Southwest Guitar Trio

The trio will be joined by classical guitarist, composer and architect, Jason Grossi on three selections on the program.

Two Pieces for Three Guitars

    3 Open Spaces - When She Left        Giorgio Mirto

    Baiao De Gude      Paulo Bellinati

 

Juxtapositions        William Beauvais

    Alonso’s Serenade

    Toward the Oasis

    Eastbound Express

    Dowland’s Calypso

 

*Intermezzo      Stephen Dodgson

 

*Stirfry       Dusan Bogdanovic

 

Intermission

 

*Cuban Landscape with Rain      Leo Brouwer

 

Beneath an Evening Sky       Ralph Towner

 

Icarus      Ralph Towner

 

*with Jason Grossi, Guitar
 

Mike McNamara holds a Master of Music in Classical Guitar Performance from the University of Toronto, where he studied with Norbert Kraft. He is a very active and experienced teacher who began teaching guitar at 18 years old and has been performing just as long. Mike has performed throughout Southern Ontario and in Michigan as a classical guitar soloist and chamber musician; he enjoys composing and improvising as other musical activities.

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Mike also holds a Bachelor of Music in classical guitar Performance from The University of Windsor, where his teachers were Dominic Bertucci, Jeffrey McFadden, and William Beauvais. He teaches guitar at the Ste. Cecile Academy of Music and is a Music Teacher with the WECDSB. He has participated in master classes with David Russell and Aaron Shearer and holds qualifications as a Suzuki guitar instructor.​

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Numerous of Mike’s former guitar students have gone on to careers as professional musicians in areas such as classical guitar soloists, rock/pop guitarists, university professors, studio musicians, school music teachers, guitar teachers, and composers. Many alumni of his studio tour parts of the world performing professionally on large stages.​

 

 

 

Robert Kubica holds a Bachelor of Music (Honours Performance) from the University of Western Ontario, and a Master of Music (Performance) from the University of Toronto. He has participated in master classes with many leading guitarists, including David Russell, Adam Holtzman, Sergio and Odair Assad, and Stepan Rak.

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Robert has been on the faculty of the University of Western Ontario since 1999, and currently teaches in the Music Performance and Music Education departments. Robert has recorded three CDs of guitar duets together with his wife, Wilma van Berkel, and has performed throughout Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba.  He has released two solo recordings: To the Greenwood Gone, featuring his own arrangements of traditional Celtic tunes and music from the English Renaissance, and Step Inside, which features his own compositions for steel-string and classical guitar. Robert is on the faculty of the National Music Camp of Canada, he teaches music at Sir Wilfrid Laurier Secondary School in London, and works regularly as an adjudicator for music festivals.​

 

 

Michael Pare is one of Canada’s young and aspiring classical guitarists, performing regularly in festivals and competitions throughout North America and Europe. Located in London, Ontario, Michael performs regularly at the London Club, Centennial Hall, Von Kuster Hall, and the McIntosh Art Gallery. 

In 2015 Michael was the winner of the highly regarded Rose Bowl Competition in London, Ontario, and is scheduled to play with London Symphonia as a guest soloist.

Michael performs concerts, weddings and private events as a soloist and with soprano, Charlotte Abbott. His repertoire ranges from renaissance art songs to contemporary solo and duo pieces. Michael also teaches a variety of styles to beginner and advanced students.

Jason Grossi is a Canadian composer, classical guitarist and architect based in his hometown of Windsor, Ontario.  His works range from pieces for large orchestra to small ensembles with the majority of his works tailored, as a result of commissions, for his local chamber sized symphonic orchestra and works for local musicians.  His work employs methods of transcribing architecture into music and vice versa allowing an inner dialog to develop between composing and design.  He believes that a direct approach bridging relationships between various methods developed for tonal and post-tonal music and architectural principals establishes solid directions for composition devoid of arbitrary associations.  The result is music that is resourceful with expressiveness and complexity, yet accessible to audiences.

 

Jason began his musical life very young, first studying classical guitar, then clarinet, trumpet, and piano, alongside theory, counterpoint and composition.  By the age of 17 his works were being requested and performed by his local orchestra.  While studying with Paul McIntyre, Jason met composer-architect, Iannis Xenakis and became fascinated with the interdisciplinary relationships required in architecture.  This took him to universities in the United States including a Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studying composition with Heinrich Taube and P.Q. Phan while completing his studies in architecture with Dominique Perrault, architect for the French National Library, and apprenticing under Gunnar Birkerts, FAIA.  At the University of Illinois, Jason was given the Award in Architecture for his thesis specialization in sacred space.  Jason’s final composition “Gestures for Woodwind Quintet” was selected among those of UIUC composition graduate students to be premiered at Jason’s direction and had its Canadian premier at the 2001 “Windsor Canadian Music Festival.”