VIDA GQ perform at the stunning concert hall at Kings Place as part of IGF‘s ‘London Guitar Festival in the Spring’ Friday 9 March 2012. The programme will include the Quartets new arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, and works by Falla, York, Crittenden, and Turina. Tickets best booked online at www.kingsplace.co.uk or on Tel: 020 7520 1490 -

It’s been a busy few weeks performing with the VIDA Guitar Quartet, with the highlight being our trip to the USA. We were thrilled to be invited to Los Angeles and the Loyola Marymount University Guitar Festival by Artistic Director and guitarist extraordinaire, Martha Masters. Our concert was the final one in the series, which this year also featured Marcin Dylla and Paul Galbraith.

Approximately 100 young guitarists performed for the Youth Showcase Concert as part of the festival, with an impressive number of very polished ensembles. It was fabulous to spend time coaching some of these groups during the weekend: what a talented bunch!

Whilst the Eden Stell Duo part of VIDA jetted off to Minnesota for a residency, there were a couple of days free to fall in love New York before our concert at the Baruch Performing Arts Center for the New York City Classical Guitar Society. NYCCGS is a thriving society with an astonishingly varied concert series and programme of events. It was a complete joy to play for them all, especially in a hall with such a clear true acoustic.

The next VIDA outing is back in the UK on 29 May for the Bury St Edmunds Festival: visit our concert diary to find out more.

My role as Director of the World Youth Guitar Festival keeps me pretty busy, and although our next festival won’t take place until next year (Aug 22-25th …. you heard it here first!) we are running a mini 1-day festival called WYGF-EXTRA on Monday 26th July down in Southampton.

The day will be full of ensemble playing with many names familiar to past WYGF students: Mark Ashford, Chris Stell, Mark Eden, Frank Gerstmeier and myself. We’re also thrilled that our brand-new guitar ensemble training scheme, GUITAR CIRCUS will be giving their debut concert as part of the day’s events.

GUITAR CIRCUS launched in London and Birmingham in January after an excellent round of auditions in the Autumn term. Gary Ryan, Director of GUITAR CIRCUS London has been working them hard ever since, and I’m really looking forward to hearing everything they’ve achieved in such a short space of time.

The ensembles meet once a month during term time for an intensive 6 hour rehearsal: I’m going to be popping along to London next month to see them for myself. So if you fancy finding out a little more about GUITAR CIRCUS or WYGF then book online for WYGF-EXTRA and we’ll see you there!

My quartet, VIDA has just had another lovely review, this time from International Record Review for our debut CD recording. We’re off on tour again very shortly in Germany and the UK so please do have a look at our dates on the VIDA website.

International Record Review praise VIDA Guitar Quartet’s debut recording “Love, the Magician” BGS118.

“Their range of timbres and colouration is so broad that one really does forget that there are four identical instruments. The excellent arrangements of Falla’s El Amor brujo by Eden, using techniques such as rapid rubbing of the strings and various scordaturas, approximates the orchestral colours of Falla’s work, assisted by the players’ refined tonal control. Reducing the work to just four guitars brings a level of intimacy to the work, particularly in the poignant ‘The Fisherman’s Story’. Ashford’s arrangement of El sombrero de tres picos is well conceived. As the informative booklet notes elucidate, Diaghilev persuaded Falla to revise his pantomime as a ballet, which was premiered in London in 1919 with sets and costumes designed by Picasso, choreographed by Léonide Massine. Most outstanding are the tonal colours in ‘The Corregidor’.”

“William Kanengiser’s arrangement of the Suite from Carmen does not have the orchestral textures that are so appealing in the Falla arangements. Although the Vida’s playing is measured and understated, it has all the necessary bravura for ‘The Toreador’s Song’ and builds to an exhilarating climax in the ‘Gypsy Song’. Their dynamic control, which ranges from an almost inaudible pianissimo to ranging fortissimos, is impressive. The arrangement of Turina’s impressionistic Oración del Toreo provides a contrast of atmosphere, with its mix of Spanish and jazz-like rhythms.”

