Guitar & E-Guitar

The Darmstadt Summer Course 2023 finds the Guitar Studio eager to celebrate the welcomed return of all classes and creative forces to parallel activity on sight and in real time. It is after all what makes the Darmstadt experience so unique and beneficial and with that in mind, we’ve set our path along three main streams:

• a. New Creation
• b. Chamber Encounters
• c. Improvisation

In new creation we’ll be having four new guitar duets by composer Matthew Shlomowitz, joining two new pieces by young composers writing for guitar & violin. A special feature for the latter is the guest appearance of violinist Irvine Arditti joining the class and playing the violin part together with our guitarists in some sort of “Play with Arditti” mini fest.

In chamber encounters the class will collaborate with various instrumental classes working on chamber music by composers from the summer course’s teaching staff (Chaya Czernowin, Katherine Young & Rebecca Saunders to name a few) who’ll also be attending some of the rehearsals & performances. No less a main accent will be put on working with string instruments from duets to a string quartet (music by Yair Klartag, Alex Mincek) and lastly, we’ll be putting together pieces for guitar quartets (music by Bernhard Lang & Beat Furrer).

With improvisation being a main theme in this year’s festival program and lineup, our class activity is also offering a very special feature in the shape of a two day seminar led by Austrian guitarist Martin Siewert. Keeping up with the improvised aroma it didn’t slip our minds to maintain a fair balance between the dense activity plan portrayed above and the notion that you – the guitarist – might want to develop projects on the fly. After all these spontaneous encounters and creative exchanges are and always have been the heartbeat of the Darmstadt summer course and now with the pandemic moving to the back seat – you can, you should, you will.

Yaron Deutsch