Hands on Fire

Aug. 23, 2006

Guitar enthusiasts can certainly get their fill this week at Interlochen, as the Interlochen Arts Festival summer concert series concludes with a three-day Fingerstyle Guitar Festival. The shows will feature noted guitarists Alex DeGrassi, one of the founders of the Windham Hill sound; William Kanengiser, a member of the acclaimed Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and one of America’s most brilliant classical guitarists; noted jazz guitarist Bruce Dunlap, and a posthumous tribute to groundbreaking Windham Hill recording artist and Interlochen alum Michael Hedges.
It’s all going down under the watchful eyes and ears of John Wunsch, director of the Interlochen College of Creative Arts Guitar Institute. Wunsch himself will perform onstage with DeGrassi, a performance he is especially keen on.
"I am particularly looking forward to sharing the stage with Alex, not only for his talent and the fit of the pairing, but also I can really say that hearing him in concert in NYC in about 1979 was a watershed moment in seeing an example of a potential direction for my own solo work," Wunsch said.
"Here was a guitarist with intense classical level chops who had created his own blend of folk, minimalist new age, and jazz influences. At the time I had my classical guitar degree and some jazz interest, but I could not yet see where they could take me. Certainly we are pretty different in the specific content of our shows and in our style as composers, but we share many features in our work."

HANDS ON FIRE
DeGrassi and Wunsch will perform Thursday night, while Friday night’s "Hands on Fire" concert will feature alumni of the Interlochen guitar program paying tribute to Hedges, one of the most influential and innovative guitarists in history. Others have utilized the two-handed tapping technique he pioneered, particularly Stanley Jordan on the jazz side and Steve Hackett on the rock side, but Hedges truly took the instrument to places it had never been before. His life was tragically cut short in an automobile accident in December 1997.
The performers will include:
- Gohar Vardanyan, a classical phenomenon who started on guitar at about age four in her native Armenia by her flamenco guitarist father. She is now in the studio of Manual Barrueco at Peabody, really the most difficult studio into which a young guitarist can gain entry.
- Collin Bay, the grandson of Mel Bay; well known for putting guitar education on the map, but also a fine jazz guitarist. Collin will play some original jazz compositions.
- Emre Yilmaz, who was already successful in his homeland of Turkey as a young media star when he came to Interlochen, and is now thriving in the world music scene of NYC.
- Luke Winslow King, a young singer/songwriter who will be performing material from his first solo CD. He has been working in New York City with the blind and developmentally disabled to help them write, produce and perform musicals.
- Richard Stadler, a natural on classical guitar, who is completing studies in composition at Cal Arts, and will perform two original modern classical compositions, one of which is a micro-tonal work.
- Adam Babarik and Tom Alt, two guitar graduates with fantastic chops, who have mixed their music study with Creative Writing and Christian Education in Adam’s case, and engineering in Tom’s case.
- Brad De Roche, who will perform a classical era piece which he rediscovered while doing his doctoral research at Eastman.
- Jimmy Pelizzari, a Traverse City native who came to Interlochen playing some simple rock licks, and left to enter the New School of Music with the kind of chops most young guitarists only dream of, and speed to burn.
- Bruce Dunlap, a 1976 Interlochen grad and acclaimed jazz guitarist.

ENERGY FUSION
The concerts will conclude Saturday night with a show by William Kanengiser. He has developed a unique repertoire for his instrument, ranging from dazzling arrangements of Mozart, Handel, and Bart�k to his innovative excursions into the music of Eastern Europe and the Caribbean.
Wunsch is looking forward to the teaching and interaction of the three-day event as much as the performances.
"This should be a great time for a lot of people, with a lot of different styles," he said. "We’ll have some people playing solo, some trios, four to six guitars at once. It’s a real fusion of different energies and styles."

For information on the classes and performances, contact Interlochen Center for the Arts at 276-7200 or through the website, interlochen.org/college. For tickets to the performances, call the box office at 276-7800.