Brazilian Guitar Quartet
Biography Brazilian Guitar Quartet
Brazilian Guitar Quartet
Winner of the 2011 Latin Grammy Award in the “best classical album” category, the Brazilian Guitar Quartet has established itself as one of world’s leading guitar ensembles. Praised by the Washington Post for its “seductive beauty” and “virtuosic gusto,” the group’s unique combination, of regular six-string and extended-range, eight-string guitars, allows for the exploration of an original and unusual repertoire. In their more than ten years of activity, the BGQ has performed over 250 concerts in the Americas, Europe and Asia, often receiving ecstatic audience responses, garnering rave reviews, and meeting sold-out halls.
Highlights of the BGQ’s past seasons include performances at the 92 Street ‘Y’ and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Spivey Hall in Atlanta, Vancouver Playhouse, Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, Dumbarton Concerts and National Gallery in Washington, D.C., Chamber Music Albuquerque, Beethovensaal in Hanover, Wortham Theather in Houston and Libby Gardner Hall in Salt Lake City, as well as at the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Felicja Blumental Festival in Tel Aviv, Colorado Music Festival, Ravinia Festival, Carmel Bach Festival and some of the major guitar festivals in the U.S., Brazil, Australia, Denmark, Scotland, Mexico, Portugal and Germany.
In 2004, the Brazilian Guitar Quartet were “headliners” at the inaugural World Guitar Congress in Baltimore where, together with the BaltimoreSymphony, they gave the world premiere of a specially-commissioned concerto by Brazil’s 2001 “Composer of the Year,” Ronaldo Miranda. In 2009, the Quartet performed the Suite Iberia by Isaac Albéniz in a Brazilian tour that included the major capitals of that country, sponsored by Instituto Cervantes in honor of the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death.
The BGQ’s discography includes five CDs for Delos. Three of them are devoted to Brazilian Music: Essência do Brasil (1999), Encantamento (2001) and the quartet’s latest release, the Latin Grammy winner Brazilian Guitar Quartet plays Villa-Lobos (2011). The other two recordings present, in their entirety, two great works of Western classical music, Bach’s Four Orchestral Suites (2000) and Albéniz’s Suite Iberia (2006).
