Pre-College Guitar Prodigies at SFCM

This past Sunday, the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts released its latest video in the Live from St. Mark’s series of concerts filmed at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. This one was particularly distinctive, since, rather than seasoned professionals, it presented a quartet of guitarists currently in the Pre-College program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). Nevertheless, the repertoire is one that would challenge many (if not most) professionals, providing an excellent example of the high standards maintained in the SFCM Pre-College Guitar Department, chaired by Scott Cmiel, who introduced the program.

The members of the SFCM Pre-College Guitar Honors Quartet (Trent Park, Emilia Díaz, Kiran Lee, and Roan Holmes, not in order of appearance) playing Maher (from the YouTube video of their recital)

The performers on this video are the members of the SFCM Pre-College Guitar Honors Quartet: Trent Park, Emilia Díaz, Kiran Lee, and Roan Holmes. The selections are, to say the least, ambitious. The first is an arrangement by Stephen Goss of the opening section of the second movement of the first symphony by Gustav Mahler. To be fair, the guitar was not a stranger to Mahler; but he did not make use of it until his seventh symphony, whose instrumentation also included a mandolin (as well as cowbells). The music Goss chose to arrange, however, was the primary (opening) theme of the first symphony’s Ländler (second) movement. This was inspired by a traditional folk dance, but Mahler did not waste any time in departing from folk traditions. Nevertheless, Goss managed to capture the Ländler spirit in his arrangement; and the SFCM students could not have given a better account of that spirit.

Having given Mahler his due, the quartet could then move on to music that was actually composed for a quartet of guitars. Their selection was “Bluezilian,” composed by Clarice Assad. Those that have followed this site for some time are probably familiar with Assad’s capacity for upbeat rhetoric. Apportioning that rhetoric across four guitars just upped the ante of engagement with the attentive listener. To be fair, the selection was relatively brief (only about three minutes); but Assad always seems to know how to establish just the right expressiveness in just the right duration of time.

Taken as a whole, the video is relatively brief, clocking in at less than eight minutes. Nevertheless, there is just the right balance of depth and diversity to make the experience time well spent. Furthermore, when one considers the youth of the performers, one can hope that at least one (if not all) of them are ready to continue on a journey to future serious concert recitals.