Grammy-winning classical guitarist Bill Kanengiser will share a Tucson stage with 40 amateur and aspiring guitarists from throughout the state on Friday in a concert that will repeat in Tempe and Flagstaff this weekend.
Tucson gets first crack at the event, which opens the Tucson Guitar Society’s 2014-15 season. The concert is centered around Shingo Fujii’s “Concerto de Los Angeles,” a work the Japanese classical guitarist and composer wrote for Kanengiser in 2006.
Fujii’s concerto has Los Angeles in its name, but it has nothing to do with the California city, Kanengiser is quick to note. Instead, the title references the composing angels who elevated guitar in their works: 18th-century Spanish composer Fernando Sor, 19th-century Spanish romantic composer Francisco Tárrega and contemporary Cuban composer Leo Brouwer.
“Each movement is dedicated to one of those guys, and somehow captures a mood and a style from their music,” Kanengiser said last week from a concert stop in Des Moines, Iowa, with his critically acclaimed Los Angeles Guitar Quartet.
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To set up the concerto, Kanengiser will perform works from the three composers during the first half of the concert. In the second half, he will be the soloist among the guitar orchestra, which is the biggest of its kind to take a Tucson stage, said guitarist and University of Arizona graduate student Kathy Acosta Zavola, who will play in the orchestra. Mostly guitar students including a handful of teens from Maryvale High School in Phoenix, comprise the orchestra.
“To get this many players, and most of them students and some professionals, is quite a treat. This is some of the best players in each area,” she said. “This is something very dear to my heart. As a guitarist, we don’t get many opportunities for orchestra or ensemble work. To be able to have 40 guitarists in an orchestra setting — like a symphony accompanying a soloist — it is going to be a fantastic experience.”
Kanengiser said he has performed the concerto 15 to 20 times throughout the U.S., China, Mexico and Japan, where he premiered it in 2006 with Fujii conducting. He has performed it with as few as 10 guitarists and as many as 150.
“Every time we’ve done this piece, it’s always been a moving experience for the players and the audience,” he said. He also looks forward to seeing his longtime friend, Craig Yarbrough, the founder and executive director of the Flagstaff-based Grand Canyon Guitar Society. “It should be fun.”
