Brazilian Guitar Quartet to launch Zankel's spring programming
One of the world’s leading guitar ensembles, the Brazilian Guitar Quartet, kicks off the spring semester at Skidmore’s Arthur Zankel Music Center with a performance on Thursday, Jan. 30.
The 8 p.m. program features selections by Heitor Villa-Lobos (String Quartet No. 12 and String Quartet No. 5), Joaquin Rodrigo (4 Piezas), and Manuel de Falla (Danza Espanola No 2, from La Vida Breve). Admission is $8 general public, $5 seniors and Skidmore community, and free for students and children. For ticket information, please click here.
Winner of the 2011 Latin Grammy Award (best classical album), the Brazilian Guitar Quartet uses a unique combination of guitars to explore original and unusual repertoire. Praised by The Washington Post for its "seductive beauty" and "virtuosic gusto," the group’s unique combination of regular six-string and extended-range eight-string guitars allows for the exploration of original and unusual repertoire. Over more than a decade, the BGQ has performed more than 250 concerts in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, often receiving ecstatic audience responses and rave reviews in sold-out halls.
Highlights of the BGQ's past seasons include performances at the 92nd Street Y and the Metropolitan Museum in New York; Spivey Hall in Atlanta; Vancouver Playhouse in Canada; Dumbarton Concerts in Washington, D.C.; Chamber Music Albuquerque; Shriver Hall in Baltimore; Felicja Blumental International Music Festival in Tel Aviv; Musica Mundi Festival in Brussels; Festival Internacional de Guitarra de Monterrey, Mexico; and the Adelaide International Guitar Festival in Australia.
In 2004, the BGQ headlined the inaugural World Guitar Congress in Baltimore where, together with the Baltimore Symphony, it performed the world premiere of a specially commissioned concerto by Brazil's 2001 "Composer of the Year" Ronaldo Miranda. In 2006, the quartet gave the Brazilian premiere of this work with the Petrobras Symphony Orchestra in Rio de Janeiro.
The BGQ's discography includes five CDs on the Delos label. Three of them are devoted to Brazilian Music: Essência do Brasil (which Audiophile Audition called one of the "best recordings of 1999"), Encantamento (2001), and the music of Villa-Lobos (2011), which won the Latin Grammy. The other two recordings present, in their entirety, two great works of Western classical music, Bach's Four Orchestral Suites (2000) and Albéniz's Iberia (2006). The quartet recorded its latest CD with music of Spain in the summer of 2013.
For advance reservations or information please click here or call the Zankel box office (518) 580-5321 for more information. The Zankel Music Center is wheelchair accessible and offers listening devices for the hearing impaired.
