We recently held our second annual Quartet Retreat in the beautiful mountains of western North Carolina, where we learned a lot of new pieces for the upcoming concert season. We worked on Phil’s arrangements of Grieg and Prokofiev, Jason’s arrangements of two Villa-Lobos études, two new compositions by Brian, and Kyle’s arrangement of a Radiohead song. We also revisited some Renaissance dances by Praetorious and a work by Jason entitled Rung. We are excited to incorporate this music into our program.



*Full embedding coming soon. Click on our YOUTUBE link for the wide screen version.

Keep an eye out for the upcoming GGQ/Sims EP, which features 5 songs from our collaboration with lyric baritone Robert Sims. The songs, all of which were arranged by Brian, run the gamut from spirituals, to blues, to folk tunes. We hope to have the EP available soon!

Finally, we have instituted a new guitar workshop to occur every summer at Western Carolina University. “Guitar in the Mountains: First Annual Classical and Contemporary Guitar Workshop in Cullowhee with the Georgia Guitar Quartet” will take place July 7–10, 2010. More details to come.

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Kyle Dawkins recently contributed a track for "Exsanguinette", the new album from Athens composer and multi-instrumentalist Killick. The band consists of Liz Allbee on trumpet, shell and electronics; Larry Ochs from Rova Saxaphone Quartet on tenor and sopranino saxophones, and Brann Dailor (from Atlanta metal band Mastodon) Kyle's track is an electronic piece called "Form Constant" and features Killick on H'arpeggionne, Delene Porter on vocals and Brann on drums.

The album was recorded by Tom Lewis at John Keane's studio in Athens, Georgia and recently mastered at Chase Park Transduction (also in Athens). The beautiful artwork which accompanies the album was designed by renowned tattoo artist and former Athenian Watson Atkinson. More info on the official release date and places to retrieve the album coming soon.





©Rinne Allen

The Quartet will be featured on a broadcast of The Atlanta Music Scene on Atlanta Public Radio WABE 90.1 FM. If you're in the Atlanta, Georgia area, tune in May 4, at 9:00pm. The featured performance will be from our recent concert in Hodgson Hall in Athens, Georgia. A special highlight will be a performance of Wheels, recently written for us by UGA theory and composition professor Leonard V. Ball and premiered at this performance.

The Atlanta Music Scene is a series of classical performances from venues all around Metro Atlanta. The series is made possible in part by a grant from the Georgia Council for the Arts, a member agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Just a reminder to those in the Athens, Georgia area - be sure to check out a performance from Our New Silence this Saturday at Ramsey Hall on the campus of UGA at 8:30pm.

Musicians Involved - Kai Riedl, Suny Lyons, Heather Mcintosh, Kyle Dawkins, Killick, Page Campbell, Josh Mckay, Jay Nackashi, Roger Stahl, Tim Hankins and more.

"Our New Silence is a collective of various musicians from Athens Georgia that are remixing/reinterpreting/abstracting music from Java Indonesia that has been documented by the Javasounds recording project produced by UGA Religion Asian studies professor Kai Riedl. This is a rare chance to hear some of Athens’s most creative musicians, learn about an unfamiliar part of the Islamic world, and enter the soundscape of another country in a particularly Athens, Georgia fashion." Hear on Myspace.

Athens Banner Herald
Red and Black
Flagpole Magazine

The Quartet was recently featured on WITF Pennsylvania Public Radio's Classical Air radio broadcast.

CLICK HERE to listen to the podcast.

Phil's arrangement of Chopin's "Etude op. 10 no. 3" has been published by Productions d'Oz and is available for purchase through their website.

Click over to the media page to listen to our performance of this piece on our album "Mosaic" or check out the live performance from our 2007 concert at LaGrange College below.

Tune in next Wednesday, December 17th to American Public Media's Performance Today to hear a few selections from our Sept. 21st Hugh Hodgson Hall performance in Athens, Ga.

American Public Media's Performance Today is broadcast on 245 public radio stations across the country and is heard by about 1.1 million people each week. Each station individually decides what time to air the program. To find out where and when Performance Today is broadcast in your area, please visit performancetoday.org

In November, we performed the final concert of what turned out to be a very busy and very fun fall season--one that included stops in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, Mississippi, and concluded in our home state of Georgia.

The last few months have brought to fruition many projects begun during the summer: we debuted new works written for us by Nikita Koshkin, Leonard V. Ball, Jr., and our own Kyle Dawkins, and we also recorded a number of Brian Smith's arrangements for our collaboration with lyric baritone Robert Sims, which we premiered at Martha's Vineyard this past July.

We sincerely thank everyone who came to hear us play this year. It's a thrill to share our music with you, and while it will be nice to have some downtime, we look forward to hitting the concert stage again in January and hope to see you at future shows. Our winter and spring schedule will bring us to New York City, Panama City Beach, Fla., and various cities in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Iowa. We also have a two-week residency in the Quad Cities area during the spring.

In the meantime, we're editing and mastering the 6–7 track demo EP that we recorded with Robert Sims in Athens back in November. We will soon be posting some photos and mp3s of our collaboration.

Below is a clipping from the recent issue of the University of Georgia Magazine (Vol. 88, No. 1) that mentions our "homecoming" concert in Athens this past September.

