Music: Atlantic Guitar Quartet

The Atlantic Guitar Quartet, a contemporary music ensemble dedicated to promoting the work of living composers, will present a free concert at Commonwealth University-Bloomsburg on Saturday, April 26, at 3 p.m. in Carver Hall, K.S. Gross Auditorium. Admission is free.

The concert will include music by guitarist-composers Olga Amelkina-Vera and Ronald Pearl, as well as premiere performances of new music written for the group by Douglas Lora (of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet) and Benjamin Verdery (Professor of Guitar at Yale University). The quartet will also give a masterclass for CU-Bloomsburg guitar students in Carver Hall immediately following the concert. Both of these events are free and open to the public, and are sponsored by the Commonwealth University Department of Music, Theatre and Dance.

Founded in 2010, each of the four members, Mark Edwards, James Keretses, Matthew Slotkin, and Zoë Johnstone Stewart, have enjoyed extensive solo and chamber performing careers before joining the ensemble. AGQ has performed as part of the Baltimore Classical Guitar Society concert series, the Ulster Chamber Series, the Evolution Contemporary Music series, York College of Pennsylvania, Loyola University, Marshall University, and the Peabody Institute. They have been artists-in-residence at the Engineers Club of the Garret-Jacobs Mansion in Baltimore since 2010, and in 2018, AGQ was selected to be part of the Maryland State Arts Council Touring Roster. In addition to their performances, the quartet has also been invited to teach master classes and workshops at the Peabody Summer Guitar Intensive, Salisbury University, and the Mid-Atlantic Guitar Ensemble Festival.

AGQ has been proactive in expanding the repertoire of the classical guitar quartet by commissioning new works. With major institutional support from the Presser Foundation and the Peabody Conservatory, AGQ has premiered pieces by American composers Vid Smooke, Christopher Gainey, and Ronald Pearl. Several of these works, along with music by composer Olivier Bensa and Arvo Pärt, are featured on the quartet’s debut CD (released in November of 2013).

The quartet’s other world premieres include performances of works by Joshua Bornfield (written for AGQ and commissioned by the Baltimore Classical Guitar Society), Judah Adashi, Olga Amelkina-Vera, Lewis Krauthamer (in performance with Gene Young and the Peabody Camerata), Julien Xuereb, Alan Thomas, Aaron Silverstein and Jerry Tabor (in a premiere recording).