International Guitar Night headlines NPAC

Fans of acoustic music are in for a rich evening of sound as the Northshore Performing Arts Center welcomes International Guitar night Feb. 2.

The IGN concept originated in Europe and was brought to the United States by Brian Gore, a lyrical fingerstyle guitarist from San Francisco, CA. Each year, Brian invites a new cast of three internationally reknown guitarists to join him for an evening of solos, duets and quartets, to highlight the virtuosity and diversity within the world of acoustic guitar and to exchange musical ideas in a public concert setting.

For IGN 2008, Gore will be touring Canada and the U.S. with D’Gary, renowned world music guitarist and singer from Madagascar; Clive Carroll, one of England’s leading fingerstyle guitarists, and Miguel de la Bastide, Nuevo Flamenco master from Toronto via Trinidad and Spain.

San Francisco guitar poet Brian Gore, founder of International Guitar Night, is an artist in residence at the Boulder Chautauqua. His music has been featured on NPR’s nationally syndicated Echoes Radio, and many other local public radio programs. Gore founded The International Guitar Night in 1995 as a forum for the world’s guitarists/composers to play their latest original songs and share musical ideas with their peers in public concert. This has evolved into six annual U.S. tours, a CD on Favored Nations Records released in 2004, and a book of IGN compositions.

De la Bastide has been involved with flamenco for over 25 years. He is one of the few guitarists outside of Spain who has mastered the techniques and the knowledge of the flamenco guitar. A native of San Fernando, Trinidad, Miguel immigrated to Canada at the age of eighteen and began an intensive study of flamenco.

In 1992, de la Bastide joined forces with Carmen Romero as Music Director for Canada’s premier flamenco company, The Candela Flamenca Dance and Music Ensemble, recently renamed Compana Carmen Romero. He is also the first flamenco guitarist to be invited on staff at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

Clive Carroll has been immersed in a diverse range of music since childhood. Over the past two years Carroll has toured as a solo performer and he has also played alongside many great artists in the traditional Irish, acoustic, and pop/rock worlds. Also in demand as a session player and a film score writer, Carroll will be doing a solo tour in the US in January/February 2007 before heading to Vancouver to record on the new International Guitar Night CD.

Ernest Randriana solo, better known to Madagascan music fans as D’Gary, is known for his penchant for “open tunings,” a special technique he has developed which form the basis of tsapiky, the music that influenced D’Gary so strongly in his early years. While in traditional tsapiky musicians change only one string, D’Gary alters several. His national tours in the U.S. and Canada will give North American audiences their first comprehensive glimpse into D’Gary’s music, including the new International Guitar Night recording.