“The Vida Guitar Quartet’s ensemble throughout is exemplary and seemingly achieved with ease … their blending of tone is remarkably unified. The recording is well balanced and natural, with a warm tone quality and intimate clarity. This is a thoroughly enjoyable disc.”

The VIDA debut CD is clocking up some lovely reviews which is hugely exciting for us all because it was simply so much fun to record, even though I was a rather huge 7 months pregnant at the time and could hardly reach round the guitar! The latest review has just come out in Gramophone magazine March issue 2010, and has been awarded a coveted Recommended gold star!

“VIDA Guitar Quartet’s debut recording is impressive indeed. Why? Because it’s so easy to imagine you’re listening to an entire orchestra and not merely to four guitars.”

“Throughout, the Quartet succeeds in bringing out the narrative and dramatic qualities implicit in the music through a combination of exquisite tonal and dynamic control, super-tight ensemble and unerring musical instinct. Listen to the confident sweep of rapid figures in the frenzied “Danza del terror” from El Amor Brujo and the beautiful transparent “Romance del pescador” from the same; or the beguiling sensuality of the “Habanera” and virility of “Toreadors” from Carmen Suite. There’s only one word for it: magic”

As you may know I was pretty busy in the Autumn playing with VIDA on our UK tour launching our debut CD Love the Magician. So we’re all really thrilled to have a lovely CD review in the February issue of Classic FM magazine.

” The members of VIDA conjure up an orchestral palette of colour and effects from four regular classical models. Sticking to tried-and-tested guitar transcription material, they play with technical brilliance and precise ensemble, creating alternately smoky and glittering colours in Falla’s El amor brujo that suit the gypsy heart of the music so well. They are high spirited in The Three Cornered Hat dances and their Carmen Suite arrangement is done with verve.”

The CD features Mark Eden’s amazing transcription of Falla’s El amor brujo as well as Mark Ashford’s beautiful arrangements of three dances from The Three Cornered Hat, Turina’s Bullfighter’s Prayer and Bizet’s Carmen Suite which is just an immense amount of fun to play.

If you want to try to catch us in action we’re playing at the Gevelsberg Guitar Festival at the end of March and then back to the UK for the Exeter Guitar Festival on 2 April and The Point, Eastleigh on 1 May for Southampton Classical Guitar Society.

I’m on the last few dates of VIDA’s CD launch tour now and getting ready for tonight’s concert at St George’s, Bristol. News just in though …. VIDA are saving the day at the Canterbury Festival on Monday 26th October replacing the Zagreb Guitar Trio from Croatia. The concert will be held at Shirley Hall, The King’s School, Canterbury. For information and tickets please call the Festival Office on 01227 452853

October is the month of VIDA! We’re really busy doing a little promo tour of the UK for our new CD, ‘Love the Magician’ which is due for release at the end of the month.

Last week the quartet headed up north for three concerts in Durham, Edinburgh and North Shields and we just about squeezed in a brief wander round Edinburgh after our concert at the Stewart Melville Performing Arts Centre. The hall there is fantastic for guitar and we had a really enjoyable workshop session there with some of the guitar students during the afternoon, followed by our evening recital.

We’ve barely had time to catch our breath before we’re trekking back up the country, this time to The Sage, Gateshead, which we actually drove past on the way back down last week. I can’t wait to play there – it’s such a striking building from the outside so I’m keen to experience the whole thing.

We’ll be doing more playing down South for the next couple of weeks – if you fancy catching up with us please visit the VIDA website for a full concert schedule.

Well we’ve waited over a year for this moment, but the VIDA Guitar Quartet are proud to announce the release of our debut recording Love, the Magician (BGS118) this October 2009.

