Album Notes

Ken Fackler began to play guitar at the age of 12, learning to read music and listening to music of many different styles.

Throughout secondary school the guitar accompanied him,... to read the guitar part in the high-school play, to play with local musicians in a jazz-rock group, to accompany the choir at the graduation ceremony...

He played with many friends and superb musicians at Berklee College of Music where he graduated with a B.A. in Applied Performance after which he turned his attention toward classical guitar.

Ken writes,
"Spain, a country rich in history and romance, beckoned. I traveled to nearly every region of this beautiful part of the world where I studied briefly with Master José Tomás and the late José Luís Gonzalez. It was the musical mastery and passion for music of these teachers which helped me to appreciate the guitar and its roots more fully. The recording Music for Two Guitars was a result of the sojourn in Spain where Jeffrey Hacker and I performed a number of concerts in southeastern Spain."

"I was most fortunate to attend a master class series in Castres, France, that featured the late Antonio Lauro, Paco Peña, and John Williams. Many musicians and stops at performances during this time left long lasting impressions. A number of the pieces that I recorded on Easy Guitar grew out of the experiences there including the ones arranged by Anton Steuxner who I met at Castres."

"While in Spain, I attended many superb concerts and one in particular was pivotal. A performance given by the Egyptian National Orchestra in Alcoy opened my ears more fully again to world music, just as had the Ravi Shankar concert several years earlier at Berklee College of Music. Revived then was my memory of an informal performance of music of the vina by a professor of Urdu at Harvard. I had spoken to him about his performance and music as it related to literature of the region and he indicated that a knowledge of one of the languages in question would be required to carry out any meaningful investigation. It was as Gurdjieff had alluded years before that languages would be necessary for any meaningful journey... and thus, the birth of the recording Crystal Lanterns-Amber Streams. It was about this time I realized that learning foreign languages fascinated me, and something totally new began to resonate within."

Ken has given performances in the U.S., Spain, and South America. He has lived, taught and traveled in Spain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Qatar, Malaysia and the U.S.