Opal” movement, I imagined a kaleidoscope of colour in and against a transparent “water matrix”…colours floating, bleeding into each other. Against a white matrix the lighter colours of the White Opal are brilliant and translucent. Evident in this stone is what is called “pinfire” (glittering points of red and green) and the “rolling flash” (which describes the effect of layers of colour which, ripple abruptly and sparkle through the stone when the stone is moved)." 

Three Guitar Heroes 

On their 2004 Grammy Award-winning release “LAGQ's Guitar Heroes”, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet paid tribute to some of the legendary guitarists who inspired them in their youth. This set expands on that concept and the LAGQ presents newly created arrangements, or “covers”, of signature tunes by heroes Michael Hedges, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa. To start is a piece by the hugely influential Michael Hedges, who created a revolution in steel-string guitar playing with his innovative tapping and open-tuning creations. Revered for his virtuosity and sonic brilliance, he was also a composer of great depth and sophistication. He took the world by storm with his groundbreaking 1984 recording Aerial Boundaries, and Mathew Greif’s arrangement of the title track presents it faithfully, providing a brief excursion before returning to Hedge’s original. It’s followed by a soulful ballad by Jimi Hendrix, America’s first “Guitar God”, in Matt Greif’s delicate setting of The Wind Cries Mary. Beginning in a quasi-minimalist style, the tune gradually reveals itself until the rocking groove locks in and we hear some of Hendrix’s patented guitar riffs. The final piece is by one of rock’s most iconoclastic and irreverently inscrutable figures, Frank Zappa. Since his satirical lyrics don’t translate very well to guitars, William Kanengiser chose one of Zappa’s most popular instrumental pieces, the funk-rock, tongue-in-cheek anthem Peaches en Regalia. Featuring a fanfare-like opening melody, the piece takes a number of musical zigs and zags, venturing into quasi-disco, jazz and faux-classical. 

O spirito do João/Xaxarê from “Brésils” by Roland Dyens 

LAGQ pays tribute to their dear departed friend and exceptional composer, arranger, and guitarist Roland Dyens, with a brief excerpt from his 6-movement tribute to popular Brazilian music, Brésils. Through his arrangements and original works, Roland displayed his utter mastery of styles as diverse as jazz, French chansons, Argentinian tango, and many others. But one of his favorites was the music of Brazil, and he showed his deep respect for its history and tradition in works such as this. Of the final two movements of Brésils, Roland wrote: 

“The title ‘O spirito do João’ literally refers to the spirit of João, in other words João Gilberto, the brilliant co-inventor of the bossa nova, whose spirit is almost visibly hovering above this piece. The title ‘Xaxaré’ is a play on words. Perhaps I should explain: The xaxádo (pronounced chachádo with the stress on the second syllable) is a dance from the Brazilian ‘nordeste’, and therefore has its origins in Africa. As the finale of this music is a xaxádo in the purest tradition, I thought it might be amusing to call it Xaxaré (pronounced chacharé with the stress on the second syllable), its tonality being basically in D major (or ré in French, as opposed to the do of xaxádo, meaning C major). It’s as simple as that.” 

William Kanengiser writes about “Gongan”: A number of years ago the quartet was invited to play at a festival in Singapore. On a free night, we attended a performance by an Indonesian dance ensemble, accompanied by a traditional “Gamelan” orchestra. It was my first direct experience hearing gamelan music, and I was entranced by the sonorities of the instruments and the hypnotic character of the music. Years later, in planning the repertoire for a recording of “world music” pieces, I wondered if this music could somehow translate to the guitar. I immersed myself in listening to recordings and searched for just the right piece to arrange for four guitars. Ultimately, I wrote an original work, inspired by the rhythms and scales of the Indonesian style. The most notable aspect of the piece is the use of preparations on the guitar strings (metal clips, plastic discs, mutes, small bells, etc.) to evoke the sound of the traditional gongs, percussion, and mallet instruments of the Balinese gamelan. The title, “Gongan” is a term describing the recurring rhythmic pattern of the low gongs that serve as a foundation for all the upper voices. 

Certainly, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” (the first movement of Sonata #14 in C# minor, Op, 27 #2, “Sonata Quasi una fantasia”) needs no introduction. It stands as one of Beethoven’s most recognizable works for solo piano, eclipsed perhaps only by Für Elise in popularity. Stunningly modern in its day (composed in 1801) it became one of Beethoven’s most-requested pieces after his premiere of the work in 1802 (apparently, he played so forcefully in the 3rd movement Presto agitato that a number of piano strings snapped!). The evocative Adagio sostenuto movement features undulating arpeggios murmuring under a melody that Berlioz described as “a lamentation”. With the instructions that “the entire piece should be played with the greatest delicacy and without dampers”, it explores the full resonance of the lower tessitura of the piano in its most delicate dynamic range. The baritone voicing of the work lends itself well to the guitar, which already sounds an octave lower than written (although a number of the lowest bass notes traverse even the extended range of John Dearman’s 7-string guitar). The challenge in William Kanengiser’s arrangement was to attempt to mimic the resonant sustain of the piano, and the subtle pedaling effects that create its haunting atmosphere. Although every arrangement carries its own set of compromises, it is hoped that this one will shed new light on a much-loved Beethoven classic. 

La Fiesta de la Tirana and Tarantella are pieces originally performed by the world-famous Chilean group Inti-Illimani, led by Horacio Salinas. Scott Tennant arranged a number of their pieces for LAGQ. La Fiesta depicts the music played during the Feast of La Tirana, when the faithful parade through the streets carrying a statue of La Tirana (the Virgin Mary) at the front of the procession. Beginning as if in the distance, the procession gets closer and closer as the music reaches a fever pitch, and then fades away as the parade passes through the village. To recreate the spirit of Andean music, LAGQ can be heard imitating several instruments such as, charangos (a small guitar with an armadillo-shell body), caja (large drum), and pan-pipes, achieved by scraping the nail across the wound bass strings and percussion. Tarantella is actually based on a medieval Italian dance, originally meant to portray the death-throes of a tarantula bite victim, but the Chilean adaptation here is explained in the long residency Inti-Illimani spent in Italy while in political exile from their homeland. 

© William Kanengiser