To mark the launch we will be playing up and down the UK at various venues where you will be able to hear us in the flesh (ahh!) and if you like what you hear you can take a little bit of us home with you in the handy shape of a CD!

Dates on the Love, the Magician tour include:

7 October – St Cuthbert’s Church, Durham (1pm)

8 October – The Performing Arts Centre, Stewart’s Melville College, Edinburgh – also masterclass on this day during the afternoon.

9 October – The Saville Exchange, North Shields (1pm)

17 October – The Sage Gateshead, Tyne & Wear (book tickets!)

22 October – East Malling Research Station Music Club, East Malling, Kent

23 October – Winchester Discovery Centre, Winchester, Hants (book tickets!)

24 October – St George’s Bristol, (book tickets!)

29 October – Kings Place – London (Book tickets!)

31 October – Kings Place, London – Masterclass (info from IGF)

All dates are evening recitals except where time is indicated.

Love, the Magician has a distinctly Andalusian flavour with a works by Falla: El Amor Brujo (Love, the Magician), and El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat); Bizet: Carmen Suite; and Joaquín Turina: La Oración del Torero (The Prayer of the Bullfighter).

You can have a sneak preview of our Love, the Magician just visit the VIDAGQ website. Let us know what you think and hope we can catch up with you at one of our concerts soon.

Helen (aka V3!)

I’m writing this, fresh from my visit to Chichester University last week to give a class for some of the voice and guitar students there. I think my last visit must have been a couple of years ago, and it was so lovely to be invited back again to delve into some voice and guitar repertoire. I am such a huge fan of this genre, I think probably because the guitar creates such a sense of intimacy as an accompanying instrument, which does take some getting used to when a singer has never experienced anything other than piano accompaniment.

In my experience singers are notoriously morning-shy and to wake those voices up properly can take a little time, so we kicked off with a guitar solo, Tarrega’s Capricho Arabe, very ably played by Chris, one of the Masters course students. This is such great standard repertoire, but to make it really successful in my opinion you really need to explore the wealth of tone-colour the guitar can offer and not go completely crazy on the tumbling semiquaver passages – in fact it is quite refreshing when I hear someone play this without completely distorting all sense of the underlying pulse. After that we plunged straight into a setting of the Willow Song which originated as one of the songs in Shakespeare’s Othello. This was the first time Alice had sung with a guitar and when you are used to a bigger cushion of sound from piano it can come as a bit of a shock to feel more exposed. She warmed to the task, however, and quickly grew in confidence. These songs can be quite deceptive, and there is often much more to them than you first think. This one flits quite freely between major and minor tonality and keeps the singer on her toes.

Other contributions came from Sam, who has recently taken a strong interest in classical guitar, having played other styles previously. He performed Caravan and was able to balance the legato melody line with pizzicato basses very successfully. This had a few awkward moments and we tried out a few different fingering options to try and find one that best suited Sam’s technique. That’s the great thing about the guitar, the flexibility to be able to find alternative solutions to a phrase – even if you end up trying it out and then going back to exactly what you had before! It’s not a wasted journey and can sometimes really turn up something exquisite.

We moved back to the voice and guitar repertoire with Liam accompanied by Chris in Dowland’s Flow my Tears. This was a work in progress for them both, but they have the makings of a very suited partnership with Liam’s light tenor voice complementing Chris’s guitar playing. I quite like hearing pieces in the early stages of development sometimes as it gives the performers scope to incorporate musical ideas into their interpretation right from the start, rather than try to add them later.

There was just enough time to squeeze in a very quick Come again, Sweet love doth now invite – from Dowland’s First book of Airs with counter-tenor, Oliver . This is one of Dowland’s more upbeat airs and great fun to perform with lots of opportunities for experimenting with phrasing and colour. The session had just zoomed by, but I’m hoping to be able to return early next year for a more in depth look at the voice and gutiar repertoire with the students. Thanks to Susan Legg (Head of Voice) and all the students at Chichester University for a fabulous morning.