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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > June > 28 > Entry
GFA Fest Saturday concert extravaganza
Saturday night at the Long Center, it was a sold-out crowd who enjoyed a stellar concert presented at part of the Guitar Foundation of America’s annual convention this year held in Austin for the first time.
Organized by the Austin Classical Guitar Society, the convention and its attendant concert series capped off Saturday with the A-List: the LA Guitar Quartet and Pepe Romero backed-up by the Austin Symphony Orchestra.
LAGQ treated with ‘Interchange,’ the piece written for them by guitar great Sergio Assad and commissioned by Matthew Dunne of UT-San Antonio and premiered at the Southwest Guitar Festival in 2009. ‘Interchange’ wonderfully reflected the individual personalities of the quartet heading down a musical highway that went through klezmer, samba, flamenco, Brazilain choro, Asian and Middle Eastern grooves.
Romero’s performance of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez was preceeded by a screening of 10-minute clip from the movie ‘Shadows and Light: Joaquin Rodrigo at 90’ that beautifully explained the backstory on Rodrigo’s most famous piece and one of the most well-loved scores in the classical guitar repertoire.
Romero’s 1992 recording of the Rodrigo Concierto is arguably the masterpiece recording of the masterpiece for guitar and orchestra. And on Saturday, backed by the Austin Symphony Orchestra led by Peter Bay, Romero should us why. Romero’s interpretation is haunting, sensitive, piercing, and it drew the audience to its feet for an unbridled standing ovation.
Romero repaid the complement with an encore of Fantasia Cubana, a delightful piece written by his father, full of vibrant color and playful yet virtuosic flourishes. Romero played the Fantasia for an encore at his solo concert earlier in the GFA festival and audiences begged for a reprise. We got it.
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