News

The Lee University School of Music will host Grammy award-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux for the final Performing Arts Series concert of the season on Thursday, March 5 at 7:30 p.m. in Squires Recital Hall, located in the Humanities Center.

Vieaux’s program will include Mauro Giuliani’s “Grand Overture,” Opus 61, Bach’s Lute Suite No. 1 in e minor, Isaac Albéniz’s “Asturias,” “Capricho Catalán,” and “Torre Bermeja, Hans Werner Henze’s “Drei Tentos” from “Kammermusik,” and Vieaux’s arrangement of Pat Metheny’s “Always and Forever.”

Also featured will be Paulo Bellinati’s “Jongo,” Antônio Carlos Jobím’s “A Felicidade,” and Vieaux’s arrangement of Duke Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” all selections from his Grammy-winning album.

Vieaux received the 2015 Grammy award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for “PLAY,” his most recent solo album. “PLAY” celebrates Vieaux’s 20th anniversary as a performer by featuring the Spanish, Mexican, South American, Cuban, French, and American classics that he has found to be universal audience favorites over the past two decades. The album was released in January 2014 on Azica Records and includes pieces by Barrios, Sagreras, Bustamante, Sainz De La Maza, and Tárrega.

National Public Radio (NPR) describes Vieaux as “perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation.” He was the first classical musician to be featured on NPR’s popular “Tiny Desk” series.

Gramophone magazine puts Vieaux “among the elite of today’s classical guitarists.”

Vieaux’s solo recitals have been a feature at every major guitar series in North America and at many of the important guitar festivals in Asia, Australia, and Europe. Recent and future highlights include returns to the Caramoor Festival, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and New York’s 92nd Street Y, as well as performances at Argentina’s Teatro Colon and Norway’s Classical Music Fest Oslo.

His appearances for Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Music@Menlo, Strings Music Festival, Grand Teton, and many others have forged his reputation as a first-rate chamber musician and programmer. Vieaux’s passion for new music has fostered premieres of works by Dan Visconti, David Ludwig, Jerod Tate, Eric Sessler, José Luis Merlin and Gary Schocker. Vieaux has performed as concerto soloist with nearly 100 orchestras. He has worked with numerous conductors, including David Robertson, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Jahja Ling, Stefan Sanderling, Michael Stern, David Lockington, Steven Smith, and Edwin Outwater, among others.

Vieaux continues to bring important repertoire alive in the recording studio as well. His latest album Together, with harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, was released in January 2015. His previous eleven albums include a recording of Astor Piazzolla’s music with Julien Labro and A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra; “Bach: Works for Lute, Vol. 1,” which hit No. 13 on Billboard’s Classical Chart after its first week; “Images of Metheny,” featuring music by American jazz legend Pat Metheny; and “Sevilla: The Music of Isaac Albeniz.”

In 2012, the Jason Vieaux School of Classical Guitar was launched with ArtistWorks Inc., an unprecedented technological interface that provides one-on-one online study with Vieaux for guitar students around the world. In 2011, he co-founded the guitar department at The Curtis Institute of Music, and he has taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music since 1997, heading the guitar department since 2001.

Vieaux is a member of the Advisory Board of the Guitar Foundation of America, and is affiliated with Philadelphia’s Astral Artists. His primary teachers were Jeremy Sparks and John Holmquist.

In 1992 he was awarded the prestigious GFA International Guitar Competition First Prize, the event’s youngest winner ever. He is also honored with a Naumburg Foundation top prize, a Cleveland Institute of Music Alumni Achievement Award, and a Salon di Virtuosi Career Grant. Vieaux is represented by Jonathan Wentworth Associates, Ltd.

Vieaux will also hold a masterclass in Squires Recital Hall on Thursday, March 5, from 12-1:30 p.m.

For more information about Vieaux, visit www.jasonvieaux.com.

Both the concert and masterclass are free of charge and open to the public. Tickets are required for the concert and will be available beginning Feb. 19. To reserve a ticket, contact the Lee University Box Office, open from 3-6 p.m. daily, at 423-614-8343.

For more information about the Performing Arts Series or other music events, please call the School of Music at 423-614-8240.