The classical guitar and composers

The classical guitar varies from the "Spanish Guitar" from its construction, size, weight, wood and the sound it produces. The common factor is that both guitars have six nylon strings against metal strings used in acoustic and electric guitars. In addition to the instrument, the phrase "classical guitar" can refer to two other concepts:

• The instrumental finger technique common to classical guitar—individual strings plucked with the fingernails or, rarely, fingertips
• The instrument's historic repertoire

The shape, construction, and material of classical guitars vary, but typically they have a modern classical guitar shape, or historic classical guitar shape (e.g., early romantic guitars from France and Italy). Strings are usually of nylon or other synthetic material, or fine wire wrapped around a nylon or other synthetic core. Historic guitars may have strings made of gut (sheep or pig intestine).

A guitar family tree can be identified. (The flamenco guitar derives from the modern classical, but has differences in material, construction and sound).

The term modern classical guitar is sometimes used to distinguish the classical guitar from older forms of guitar, which are in their broadest sense also called classical, or more specifically: early guitars. Examples of early guitars include the 6-string early romantic guitar (ca. 1790 - 1880), and the earlier baroque guitars with 5 courses.

Today's modern classical guitar was established by the late designs of the 19th century Spanish luthier Antonio Torres Jurado.

Eliot Fisk

Fisk was the last direct pupil of Andrés Segovia and is the holder of all reproduction rights to Segovia's music, given to him by Segovia's wife, Emilia. After attending Jamesville-Dewitt High School in Dewitt, New York, Class of 1972, Fisk also studied interpretation under harpsichordists Ralph Kirkpatrick and Albert Fuller at Yale University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1976. After graduation, he was asked to form the Guitar Department at the Yale School of Music. He was the winner of the International Guitar Competition in 1980.
He is a professor at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg in Austria, where he teaches in five different languages, and in Boston at the New England Conservatory. His students have come from many countries, and several have gone on to become important performers and teachers in their own right.
Fisk lives in Boston, Salzburg, and Granada, Spain with his wife, Zaira, and their 11-year-old daughter, Raquel. He uses a handmade Thomas Humphrey Millennium guitar and another by upcoming luthier Stephan Connor. He received the Grand Cross of Isabel la Cátolica on June 10, 2006, from King Juan Carlos of Spain. Earlier recipients have included Andrés Segovia and Yehudi Menuhin. Fisk earned the award for contributions to Spanish music as an interpreter and teacher.

Fisk is known for an adventurous repertoire and willingness to take art music into unusual venues, including schools, senior centers and even prisons. He has received critical acclaim in recital, as a soloist with major orchestras and in a wide variety of chamber music combinations. In 1996 he appeared in a command performance in the Palacio de los Cordova in Granada, Spain, for then U.S. President Bill Clinton and King Juan Carlos and their families.
Fisk is founder and director of Boston Guitar Fest, an annual event held in the month of June at the New England Conservatory. This workshop is dedicated to exploring new technical and musical possibilities of the guitar within an international cultural context. He has expanded the repertoire for the guitar through transcriptions of works by Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Paganini, and others, as well as through commissions from various composers including Luciano Berio, Leonardo Balada, Robert Beaser, Wiliam Bolcom, Xavier Montsalvatge, Nicholas Maw, George Rochberg and Kurt Schwertsik. His transcriptions and editions are published by Universal, Presser, Ricordi and Guitar Solo Publications.

His recordings for the Musical Heritage Society, DGG, Arabesque, and EMI have been much praised and even entered the Billboard charts as bestsellers. Many of these recordings include repertoire never before performed on the guitar such as his reading of the 24 solo violin Capricci, Op. 1 of Paganini, and his recordings of contemporary works by Berio and Rochberg or his recording with Paula Robison of Robert Beaser’s Mountain Songs, which was nominated for a Grammy.
Fisk's efforts in unconventional musical territory have included collaborations with chanteuse Ute Lemper, Turkish music expert Burhan Öçal, jazz musician Joe Pass, and master of castanets Lucero Tena. Upcoming projects include the premiere of a new quintet for guitar and strings by Leonardo Balada with the Miro String Quartet, the premiere of a new guitar concerto by Robert Beaser, and a nationwide tour of the US resulting in a duo CD with flamenco guitarist Paco Peña.

John William

John Christopher Williams (born 24 April 1941) is an Australian classical guitarist and long-term resident of the United Kingdom. In 1973, he shared a Grammy Award win in the Best Chamber Music Performance category with Julian Bream for Julian and John (Works by Lawes, Carulli, Albéniz, Granados).

John Williams was born on 24 April 1941 in Melbourne, Australia to an English father, Len Williams, who was later the founder of the London Guitar School, and Malaan (née Ah Ket), an Australian-Chinese mother (a daughter of Melbourne barrister William Ah Ket). In 1952, the family relocated to England. Williams was taught initially by his father and educated at the Friern Barnet Grammar School, London. From the age of eleven he attended summer courses with Andrés Segovia at the Academia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy. Later, he attended the Royal College of Music in London from 1956 to 1959, studying piano because the school did not have a guitar department at the time. Upon graduation, he was offered the opportunity to create such a department. He took the opportunity and ran the department for its first two years. Williams has maintained links with the college (and with the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester) ever since.

Williams's first professional performance was at the Wigmore Hall in London on 6 November 1958. Since then, he has been performing throughout the world and has made regular appearances on radio and TV. He has recorded almost the entire repertoire for the guitar and has extended it by commissioning guitar concertos from composers such as Stephen Dodgson, André Previn, Patrick Gowers, Richard Harvey and Steve Gray. He has recorded albums of duets with fellow guitarists Julian Bream and Paco Peña.
Williams is a visiting professor and honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music^[3] in London.
(sources: wikipedia.org)