Guitar Orchestra to Perform "Mostly Latin and Spanish"
KEENE, N.H. 3/22/06 - The KSC Guitar Orchestra will play a concert of “Mostly Latin and Spanish” music, directed by Professor of Music José Lezcano, on Wednesday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. in the Alumni Recital Hall of the Redfern Arts Center on Brickyard Pond. Tickets are $7 for the general public and $5 for KSC students, senior citizens, and youth age 17 and under. Call the box office at 603-358-2168.
They will play the three-movement Españoleta de Camera Suite by Laurindo Almeida. Mr. Almeida was a legendary Brazilian guitarist who played jazz guitar with Stan Kenton’s band and wrote many film and TV scores during a long career in Los Angeles.
They will also play the English Suite for guitar ensemble by British composer Jack Duarte. This is an arrangement of three English folk songs, including Greensleeves, Lady Maisry, and The Scolding Wife. Mr. Duarte was an important composer, teacher, and writer in the guitar world.
The concert will also include a Venezuelan waltz, El Diablo Suelto, by Heraclio Fernandez, and La Partida, by F. M. Alvarez. Also included will be Spanish Legend, by the Paraguayan guitarist-composer Agustin Barrios, and a Spanish flamenco-dance, Sevillanas, arranged by Lezcano.
A special feature will be two scholarship students, David Ross and Nic Trembaly, playing two duets by Spanish composer Isaac Albeniz: Rumores de la Caleta, and Evocacion from the suite Iberia, in arrangements by the early- 20th-century Catalan guitarist Miguel Llobet.
Lezcano, who was named Composer of the Year in 2002 by the New Hampshire Music Teachers Association, has been teaching guitar, music theory, and Latin American music at Keene State since 1991. He has a Ph.D. in music theory from Florida State University, and BM in guitar from Peabody Conservatory. He received two honors in 2003: a New Hampshire State Council on the Arts Individual Artists Fellowship and Keene State College’s Award for Distinction in Research and Scholarship in recognition of his activities as performer, scholar, and composer. He was recently selected for the 2004-05 New Hampshire Touring Artist Roster and lectures around the state on the mythical traditions of the indigenous guitar in Ecuador.
