Album Notes

When I first dreamed up what was to become the Boston GuitarFest, I wanted to bring together people from all corners of the world and from every conceivable discipline to shed new light on the classical guitar, its conundrums, and its rich legacy.

Boston GuitarFest, at this writing just short of its second birthday, seeks to appeal to music lovers and guitar aficionados of all ages, but in particular it aims to give young players a boost. Even though I am famously a foe of guitar competitions for all the easily imaginable reasons, I decided to make a low pressure guitar competition a part of our festival in the hope that such an event would be of use to all those participating whether they won prizes or not.

Due to an administrative oversight, we ended up with a four (rather than 3 or 5!) person jury. Thus Jury President Bruce Holzman of Florida State Unviersity was assisted by Professor of Piano, Veronica Jochum, and Professor of Viola, Martha Strongin Katz, both of New England Conservatory, and by jazz guitarist extraodinaire, Professor David Tronzo of the Berklee School of Music.

And in good democratic fashion our distinguished jury split right down the middle over the first prize. For this reason, in true solomaic manner, our winners’ CD is also split down the middle.

As the Director of Boston GuitarFest, I am more than proud to join Vicente Go of VGo Recordings in presenting our joint first prize winners, Steve Lin and Joseph Williams II, in their CD debuts featuring an unusual and varied program of virtuoso guitar music of 3 centuries.

As always, our thanks to the one and only “General” Vicente Go, without whose infinte patience, perseverance and generosity this project would never have come to fruition.

Eliot Fisk
Boston, MA - April 12, 2007