Classical Guitarist Will Offer Variety Of Old, New Works

The electric guitar pounds out rock and is a recent rage, but its quiet cousin the acoustic guitar has been making music for centuries.

The classical guitar enjoyed a heyday in the 17th and 18th centuries but went into a decline in the 19th century until the Spanish virtuoso Andres Segovia created a new audience in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Classical guitarist James Reid will perform a survey of old and new works for the instrument Sunday afternoon at 4 at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, at 24th and Grand.

Reid directs the guitar programs at both Washington State University and the University of Idaho and is founder of the Northwest Guitar Festival. Reid has performed in guitar series and at music festivals throughout the country.

His program will include his own guitar transcription of a lute suite by Sylvius Leopold Weiss as well as Four Divertimenti by Mauro Giuliani, the best-known guitarist-composer of the early 19th century and a player much admired by Beethoven.

Other composers whose original guitar works Reid will perform include Johann Kaspar Mertz, Heitor Villa Lobos, Alan Hirsh, Andrew York and Maximo Diego Pujol.

Several of the works on Sunday’s program, some of them commissioned by Reid, are included on Reid’s latest album, “Higher Ground,” on the Lost Trails label.

Tickets are $10, available at the door.

, DataTimes