International Guitar Night 2013

Featuring Martin Taylor, Solorazaf, Celso Machado and Brian Gore

Thursday, January 24

8pm

All Tickets: $10

THE INTERNATIONAL GUITAR NIGHT (IGN)is the world's premier touring guitar festival. Each show brings together the most interesting and innovative acoustic guitarists to exchange musical ideas in a public concert setting. Each tour, IGN founder Brian Gore invites a new cast of guitar luminaries to join him for special evenings of solos, duets and quartets that highlight the virtuosity and diversity within the world of acoustic guitar.

Audiences cherish the virtuosity of the playing and the friendly, informal ambiance of the performances. Participants relish the chance to play with peers from different genres, and to collaborate rather than compete. This unique brand of “guitar positivity” has helped make IGN the most successful guitar showcase of its kind.

For this show, IGN founder Brian Gore will be joined by Scotland's Martin Taylor, Solorazaf (from Madagascar), and Celso Machado from Canada via Brazil. Martin is revered in jazz circles for his smooth chord-melody style and walking bass lines. Solorazaf has a unique Malagasy style, mixing vocalizations with rhythmic guitar patterns and foot percussion. Celso is an internationally acclaimed guitarist, singer and composer known for his dynamic "one man band" performances. You can look forward to a particularly lyrical version of International Guitar Night, with a nice mix of playing and singing.

Martin Taylor

Described as "THE acoustic guitarist of his generation" by America's Acoustic Guitar Magazine, Martin Taylor has established a unique career as an internationally acclaimed guitarist, and his inimitable style has seen him recognised as the world's foremost exponent of solo jazz guitar playing. Although completely self taught, he has enjoyed a musical career spanning over 30 years, dazzling audiences with his solo shows, which combine virtuosity, emotion and humour, with a strong stage presence.

He spends much of the year travelling the world, playing in concert halls in Europe, North America, Japan, Asia, and Australasia. As well as his solo concerts and recordings, he has also collaborated with musicians from many different musical genres including, Stephane Grappelli, Chet Atkins, Bill Wyman, Dionne Warwick, Sacha Distel, and Bryn Terfel.

In 2002, he was appointed MBE "For Services To Music", in The Queen's Birthday Honours List, which he received personally from Her Majesty The Queen at an investiture at Buckingham Palace. When not touring he divides his time between his homes in France and Scotland where he writes music for TV and film. His autobiography MARTIN TAYLOR - AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A TRAVELLING MUSICIAN and his latest album DOUBLE SOLO are available worldwide.

Solorazaf

Solo Razafindrakoto ("Solorazaf") is an amazing guitarist and singer from Madagascar currently residing in Paris. He mixes complex guitar patterns with his singing to produce a sound that is at once highly rhythmic and smoothly flowing. He also adds foot percussion, using home made “stompboxes.” The left foot plays a kind of bass drum & the right foot a kind of shaker.

His latest CD "Andreasong" is dedicated to his son Andrea. This album is the result of a journey with many stopovers from Europe to Africa, between Paris and Antananarivo. It was recorded both in France (his birthplace) and in Madagascar (where he grew up).

In Solorazaf's words: “In this musical project, there is a union of SALEG and SéGA ,"6/8" rhythms coming from the southern Indian Ocean region (Madagascar, Comoros, the Réunion and Mauritius islands). Think about waves of ternary rhythms, and we also can feel binary beats inside, combined with guitar compositions shaped like songs with or without lyrics (lyrics are mostly in French & Malagasy, with some written in English).

You can hear me humming, talking, and singing the songs with a "Brazilian flavor" (as a journalist said) and sometimes the voice embodies an imaginary seventh string of a guitar, or also uses "throat clearing" and "tongue clicking" (from my 15 year South African musical experience as a lead guitarist of Miriam Makeba's band). As a self taught musician, I learned guitar inspired by traditional world musics that I mixed with some jazz -blues chords, plus a combination of a fingerstyle guitar picking that is similar to the way the African string instruments Valiha and Kora are played.

On stage, the guitar, the voice and the different "foot percussion" form a "one man band," performing without any loop pedal, or sequencers. It's live only. I am simply narrating with music that I belong to many different cultures, either rich or poor. My personal goal is to communicate the need for sharing what I have experienced, trying to express this "potpourri" of all those many influences in a way to avoid contradictions.

Celso Machado

Brazilian music has arisen out of various blends of Classical European, African, Portuguese, and Indigenous influences. There is less division in Brazilian music between classical and jazz, jazz and folk. While Celso's music is rooted in Brazilian rhythmic and melodic styles, it also reflects his incurable fascination with other world music traditions. He finds similarities between the music of southern Italy and northeast Brazil, the Egyptian Maqsoum and the Brazilian Baião rhythm, the Moroccan Gnawa rhythm and Afoxé and Samba. Celso incorporates these influences into his own sound; his own unique contribution to the ongoing evolution of Brazilian music. Drawing on his thorough study of classical guitar, Celso composes for guitar and ensemble. His remarkably innovative compositions are infused with a rich knowledge of the traditional music of Brazil: samba, chôro, baião, frêvo etc. Published by Editions Henry Lemoine in Paris, his compositions are performed and recorded worldwide. Celso has toured internationally for over 30 years both solo and with some of the

world’s great guitarists: Sergio and Odair Assad, Badi Assad, Romero Lubambo,

Yamandu Costa, Cristina Azuma, Peter Finger, and Solorazaf. More...

Brian Gore

San Francisco guitar poet Brian Gore is gaining a reputation as one of the most interesting and influential performers of "the next generation" in fingerstyle guitar. A musical romantic, his compositions draw inspiration from myth and modern literature. Hailed as having "...one of the most unique new acoustic guitar styles on the scene today (News and Review)," his lyrical, understated compositions integrate classical and percussive techniques that display what the Los Angeles Times calls "a characterful bounce and spaciousness all his own."

Gore’s style of playing offers strikingly beautiful tone and dynamics-- qualities that are often hard to find in steel string players. His melodic, evocative songs rely heavily on the use of open tunings, extending the “stream of consciousness” style of guitar composing he grew up with in Northern California. “Music started out as a kind of therapy for me,” says Gore. “Consequently, I am a very emotional player. Now, my style of playing has also become a well honed craft. I am very grateful I can share this with people.”

His buoyant personality and odd sense of humor help add lightness to his shows. “By the time I’m done with a performance,” explains Gore, “people really know the meaning of the term ‘extroverted introvert’.” While Gore integrates some of the flashier percussive techniques into his pieces, the poetic quality of his music is preserved. “Because my music is simple and somewhat rootsy, it’s easy to relate to, which is something I’m thankful for. Also, it helps keep me grounded.”

Gore's first CD, produced by Peppino D’Agostino, is called The Path of Least Resistance. His second CD, Legacy: Solo Guitar and Duets, is available on Germany’s Acoustic Music Records Label. His music has been featured on NPR’s nationally syndicated Echoes Radio, and many other local public radio programs.

Brian founded The International Guitar Night in 1995 as a forum for the world's finest guitarists/composers to play their latest original songs and share musical ideas with their peers in public concert. This has evolved into critically acclaimed annual tours in the US (starting in 2000), Canada (starting in 2006) and the UK (starting in 2007), a CD on Favored Nations Records released in 2004, a guitar instruction book published in 2005, and IGN releases on Warner Music Canada (the 6th annual CD will be released in 2011).