Recital takes listeners on a journey

Music for me is a journey,” states Dr. Richard Greene.  “A journey from my time to the music’s time and from my place to the music’s place.”
Greene, accompanied by Josh McGuire, elected to share this journey with GCSU students and faculty in a recital Sunday night appropriately named, “Journeys and Dreams.”
  I really enjoyed hearing guitar music for a change,” said Neal Clark, a senior.  “Most of the recitals are vocalists or traditional band instruments, you never hear guitarists.”
Dr. Greene has been playing guitar for 40 years and teaching for 25 of them. He plays a David Anton Custom classical guitar with La Bella nylon strings and although he claims Jimi Hendrix as one of his favorite guitar players, he doesn’t fiddle with anything electric.
Josh McGuire recently received his master’s degree in guitar performance from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and is the new choral director at Baldwin High School.
 The music of the recital covered a very broad span of both time and national origins, with everything from “Dreaming,” by Robert Schumann, to music from France, Spain, South America and even Dr. Greene himself.
“It was a great collection of music.” said Dr. Maureen Horgan, a professor of music. “He did a wide range of time periods and styles with some piano transcriptions that were just gorgeous.”
  One piece, “The Sonata for Guitar,” written by Alberto Ginastera and performed by Josh McGuire, consisted mainly of various types of banging, scratching, thumping and other behaviors that would get most people thrown out of their local guitar store.
  Greene’s own composition, “Journey to the House of the Quetzal Plumes,” centers on the Mayan, Aztec and Toltec legends of Quetzalcoatl, who sacrificed himself by self-immolation and whose ashes formed the feathers of the quetzal bird that rose into the heavens to become the brightest star.
“These days we tend to take music for granted, since it is part of our daily environment,” says Greene. “But this recital will give the audience a chance to get inside the composer’s environment, at least a little bit. The music becomes more adventurous, and so do we.”
Although Dr. Greene is a very busy man, he does offer some private student lessons on the side.  The next scheduled guitar recital will be October 9 in the Max Noah Recital Hall at 7:30 p.m. and will be performed by guest artist Elliot Frank.  Visit www.gcsu.edu/music for other concerts, updates, and further information.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 1 2006. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry