UMS Concert Program, March 21, 1994: Guitar Summit --

Season: 115th
Concert: Forty-ninth
Rackham Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

University Musical Society
and Regency Travel
GUITAR SUMMIT
Monday Evening, March 21, 1994, at 8:00 Rackham Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
PROGRAM
Joe Pass
Paco Pena INTERMISSION
Pepe Romero
Leo Kottke
The program will be announced from the stage.
Tour Staff
Susan Lamborghini, Company Manager
Steve Baldwin, Stage Manager & Lighting Designer
Jim O'Brien, Sound Engineer
Acknowledgments
Chick Migliaccio, Hotel Coordinator Patti Rose, Destinations Unlimited Travel Agency
Marya J. Glur, Production Manager Mary Hashimoto, Managerial Assistant
Represented by Columbia Artists Management Large print programs available upon request from an usher.
Special thanks to Herb David of Herb David Guitar Studio for this evening's Philips Educational Presentation.
Forty-ninth Concert of the 115th Season 23rd Annual Choice Series
About The Artists
Born Joseph Anthony Passalaqua in New Bruns?wick, New Jersey, in 1929, Joe Pass grew up in a Pennsylvania steel town during the Great Depres?sion. Young Joe received his first guitar from a family friend and started teaching himself to play when he was nine years old. By the time he was 14, Joe was playing parties and dances with a small string combo. His early guitar influences were the gypsy phenom?enon Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, and Wes Montgomery.
Pass migrated to New York where he performed around town. Later relocating to Los Angeles, he became an active studio player, working with such artists as Julie London and Frank Sinatra before re-emerging in 1962 with his first album, Sound of Synanon. It was producer Norman Granz who first heard Pass in 1970, signed the guitarist to the Pablo label in 1973, and brought this "new talent" to
international prominence. Pass won a Grammy in 1974 for a trio recording he made for Pablo with Oscar Peterson. A steady schedule of concerts and recording dates with many of the jazz greats made Pass one of modern jazz's most active and acclaimed guitarists.
With the Pablo label (later renamed the Fantasy label) for almost 20 years, Joe recorded such memorable albums as Summer Nights, For Django, and Whitestone; recently Appassionato, Blues for Fred, and One for M} Baby were released. Now recording for Telarc, Joe's latest recording, My Song was released in September of 1993.
In addition to his increasing number of club and concert dates, Joe Pass is in demand for regular tours of Europe. He has become a mainstay at major jazz events from the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Hague to counterparts in Montreal, Toronto, and California. A perennial winner in Down Beat magazine's jazz polls, Pass is performing at the peak of his prowess at the age of 62. His name and technique are represented in a series of instrumental instruction books with such titles as Joe Pass Guitar Style, Joe Pass Guitar Method, Jazz Solos and Chord Melody Solos, but it is on his recordings and in his many live concerts every year that his singular brilliance comes to life.
His favorite context remains the solo guitar, and the classic songs and jazz standards. Pass' mastery of his instrument is such that the challenge is not longer one of technique -although guitarists of all disciplines still marvel at it but one of interpreting a song in new and meaningful ways.
Tonight's performance marks Mr. Pass's LJMS debut.
Paco Pena was born in Cordoba, Spain, and made his first professional appearance at the age of 12. His work has taken him from Ronnie Scott's Jazz club to Carnegie Hall to a concert with Victoria de los Angles at the Royal Albert Hall, and his shared recitals with guitarist John Williams have been a real success in Britain and throughout Europe.
In 1990, for the fifth year in a row, Paco Pena was named winner of the coveted Guitar Player Magazine's annual Reader's Poll Award in the "Flamenco" category. In 1983, he was awarded Spain's celebrated Ramon Montoya Prize, as well as the German Records Critics Prize. In 1985 Pena was appointed Professor of Flamenco at the Rotterdam Conservatory (the first such post to be created), thus confirming his status as one of the greatest flamenco artists performing today.
Now recording for Nimbus Records, Pena's first recording for that label, Flamenco Guitar Music.of Ramon Montoya and Nino Ricardo, received enormous critical and public acclaim.
With the recording of the Billboard Charts for 30 weeks, Billboard Magazine named Pena on of the Top 10 Crossover Artists of 1988. His second recording for Nimbus, entitled Azahara, was released in Janu?ary of 1989, and in late 1989 he released Encuentro with singerguitarists Eduardo Falu. In 1991, Nimbus Records released Pena's Misa Flamenca, a flamenco Mass with The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chorus, conducted by Laszlo Heltay.
Paco Pena founded his famous Flamenco Com?pany of dancers, guitarists and singers in 1970. The group was an immediate success and has since appeared at major festivals from Edinburgh to Hong Kong, garnering special acclaim for its London seasons at the Royal Festival Hall and at Sadler's Wells Theater. He also established the Centro Flamenco Paco Pena in Cordoba, Spain, in 1981. The center offers aficionados from all over the world the opportunity to experience the art of flamenco in its native environment. The Center organizes an annual Guitar Festival of international renown that
covers other types of guitar music as well as flamenco.
