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Acoustic Guitar Master Alex de Grassi Plays Hayes Center March 8

Story by Anna Oakes

Alex de Grassi, known worldwide as one of the top fingerstyle, steel-string guitarists, will perform at the Hayes Center on Saturday, March 8, at 7:30 p.m. de Grassi will perform a solo set of original compositions and arrangements of jazz standards, folk songs and other music.

Billboard praised de Grassi for his “intricate fingerpicking technique with an uncanny gift for melodic invention.” His trademark is the ability to create a highly orchestrated sound in his solo guitar music, weaving together melody, counter-melody, bass, harmony, rhythm and cross-rhythms, his website says. His 1998 release The Water Garden was nominated for a Grammy award.

“The guitar is quite a versatile instrument,” de Grassi said. “I discovered that it is possible to play solo guitar and really sort of fulfill all the parts of a group or a band.”

de Grassi says he was heavily influenced by fingerpicking guitarist Leo Kottke and British folk and blues players like John Renbourn.

“The whole scene has grown tremendously. Now, there’s a whole generation of solo guitar players on steel strings,” he said. “That full sound is really the result of trying to sit down and play and be a complete band.”

The artist was born in Yokosuka, Japan, but raised in the San Francisco Bay area. His grandfather led a string quartet and was a violinist with the San Francisco Symphony. His father was trained in classical piano and his mother was a jazz aficionado.

de Grassi first learned to play the trumpet, but he discovered the guitar at age 13, learning folk, blues and popular styles. He is largely a self-taught musician but has studied jazz guitar with noted instructor Bill Thrasher. In addition, de Grassi has studied jazz piano and composition.

Studying piano had an even more profound impact on his music—especially his compositions—than studying jazz guitar, de Grassi said.

“As versatile as the guitar is, the piano still reigns supreme as the composing instrument,” he noted.

He has released multiple records since his first release, Turning: Turning Back, in 1978. His latest album is a collaborative effort with bassist Michael Manring and percussionist Chris Garcia; they call themselves deMania. Their self-titled album was released in 2006. de Grassi also released a concert DVD, in 2007.

In 2006, de Grassi and violinist Jeremy Cohen were commissioned to write a concerto for steel string guitar, string quartet and orchestra that has since been published and premiered. de Grassi said it’s in this direction that his work is headed.

“That’s all beginning gradually over time—it’s become more a part of what I do as a guitar player,” he said. The artist is currently at work on a new album of original compositions that he hopes will be released later this year.

He has toured in Europe, Japan and throughout North America, playing at venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Interlochen Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival and the Belfast International Festival.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $14 for students. For more information, call 828-295-9627 or click to www.brcac.org.

Want To Go?

Date: Saturday, March 8
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: Hayes Performing Arts Center
Cost: $20 adults/$14 students