Concert by Carl Herring

6th March 2004 at Kinson Community Centre

The winner of the 6th Ivor Mairants guitar competition, Carl Herring, will be giving his recital at Kinson on 6th March. The adjudicators awarded the prize to Carl for his all round competence and for his intensely poetic interpretation of the first movement of Berkeley’s Sonatina. Carl has included this piece in his programme.

Carl’s programme also includes Suite, BWV995 by J. S. Bach, Fandanguillo by Joaquin Turina, Homenaje by Manuel de Falla, The Blue Guitar by Michael Tippett and Fandango Zapateado by Joaquin Rodrigo.

Biography

Born in 1980, Carl showed great promise from an early age and is now one of Britain’s brightest young guitarists.

In May 2000 he was chosen to represent the UK in the pioneering and exciting first stages of the European Youth Guitar Ensemble (EYGE), performing with them in venues such as the Assembly Rooms, Bath and the Konzertgebouw, Amsterdam and collaborating with international figures such as Leo Brouwer and Peter Constant. Most recently, they performed a specially commissioned piece by Stephen Dodgson with John Williams as soloist.

While performing with EYGE at the Bath International Guitar Festival In June 2001 he won second prize in the International Admira Young Classical Guitarist of the year competition.

Among others, he has played in master classes with David Russell, Leo Brouwer, Stephen Dodgson, Chen Zhi and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet.

In 2002 Carl worked closely with the colossal Gyorgy Kurtag for a performance of the Hungarian composer’s powerful guitar concerto Grabstein. His interpretation received not only the approval of an enthusiastic capacity audience in the Duke’s Hall of the Royal Academy of Music but also the praise of the notoriously demanding Kurtag.

Before graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in the summer of 2003 with first class honours he won the highly coveted Julian Bream prize, adjudicated by the maestro himself. Carl recently impressed a panel of select names from the guitar world and fended off stiff international competition to receive the Ivor Mairants guitar award.