Guitar quartet earns glowing reviews, encores, in European news
 Fredonia Guitar Quartet is shown here on Spring Break Tour at Burgthann Castle in Germany. From left to right are Jahzeel Montes, Mario Rubano, Michael Mendoza and Anthony LaLena. |
The all-student Fredonia Guitar Quartet recently returned from a highly successful concert tour in Germany and France, earning encores and glowing reviews in the local press.
"The overwhelming sentiment from audience members in both Germany and France was that the performances of the Fredonia Guitar Quartet belied the fact that they are indeed a student ensemble," their Director James Piorkowski said. "This earned them great admiration from a knowledgable and enthusiastic audience, with requests for return performances in the future
Jahzeel Montes, Mario Rubano, Michael Mendoza, and Anthony LaLena, under the direction of Distinguished Professor Piorkowski, performed a program which included music by Johannes Brahms, James Piorkowski and Parisian Roland Dyens, who wrote and dedicated a new composition, Filmaginaires, to the quartet.
The first concert on March 9 was in Burgthann, (near Nuremberg) Germany. The performance took place inside a 1,000 year old castle, a setting that was fairy-tale like in both the visual and acoustic realms. A full and enthusiastic audience enjoyed the concert so much that an encore was demanded, a reaction that was to be repeated in subsequent cities.
The next night in Colmar, France, the FGQ played to an overflowing and rapt audience in another movie-set like venue—Le Musée du Jouet, a charming toy museum in the capital city of Alsace. The following day, the music reviewer from the newspaper, L'Alsace, wrote about the "concert that charmed the audience" by praising this "remarkable guitar quartet" that "effectively play like pros, despite the difficulty of the pieces in the program."
On March 13 at the Centre Culturel Jean Charcot in Ludres, France, the Quartet again performed for a full house, and returned for repeated curtain calls from a highly appreciative audience, with an unexpected autograph session materializing at the post-concert reception.
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