Thanks for your support, and be sure to check out the recent video clips on our Youtube channel.
-GGQ

We just returned from an exciting tour of New England, where we performed six shows in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and two different towns in both Massachusetts and New Hampshire. We had a great time performing the recent additions to our program (Koshkin, Ball, Dawkins) to receptive and responsive audiences. We also really enjoyed working with the bright students at the Loomis Chaffee School (Windsor, CT) as well as the talented guitarists at Keene State College. All in all, we had a really fun week together making music, eating copious amounts of clam chowder, and goofing around. Here is a video that sums up the tone of the entire trip.

Georgia Guitar Quartet honors mentor John Sutherland
By Chris Starrs | Athens Banner Herald | 9/17/2008

On Sunday, September 21 we performed a "homecoming" concert in Athens, GA at Hodgson Hall on the UGA campus. It has been over 5 years since we have performed in this venue, and it was a thrilling experience to perform there again. This hall has some of the best acoustics in the Southeast, if not the entire country. Our program ranged from the first piece that we ever performed together some 12 years ago (The Cat's Fugue by Domenico Scarlatti) to the world premiere of a piece entitled Wheels composed for us by Leonard V. Ball, Jr. We also performed the Suite for Four Guitars that we had commissioned from Nikita Koshkin and the second of Two Repaired Movements by our very own Kyle Dawkins. It was so great to see so many longtime friends at this concert. Thanks to everybody who was able to make it out!


The concert was dedicated to our teacher and mentor John Sutherland. John has taught at UGA since 1971 and is still going strong. If you know anything about the classical guitar, you know who this man is. Besides being responsible for forming our quartet, John gave us invaluable feedback and constructive criticism during our formative years (and beyond). He is an outstanding pedagogue and friend who has touched the lives of countless people—guitarists and non-guitarists alike. A core component of John's teaching philosophy can be summed up as follows: He does not produce guitarists; rather, he produces musicians whose medium is the guitar. He has taught us to love music first and the guitar second—the latter merely being the means to the former.





On a separate note, our twin albums Mosaic and Puzzle both received favorable reviews by Al Kunze in the most recent issue of Soundboard Magazine (34.3, p. 107). These albums are "twins" only because they were "conceived" and recorded at the same time. They were actually born about three years apart (Puzzle being the younger sibling). Our good friends The Athens Guitar Trio also received a great review of their debut recording entitled Emergence in the same issue (p. 106). These guys sound great, so check them out if you get the chance!

We just returned from a performance at the Deer Valley Music Festival in Park City, Utah. We had a fantastic time and premiered two new works: The second movement of Two Repaired Movements by Kyle Dawkins and the Suite for Four Guitars by Nikita Koshkin. These new additions to the program went over very well with the crowd, and we look forward to performing them during our upcoming concert season.

While in Park City, we gave a salon performance at the beautiful home of Sheldon and Sandy Urlik. Sheldon is a collector of fine classical guitars, and he graciously showed us his collection. He owns the Torres guitar that belonged to none other than Francisco Tárrega! The guitar sounds amazing--it is loud and perfectly balanced. The playability and sonic quality of this instrument inspired Tárrega to write such beautiful works as Recuerdos de la Alhambra, Adelita, and the Gran Vals (from which the Nokia tune is taken). Sheldon let each one of us play this guitar, which was an overwhelming experience that we'll never forget.

To order Sheldon's book that profiles his collection CLICK HERE.

We recently spent a week in the beautiful area of Waynesville, NC at the
amazing Fuller Cabin. Special thanks to Emmett and Melanie Fuller for
allowing us into their fantastic home. While on the retreat, we
learned some new music that we're very excited about. Leonard V. Ball,
Jr., a professor of composition at the University of Georgia, composed
a work for us entitled Wheels. This is one of the most challenging—and
also most interesting—musical works we have ever played. The piece is
written in a highly contemporary style but has an abundance of
infectious rhythms and well-developed themes that make it very
accessible. We look forward to premiering it in Athens this coming
September.

We also learned the Suite for Four Guitars that we had commissioned
from Nikita Koshkin and received from him about a year ago. The 3
movements of this work are very idiomatic and fun to play. The work is
somewhat of a departure from his first quartet, Changing the Guard. It
features the trademark Koshkin harmonies, themes, and rhythms that
anyone familiar with his output will recognize. He achieves a
remarkable variety of texture and color with this work, and the slow
second movement is pensive and heartbreaking. We think this suite will
go over well with audiences.

Finally, we learned one of Kyle's latest tunes: the second movement of
his Two Repaired Movements. This is a rock tune that truly rocks.
Think Appalachian folk music meets Tool meets Radiohead, all combined
with Kyle's unique voice. It features percussion, surprising rhythmic
changes, power chords, Bartók pizzicato, and wonderful themes that you
will never be able to get out of your head.

In addition to these brand new pieces, we also revisited 3 selections
from Estampes by F. M. Torroba: La Boda, Camino del Molino, and Juegos
Infantiles. We are excited to incorporate these pieces back into our
program…it has been nearly 8 years since we last performed them!

This porch setting is where we rehearsed 4–5 hours a day
for the entire week. The mountains were both inspiring and
distracting.