The Seattle Creative Orchestra (SCO) presents a concert entitled "Music for Guitar and Orchestra" on Saturday, June 29th at 8 pm, Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall, 3d and Union, Seattle. The concert features guitar soloists Carsten Radtke, Michael Partington, Daniel Corr, and Michael Nicolella, in a program of music by Luciano Berio, Leo Brouwer, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and world premieres by local composers Michael Nicolella and Donald Craig. The concert presents a wealth of music from Cuba, Brazil and Italy, and also utilizes the sonic potential of both classical and electric guitar. Tickets are $15/$12 at the door or by calling 206-789-3628. The concert is co-sponsored by Seattle Classic Guitar Society.

Carsten Radtke will perform Luciano Berio's "Chemins V", a work from 1992 which sets the composer's "Sequenza XI" for solo guitar in a chamber orchestra setting. The addition of accordion to the ensemble can be heard as a commentary on the guitar's folk origins.

Michael Partington will present Leo Brouwer's "Concerto Elegiaco" (Concerto No.3), among the most lyrical of all the Cuban composer's works, and one of the most classically structured. The concerto was dedicated to Julian Bream who premiered the work in 1986. The character, style and thematic material were inspired by (in Brouwer's words) Bream's "overtly passionate and emotionally dramatic" playing.

Daniel Corr will be the soloist for Villa Lobos' "Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra", composed in Rio de Janiero, in 1951. The work was first written as a fantasia, and the final version in three movements retains the rhapsody of the original. By request of Andres Segovia, to whom the work was dedicated, a large cadenza was later added.

A Seattle native, Daniel Corr has performed recitals and chamber music widely on both east and west coasts. He was the 1st prize winner of the 2002 Northwest Guitar Festival Competition, and the winner of Yale School of Music's 2001 Eliot Fisk Prize as an "outstanding graduate in guitar."

Michael Nicolella's "Concerto for Guitar" will be performed by the composer. Nicolella has long been a proponent of the music of today's composers. The vitality of his playing is exhibited throughout the work scored for chamber orchestra. Classical Guitar (UK) has called his playing "remarkable..breathtaking..superb..a fully enlightened musician of our time."

The SCO is pleased to perform the world premiere of Donald Craig's "Phantasititablatura" chosen from a competition presented by Washington Composers Forum. Michael Nicolella will also perform as soloist in this work for electric guitar and orchestra. The solo part takes full advantage of the possibilities of the electric guitar with multiple pedal and amplification effects.

Founded in 1996 by conductor Roger Nelson, artistic director Jarrad Powell and orchestra manager Christopher Shainin, the Seattle Creative Orchestra has perforemd at the Festival of the World, Music, Arts and Dance (WOMAD), and the University of Washington's summer arts festival.
-Christopher Shainin