In addition to major tours of the United Kingdom, Paco Pefia's current season also includes tours of Europe, Asia, and North America. In addition, he will tour the United States and Australia with John Williams and the Chilean group Inti-lllimani, performing works from their collaborative recording for CBS Records, Fragments of a Dream (1988), which was nominated for a 1989 Ovation Award in the Crossover category, and Leyenda, which was released in the fall of 1990.
Tonight's performance marks Mr. Pena's IMS debut.
Born on March 8, 1944, in Malaga, Spain, Pepe Romero is the second son of "the Royal Family of Guitar", The Romeros. He learned guitar from his father, the legendary Celedonio Romero, and his first professional appearance was in a shared concert with his father in Seville's Teatro Lope de Vega when Pepe was only seven years old.
Romero's discography presently contains more that fifty recordings and includes twenty concertos with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields con?ducted by Sir Neville Mariner and Iona Brown. Romero is currently working on a recording of Spanish music for voice and guitar with soprano Jessye Nor?man. In summer of 1993, he recorded Four Centuries
of Spanish Music for the Phillips label. He is also a leading personality in the film documentary Shadow And Light: Joaquin Rodrigo At 90. Joaquin Rodrigo wrote his latest guitar concerto, Concierto para una fiesta, for Pepe Romero in 1983; it was commissioned by the McKay family of Ft. Worth, Texas, and recorded on the Phillips label.
With his father and brothers, Pepe Romero helped establish The Romeros Quartet as the leading classical guitar ensemble in the world. As a member of The Romeros, he has been invited to play at the White House several times, has performed at the Vatican for Pope John Paul II, and has performed for His Royal Highness Prince Charles.
Pepe Romero's contributions to the field of classical guitar have inspired a number of distinguished composers to write works specifically for him, including Joaquin Rodrigo,
Federico Moreno Torroba, Rev. Francisco de Madina, and Celedonio Romero. He has performed with virtually all of the leading orchestras and conductors in the United States and in all the capitals of Europe; his solo recital tour consistently contains the world's most prestigious recital series and concert presenters.
Highlights of the past two seasons include two performances at the prestigious Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, California, and world premiere of a work by classical composer Fernando Sor (composed c. 1830 but never published) at Spivey Hall in Atlanta, Georgia. Chosen by Joaquin Rodrigo and the government of Spain to be one of the major participants in the world-wide celebration of that composer's 90th-birthday year, Pepe Romero performed tributes with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, in the Musikverein in Vienna, and at Moscow's Great Hall of the Pillars. Other performances included several recitals with soprano Jessye Norman. This performance is the third UMS appearance by Mr. Romero.
Born in Athens, Georgia, Leo Kottke began playing violin at the age of five. From there he went to the trombone, but after enduring a vision of himself in the life of a professional trombonist, he picked up the guitar and was instantly hooked.
Leo Kottke is now renowned as one of the most innovative acoustic guitarist of that instrument's history. He has performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall to New Orleans' Tippatina's, from Frankfurt's Uncle Po's to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and from the Sydney Opera House to Austin City Limits. A member of Guitar Player Magazine's Hall of Fame, he has recorded twenty-one albums and received two Grammy Award nominations. Kottke's music is taught at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music and Taylor Guitars builds and distributes the Leo Kottke Signature Model 12-String.
After his first album, 12 String Blues, Leo
recorded 6 and 12 String Guitar for John Fahey's Takoma label in 1969. It was praised in Rolling Stone and eventually became a favorite on progressive radio in the mid-'70s. Throughout the '70s and '80s, Leo toured extensively, recording twelve albums and two "best-of collections on the Capitol and Chrysalis labels. Leo Kottke debuted on the Private Music label in 1986 with A Shout Toward Noon, followed by Regards from Chuck Pink, My Father's Face and That's What. In 1992, Private released Great Big Boy, Leo's first (ever) all-vocal offering and his first-time collaboration with producer Steve Berlin, sax player and producer for Los Lobos. Just released in February 1994 is his sixth album on the Private Music label, Peculiaroso, produced by Rickie Lee Jones.
Today, the ex-trombonist spends about eighty percent of the year on the road and remainder in his adopted home, Minnesota. Kottke still finds time for other projects: he composed Ice Fields, a suite for guitar and orchestra, and performed it with the Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and Kansas City symphony orchestras. In addition to scoring and performing music for two films, he wrote and performed the music for a BBC documentary on Raymond Carver, for a children's album and a Showtime presentation of Paul Bunyan, narrated by Jonathan Winters.
In addition to his numerous concert performances in the United States, Leo regularly tours Europe and Australia. With over 170 compositions, all of which have been published and recorded, Kottke has concluded that his early training has not gone to waste. "The theory that I learned on trombone is, of course, applicable to the guitar . . . and you don't need a lip."
Tonight's concert marks Mr. Kottke's UMS debut.
Supported by the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. : =