Close Encounters with Music
Mahaiwe Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA
May 7, 2017
by Rebecca Phelps
This year Close Encounters With Music celebrates its 25th
season presenting creative programming for smaller venues in and around Great
Barrington. The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet was their penultimate concert of the
2016-17 season and was a huge hit with the audience.
Beginning with music from the time of Cervantes, arranged
and narrated by LAGQ member William Kanengiser, the concert was off to an
engaging start. William Kanengiser is not only a talented guitarist and
arranger, but indeed a gifted actor, who told the story of Don Quixote and his
sidekick Sancho Panza, interspersed with short, delightful Spanish renaissance
dances. Kanengiser included castanet, tambourine, and drum-like effects on the
guitars.
Bach’s 6th Brandenburg Concerto was arranged for the quartet
by their former college professor, James Smith, to whom the LAGQ remains deeply
indebted. It was in his studio where they originally met and became an
ensemble; three of the four members have remained together for 37 years!
The Three Brazilian Pieces, which came next, represented a
small sample of a project the LAGQ undertook in 2007 in which they studied,
performed and recorded several Brazilian works. Each piece which they performed
represented a different aspect of Brazilian music; the first by contemporary
jazz composer Hermeto Pascoal, the second (originally for piano) O Lenda da
Caboclo, by Heitor Villa-Lobos, and lastly a traditional samba - Samba Nuovo;
highly energized and lots of fun.
La soiree dans Granade from “Estampes” by Claude Debussy was
another of James Smith’s arrangements; a perfect choice as the original piece
depicts a scene of the Alhambra in Granada and is, in its original form, a
piano imitating guitars! Stunningly beautiful in either form.
The final set of was another of William Kanengiser’s
arrangements, this time a suite of
movements from Bizet’s famous opera Carmen; another selection featuring
guitaristic sounds depicting the much loved dances and melodies made famous by
the bewitching Spanish Carmen.
The LAGQ brought the audience to its feet with their
creative programming, their virtuosity that never gets in the way of music
making, and their obvious enjoyment of performing together. Bravo!
